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Article 2755 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Table-lookup Chinese speaker
Message-ID: <1992Jan15.210745.11177@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 15 Jan 92 21:07:45 GMT
References: <1992Jan15.181213.29101@oracorp.com>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 23

Well this may be a bit absurd, but...

In article <1992Jan15.181213.29101@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>I meant *complete* conversations, starting from the first time the
>conversants meet. That is why I allowed conversations of up to 100
>years in length. By this definition, "Ah, so we meet again, Professor
>Chung!" is *not* a sensible response to an opening sentence "Hello."

>The way I have defined conversation, you only have *one* extended
>conversation with each person. Everything you said in the past is part
>of the single, on-going conversation. The relevant probabilities
>involved are not the probabilities of entire conversations, but the
>probability of the next reply, given what has gone on before.

I think one should specify that one person only has one extended conversation
with how ever many people he or she come in contact.  This allows correct
answers to questions such as "What did john say to you last night?"  Some
measure of time must also be part of the conversation.  None of this 
invalidates the idea.

It seems to me that this database is even learnable though simple elimination.

--gary forbis@u.washington.edu


