Xah's Edu Corner: The importance of syntax & notations.

[Peter Keller]

In comp.lang.scheme w_a_x_man <w_a_x_man at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Aug 16, 11:05?am, Petey Keller <psil... at merlin.cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>  Compiler go through *great* pains
> 
> Compiler work real hard.
> Compiler have heap big trouble.

That's a funny observation in the context of this thread--which I
appreciate, since syntax really is the cornerstone of meaning transferal
between people. The unintended connotation brought in by what I mistakenly
wrote underscores the value of syntax.

However, what we don't have is a means of measuring the effectiveness
and/or efficiency of expressing meaning for an arbitrary set of syntax
rules. Computer Scientists can do this somewhat in that the expressive
power of parsing is greater than regular expressions and both can use a
syntax to represent them. But in a single complexity class, the "black
art" of how to place a metric on a syntax is, at least at this time,
relegated to the right brain and how it visually sees (and visually
parses) the syntax and how our emotions relate to the syntax.

The wolfram article, in fact, never does mention any metric other than
"this is hard to understand, this is less hard to understand". In a sense,
how is that useful at all?  Instead of really trying to find a method
by which understanding can be placed upon a metric (or discovering a
method *can not* be found, he seems to anecdotally ascribe understanding
difficulty upon various syntaxs.

The real frustrations of Xah Lee might be explained by his denial of the
right brain processing of syntax information. It is to be expected since
most industrial cultures suppress right brain advancement (emotional
understanding/social interaction, drawing, music, spatial relations) in
lieu of left brain processing (language and syntax, symbolic manipulation
(part, though not all of the skill set of math), object naming). In
fact, his skills of communicating his ideas in a social setting which,
in my opinion, are poor and stunted, is a red flag and the epitome of
this type of cultural viewpoint.

Thank you.

-pete