Dear all on the Corpora-List
I understand it is possible that some of you may harbor some negative sentiments towards me and/or my recent replies on the list. That having been expressed, I would like to remind everyone on this list it is important to understand that many subjects such as computational [x, where x can be e.g. linguistics, biology, physics, modeling...], digital humanities, data analytics, data science, and many of their dependencies have been / are in the public domain, much of which academic and scientific in nature. Science is in the public domain.
What we are experiencing here is sort of a computational and statistical turn in the computational sciences and studies --- anything that involves data (computational and otherwise). Previously (or even currently in many disciplines/practices), one has modeled / has been modeling many symbolic concepts and values computationally, directly inheriting these from "traditional sciences" (i.e. sciences from a time when all was done without any computational machinery), assuming that these values and the relationship between such would not only hold but also hold as the only ground truth. But as e.g. my results have shown, many of these scientific concepts, values, and relationships deserve to be re-evaluated and re-interpreted.
What I have been trying to do is to communicate this, as without any updates and/or self-correction, we could be experiencing many discrepancies in our experimental results. Good scientific practice (including good assumptions therefor) is fundamental to everyone. This includes but is not limited to having good assumptions, leveraging appropriate methods, being responsible in evaluation as well as addressing ethical concerns, e.g. in the case of my findings: a combination of false assumptions and miseducation. (Sorry to re-iterate this but it is just such an important lesson for many on this list... it may be painful for some too.)
Corpora-list might have changed more or less like how the field of CL/NLP has in the past decades. While these areas might have become more generalized and thus the audience more "diverse" in terms of background and areas of familiarity, there are certainly some on this list who are concerned about some of the "bad" science/values that could get propagated through the use of data/corpora. That is one of the reasons behind my many replies of late.
*If you should find my comments/replies an issue of concern, please let me know what in specifics you disagree with. I'd be happy to modify my formulations or discuss further. If you think I have been wrong somewhere, please do let me know. I'd be happy to update. *
Thanks and best Ada
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 5:39 PM Ada Wan adawan919@gmail.com wrote:
Amendment: In short, there are no symbolic concepts relevant in computing / computational processing except for those which also align with statistics. (There are various levels of assumptions/abstractions that could be relevant depending on the goals/tasks. But much of what one might have been doing in "symbolic computing" surely deserves a critical re-examination.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 4:48 PM Ada Wan adawan919@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Ben, Rodolfo, and Toms
Please accept that there is a responsibility to science, technology, engineering, and education (or anything that we undertake).
If you could point out the specific arguments as to which of what I wrote may be problematic to you, perhaps we can have a constructive exchange. The way in which you three expressed your sentiments on this thread can be interpreted as mobbing.
Please note the intent behind my statement and lend me the benefit of a doubt as to why I would have invested my time and energy to write the reply that I did to the list: "As language sciences (e.g. Linguistics) and NLP are still taught at some universities, i.e. part of publicly accessible education, there is a general responsibility that one should bear when promoting/hosting events that would be explicitly/implicitly supporting biases and/or in violation of scientific integrity." This applies to the whole area of computing, including digital humanities and the computational social sciences.* In short, there are no symbolic concepts relevant in computing / computational processing.* I am sorry if that has not been clear.
I understand that there are members in the CL/NLP community/communities who might be interested in (or used/addicted to) "word" hacking. But it is now high time to stop.
@Ben: Please note that I am not doing this "for fun". I am not trying to ridicule anyone. My remarks are not ad personam. For each of the research directions/practices that I commented on, there are opportunities for all practitioners to do a better job, to refine our analyses.
Thanks and best Ada
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 9:45 AM Toms Bergmanis via Corpora < corpora@list.elra.info> wrote:
Can’t agree more.
Toms
*From:* Rodolfo Delmonte via Corpora corpora@list.elra.info *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2023 10:06 AM *To:* Ben Sir benoit.siroit@gmail.com *Cc:* corpora corpora@list.elra.info *Subject:* [Corpora-List] Re: RANLP 2023 Call for Participation
Fully agree with you Ben.
Rodolfo
Il lun 21 ago 2023, 01:00 Ben Sir via Corpora corpora@list.elra.info ha scritto:
Hi Ada,
It's understandable that enthusiasm can sometimes lead to excessive engagement, but your disruptive posting on the mailing list has reached an intolerable level. Please keep your conversations private instead of spamming everyone and curb your enthusiasm. Your obnoxious behavior reflects poorly on you.
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