Hello.
Gully Burns wrote this in response to a few unnecessary ad-hominem posts:
/I was shocked to see a vitriolic ad-hominem attack on a colleague posted to this mailing list. It is entirely inappropriate to post this type of diatribe against an individual even though someone might disagree with either the tone or the content of an individual's messages or arguments. The fact that other members of the community chimed in to reinforce the attack is also appalling and entirely inappropriate./
I agree with Gully. Ada Wan's posts may be long, and clearly are not to everyone's liking, but they speak to a phenomenon that is troubling enough to merit a discussion. Symbolic processing in NLP is utterly outmoded. Number crunching has taken overcompletely, and linguistic reflection seems to be considered unnecessary. This may be an opening for scientific dodginess. Ada advocates, and very reasonably, for good scientific practice, so one wonders why anyone would be riled up.
This may be my optimism, but the Corpora List may be the best forum that NLP has today. It is not only a place for announcing conferences and workshops, and advertising open positions. It is, and it should be, a place for an exchange of ideas.
-- Stan Szpakowicz, PhD, DSc, Emeritus Professor EECS, Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Dear Stan, I'm trying to find out whether your message is to be read as a provocative stimulus or literally. Because in the second case I will have to erase the impression I got when we met in a restaurant for the social dinner. You were well informed on the production of the Australian Nobel Prize for literature which you regarded as an outstanding writer. Now you seem to be saying GPT will substitute easily any such human product and statistical counting of character sequences will suffice to generate exquisite stories. Sorry but I'm still strongly on the other side. Just consider the total inability of GPT to cope with sounds and all that concerns poetry.... No thanks statistics is useful but symbolic approches will continue to be there. Rodolfo
Il mer 23 ago 2023, 16:29 Stan Szpakowicz via Corpora < corpora@list.elra.info> ha scritto:
Hello.
Gully Burns wrote this in response to a few unnecessary ad-hominem posts:
*I was shocked to see a vitriolic ad-hominem attack on a colleague posted to this mailing list. It is entirely inappropriate to post this type of diatribe against an individual even though someone might disagree with either the tone or the content of an individual's messages or arguments. The fact that other members of the community chimed in to reinforce the attack is also appalling and entirely inappropriate.*
I agree with Gully. Ada Wan's posts may be long, and clearly are not to everyone's liking, but they speak to a phenomenon that is troubling enough to merit a discussion. Symbolic processing in NLP is utterly outmoded. Number crunching has taken over completely, and linguistic reflection seems to be considered unnecessary. This may be an opening for scientific dodginess. Ada advocates, and very reasonably, for good scientific practice, so one wonders why anyone would be riled up.
This may be my optimism, but the Corpora List may be the best forum that NLP has today. It is not only a place for announcing conferences and workshops, and advertising open positions. It is, and it should be, a place for an exchange of ideas.
-- Stan Szpakowicz, PhD, DSc, Emeritus Professor EECS, Computer Science, University of Ottawa _______________________________________________ Corpora mailing list -- corpora@list.elra.info https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/ To unsubscribe send an email to corpora-leave@list.elra.info
On 2023-08-23 8:15 a.m., Rodolfo Delmonte wrote:
I'm trying to find out whether your message is to be read as a provocative stimulus or literally. Because in the second case I will have to erase the impression I got when we met in a restaurant for the social dinner. You were well informed on the production of the Australian Nobel Prize for literature which you regarded as an outstanding writer. Now you seem to be saying GPT will substitute easily any such human product and statistical counting of character sequences will suffice to generate exquisite stories. Sorry but I'm still strongly on the other side. Just consider the total inability of GPT to cope with sounds and all that concerns poetry....
"Now you seem to be saying GPT will substitute easily any such human product and statistical counting of character sequences will suffice to generate exquisite stories." Uhm. I am saying the exact opposite. The utter domination of statistics is not a good thing, IMO. Ada's posts -- as I understand them -- are meant to alert us all to the dangers (well, figuratively speaking thus far) of the one-track-mind attitude we are witnessing. (-:)
Cheers,
-- Stan Szpakowicz, PhD, DSc, Emeritus Professor EECS, Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Sadly,the list server fails, at least for me, to respond properly ("Server error") when reaching back to follow this thread.
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 7:31 AM Stan Szpakowicz via Corpora < corpora@list.elra.info> wrote:
Hello.
Gully Burns wrote this in response to a few unnecessary ad-hominem posts:
*I was shocked to see a vitriolic ad-hominem attack on a colleague posted to this mailing list. It is entirely inappropriate to post this type of diatribe against an individual even though someone might disagree with either the tone or the content of an individual's messages or arguments. The fact that other members of the community chimed in to reinforce the attack is also appalling and entirely inappropriate.*
I agree with Gully. Ada Wan's posts may be long, and clearly are not to everyone's liking, but they speak to a phenomenon that is troubling enough to merit a discussion. Symbolic processing in NLP is utterly outmoded. Number crunching has taken over completely, and linguistic reflection seems to be considered unnecessary. This may be an opening for scientific dodginess. Ada advocates, and very reasonably, for good scientific practice, so one wonders why anyone would be riled up.
This may be my optimism, but the Corpora List may be the best forum that NLP has today. It is not only a place for announcing conferences and workshops, and advertising open positions. It is, and it should be, a place for an exchange of ideas.
-- Stan Szpakowicz, PhD, DSc, Emeritus Professor EECS, Computer Science, University of Ottawa _______________________________________________ Corpora mailing list -- corpora@list.elra.info https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/ To unsubscribe send an email to corpora-leave@list.elra.info
I agree: independent of how much opinions of colleagues annoy us, we should be nice in responding. While lists serve to share announcements, I also agree that they are an important way to discuss topics. If somebody has strong feelings regarding certain statements, I also think that it is often more useful to interact with people directly, rather than sharing critique over the whole list.
Best,
Mattis
On 23.08.23 17:22, Jack Park via Corpora wrote:
Sadly,the list server fails, at least for me, to respond properly ("Server error") when reaching back to follow this thread.
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 7:31 AM Stan Szpakowicz via Corpora <corpora@list.elra.info mailto:corpora@list.elra.info> wrote:
Hello. Gully Burns wrote this in response to a few unnecessary ad-hominem posts: /I was shocked to see a vitriolic ad-hominem attack on a colleague posted to this mailing list. It is entirely inappropriate to post this type of diatribe against an individual even though someone might disagree with either the tone or the content of an individual's messages or arguments. The fact that other members of the community chimed in to reinforce the attack is also appalling and entirely inappropriate./ I agree with Gully. Ada Wan's posts may be long, and clearly are not to everyone's liking, but they speak to a phenomenon that is troubling enough to merit a discussion. Symbolic processing in NLP is utterly outmoded. Number crunching has taken overcompletely, and linguistic reflection seems to be considered unnecessary. This may be an opening for scientific dodginess. Ada advocates, and very reasonably, for good scientific practice, so one wonders why anyone would be riled up. This may be my optimism, but the Corpora List may be the best forum that NLP has today. It is not only a place for announcing conferences and workshops, and advertising open positions. It is, and it should be, a place for an exchange of ideas. -- Stan Szpakowicz, PhD, DSc, Emeritus Professor EECS, Computer Science, University of Ottawa _______________________________________________ Corpora mailing list -- corpora@list.elra.info <mailto:corpora@list.elra.info> https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/ <https://list.elra.info/mailman3/postorius/lists/corpora.list.elra.info/> To unsubscribe send an email to corpora-leave@list.elra.info <mailto:corpora-leave@list.elra.info>
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Jack Park -
Johann-Mattis List -
Rodolfo Delmonte -
Stan Szpakowicz