H.I. No. 8: First World YouTuber Problems: Difference between revisions
→Other: Cleaned transcript up to 25:20
Timscriber (talk | contribs) (→Other: Cleaned transcript up to 15:36) |
Timscriber (talk | contribs) (→Other: Cleaned transcript up to 25:20) |
||
| (One intermediate revision by the same user not shown) | |||
Line 374:
Brady: --I haven't thought this through. [chuckles] It, uh, if anyone decides that they're going to do that, I don't know, I mean, maybe I've- no, don't email me.
Grey: You know, you're still gonna read 'em. [chuckles]
Brady: Anyway, I did get this email from a chap named Sean... I don't know if I should say his surname, 'cause he might like it being read out, but I'm always really reluctant to use people surnames, um, publicly.
Grey: Uh, yeah, I'd- I'd say the general policy let's stick with- with first names, right? That's what I would--
Brady: Sean, you know who you are, you wrote a long email. It was very good, you made a lot of good points. Some I agree with, some I have no opinion on--
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: --uh, but some I didn't make in our discussion.
Grey
Brady: I mean, I- like most things in life, I have no really firm position on this whole language-in-school debate. But, I tried to put the other side because... you put- you put your side so strongly, and he made some really good points, and I'd like to share a couple of them with you. One of the points he made, you talked about in the last podcast, how you think, sort of, machine translation is moving along so quickly,--
Grey: Mm-hmm?
Brady: --that that's one of the reasons speaking other languages will become sort of, you know, a less important skill--
Grey
Brady: --as
Grey
Brady: He's- he politely but strongly disagreed with that. And he seems- it seems to be an area he knows quite a lot about.
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: And he- he thinks were fifty, if not a hundred years away from computerized language translation being really top notch, like reaching a level that, um, is acceptable for, you know, strong purposes.
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: I'll send- I'll send you the email,- and you can decide if you want to read it.
Grey
Brady: He made a strong case for it.
Grey: Yeah.
Brady: So I just want to throw that in the mix. I don't- I don't know if he's right or not,--
Grey: I- I- my- my- my, uh, my thought on that just- just very briefly is, when I talked about the- the language translation, we- we discussed it a little bit last time, but my main thought about that is the scenario of- of utility, right? It is a good enough for most people traveling in a foreign country to communicate with the people around them. And, I think that that is the language scenario for most people. I- I- I imagine, especially, especially if you are ever having to, uh, translate a- a work that has any kind of nuance to it, like if you're translating a novel between languages, I don't- I don't think machine translation is going to be able to do that kind of work for a very long time, because I think that's a- that- that- that is not a question of- of communication, uh, translating something that has style to it. [clears throat] Excuse me. Um, I think--
Brady: We'll blame Derek for that cough.
Grey: Yeah, yeah, I will blame Derek for that cough. What I was just gonna say is- is, uh, I was reading a document a while ago, talking about, uh, the beginning points of- of machine language translation, like, what- "how do you begin to train these algorithms?", and I think to give you a sense of how- of how dry and utilitarian the translations may be, is that the- the starting point for this one algorithm that I was reading about was the European Union Corpus of Laws. Because, uh, for- for those of- of you who are aware, in the European Union (oh god, I should know this off the top my head), but I think it's there's something like twenty-two or twenty-four different official languages,--
Brady: Hmm.
Grey: --and what that means is that any document that is issued in the European Union has to have legal copies in all of the other languages.
Brady: Nice.
Grey: Which is, you can find these- these statistics for how many human hours is employed in--
Brady: [chuckles]
Grey: --uh, in this endeavor, which is- which is quite a lot. For the record, I just want to say I'm totally okay with that, right? If you're going to designate something as an official language, you need to produce documents in that language, otherwise, what's the point?
Brady: Yeah.
Grey: But basically, the result is that you end up having just this enormous treasure trove for computer linguistics of data of thousands of documents that have been translated into this twenty-something different languages. And so it's- it's a great training ground. And by- by training I mean, algorithms a little weird, you can actually sort of have them learn on their own. It's- but, the- the result means that, like, your translation style is going to sound probably as dry as a European Union legal memo is going to sound. Uh, so I don't- I don't think that we're going to have translations of poetry that are anything but laughable for quite a long time.
Brady: Well, if that's your- if that's your brief response to that first of Sean's points,--
Grey: Oh god... [laughing]
Brady: --I'll, uh, I'll- [laughing] I'll limit the number of Sean's points I share with you.
Grey: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Brady: And I will point out, I'm only briefly summarizing, I'm not- I'm not pointing out his whole argument.
Grey: Yes, yes.
Brady: Another point he made it was very good though, um, you were saying you're an advocate of coding, computer programming--
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: --as something that would be more valuable to teach in schools.
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: He rightly points out, computer languages are- change very quickly become outdated very quickly.
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: Uh, you know, what- what languages are we going to- what computer languages are we going to teach in school? Are people going to come out fluent in some code that is redundant before they even reach the job market?
Grey: Yeah, so this is- I- I think- it's an interesting point, I actually, uh, discussed this with Derek a- a little bit, uh, tonight. In any future video or any- any, uh, future podcast that we talk about, I mean computer programming languages in a very very broad way. I- I think there are- there are lots of things if I- if I was having a- a computer language course, that I- that I would teach that would not be straight up computer languages. So, um, for example, when I- when I, uh, worked as a teacher, I taught a course in electronics. And, that was a- a one-hundred-percent hands-on practical course, no code at all. Uh, but what it was, was the- was kids had to connect a bunch of- of sensors and buttons and switches to each other. And they had to make those connections using, um, logic gates. So those are things like "if the heat sensor is active, and the light sensor is active, then make the buzzer sound". Um, so- so I think any kind of- of teaching of logic, to me falls under this category of "what a computer programming language is". Just the very idea of "how do you talk to computers?". And so, even though computer programmers in the audience, right? Their- their head will explode when I put this in the same category, but I would be totally happy to have a lot done in say, spreadsheets. There's an enormous amount of stuff you can do with a spreadsheet that is "if, then, else", right? "If this number is this, then do that thing." That's what I mean by computer programming, just the idea of teaching, "how to communicate with computers in a- in a logical way". I just want to say that that's- that's a very- very broad, um, a very broad, uh- uh, definition. But to specifically answer his question about the- the language, I- I would just say that the languages in the field seem to turn over very slowly. The- there are languages that don't move very much, and--
Brady: Okay.
Grey: For example, uh, you know, if you're using- and it's- it's 2014, and if you're using an iPhone, those iPhones are still programmed in, basically in- in a variant of the language of C, which... [sighs] oh god, I mean, off the top of my head, I'm going to say C is at least, um, 1970s, kind of old. Uh, so that's not- I mean, C is not a pretty language, I've taught- I've programmed a little bit in C. Sorry, C programmers, it--
Brady: [exhales in amusement]
Grey: --it is just kind of ugly. Lisp is beautiful, for those in the audience who are listening, and I do like Python. But anyway, um, you can pick languages that don't change very much, but- uh- much more with computer languages than with say, human languages, the- the internal concepts, the- the logical gates of "if, then, else, and, nand", those things are universal in languages and the- the syntactic differences between programming languages are not as large as you might think they are. So, um--
Brady: Let me read you something Sean wrote, which I quite liked.
Grey: Yeah- yeah.
Brady. And this sort of touches nicely on something you covered a few seconds ago, um--
Grey: Mm-hmm?
Brady: --and maybe this also is where we come to the interesting point where, sort of, the robot Grey versus the human me, but this really appealed to me, maybe it won't appeal to you.
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: This is what Sean wrote:
Grey: Yeah.
Brady: "The selling point for teaching language for me is, as you alluded to in the podcast, the access point to culture, but I would include all human culture in that. More than anything else in our makeup, we are built to understand language. It is literally in our DNA more than physics, math, almost anything else. Language is what distinguishes us evolutionarily from the rest of the animals and is deeply linked to our cognitive ability.
Grey: The second part of that is undeniably true, that humans are- I mean especially little humans- are just language absorbing machines. That's clearly built straight into our DNA. That- that's- that's something that kids do. But I- I- I feel like I- I'd have to hear that first bit of it again, but I- I- I just- just because that's the thing that humans intrinsically are good at when they're young. I don't- I don't see that as an ar- as a convincing argument for why we should teach it in this very formulaic way when they're older. Right?
Brady: Well, let me say that- that he- Sean also made the point that Derek made,--
Grey: Mm-hmm.
Brady: --which is that he thinks it's really important to start young. Um,--
Grey: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that.
Brady: Yeah, uh, and maybe if we started young, we'd be less inclined to give it the flick later on. But something else he said: "just because something may be poorly taught is not an excuse for it to not be taught". I mean, I think he's saying there that you're throwing the- the baby out with the bathwater,--
Grey: Yeah.
Brady: --and if it's being taught poorly at school, don't ditch it, just teach it better.
Grey: Yeah, I- I- [laughing] I- I keep mentioning this conversation with Derek because it did go on for forever, um--
Brady: I'm wondering if this is it,--
Grey: [laughing]
Brady: --I wonder if Sean is actually like, you know, Derek trying to sneakily get- get to--
Grey: [laughing] Yeah, maybe.
Brady: --alias.
Grey: Get more face time with his points? Yeah.
Brady: Yeah.
Grey: Um, I- I would- I would just say that- that, uh, [sigh] this- this- this cannot be the topic for today, 'cause it'll be- it'll go on forever, but--
Brady: Mm-hmm.
Grey: --the language thing is very much connected with my with my opinions of how school in general works in a modern world, which having seen it as a professional in that environment is is generally very poor. I don't think I think the whole education system has it has a whole lot of problems. And so I would leave it at that that's like there are very many things that I would change about the education system, and I just think languages, particularly ill suited for the sit at a desk kind of learning method. But there are many things They're just done terribly as well in that system. But obviously, we still we still send kids to school. So
Brady 26:06
| |||