Exactly! The territory is all I really want to know about, but finally having a (crude) map would definitely be useful.surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 12:54 amWe use language to describe what we perceive to be reality but it is important not to confuse the map with the actual territoryTryingMyBest wrote:
We describe our world by using words . I see value in letting those words and definitions work for us so
that we may uncover Truth that we werent even looking for . Will it work ? Is it at least worth a shot ?
And because the map is not the territory it is possible it may be wrong [ least in part ] and so this needs to be remembered too
Dictionaries and Mathematics
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Re: Dictionaries and Mathematics
Re: Dictionaries and Mathematics
If all definitions are connected and cycle through each other the map would look like a circle, approximate of a circle, or sphere if mapped 3 dimensional.TryingMyBest wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 4:47 amExactly! The territory is all I really want to know about, but finally having a (crude) map would definitely be useful.surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 12:54 amWe use language to describe what we perceive to be reality but it is important not to confuse the map with the actual territoryTryingMyBest wrote:
We describe our world by using words . I see value in letting those words and definitions work for us so
that we may uncover Truth that we werent even looking for . Will it work ? Is it at least worth a shot ?
And because the map is not the territory it is possible it may be wrong [ least in part ] and so this needs to be remembered too
If you want to really understand the nature of language, studying basic circles, lines and points is the best approach as the nature of linguistic definition mirrors this.
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Re: Dictionaries and Mathematics
Thank you for the comments. I am attempting to first analyze the thesaurus in one-dimension. That is, to assign each unique sense of a word a variable with a random number between 1 and 10,000. Then I am changing the variables so that they become the average of the variables of its synonyms. (This will cluster words of similar meaning.) After a few iterations, this should determine how many unique clusters of meaning there are in the language. Are all words connected to each other or are there thousands of unique clusters of meaning? I don't currently know and not knowing makes me curious to find out.
Re: Dictionaries and Mathematics
This sounds like Google's Page Rank algorithm. Instead of "importance" you are measuring "connectedness".TryingMyBest wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 5:52 am Thank you for the comments. I am attempting to first analyze the thesaurus in one-dimension. That is, to assign each unique sense of a word a variable with a random number between 1 and 10,000. Then I am changing the variables so that they become the average of the variables of its synonyms. (This will cluster words of similar meaning.) After a few iterations, this should determine how many unique clusters of meaning there are in the language. Are all words connected to each other or are there thousands of unique clusters of meaning? I don't currently know and not knowing makes me curious to find out.