Andy I hadn’t heard of that, but it sounded interesting enough to send me googling. I found a 2005 review paper by Royal Skousen of BYU. Tell me if I’ve got the gist of things:

Concerning the QAM states:
1) One uses classical bits instead of quantum (2 states only, cloning allowed).
2) Bits can exist in quantum mechanical superposition.
3) Each pure state represents something called a “supracontext”, or rule. Each rule must be “homogeneous”, that is, they all must have the same “uncertainty”.*
4) The amplitude of each rule in a superposition of states is proportional to its frequency. It’s probability is the square of its amplitude.
5) It’s frequency is determined from a data set.

* I use the term “pure state” here loosely, since it seems that each rule is contructed from multiple “features”, which may appear in other rules as well. And I put “uncertainty” in quotes to highlight that it has a specific definition: uncertainty for a given rule, Q = sum( # features that predict outcome x/# of features that don’t ). The sum is over x for each feature in the rule.

Concerning the QAM operators:
1) All operators are classical, reversable, and operate on every rule.
2) Using the appropriate operator, one can determine the homogeneity of each state in the superpositon. The action of the operator sets the amplitude of non-homogeneous states to zero. According Skousen, this can be calculated in linear time for each state.
3) There exists a directional pointer between each pair of data that falls within each rule. Therefore by selecting a pointer, one automatically selects a rule with a probability that goes as the square of its frequency.

The direct selection of a data set member is different from the way one measures a quantum mechanical state. Really, the only part of this that’s vaguely quantum mechanical is the idea that the “total state” of the system is a statistical combination of states. Andy, I’d like to see a paper that lays out an NLP example. Perhaps Skousen’s paper does this—I’ve only gotten about 15 pages in (of 54!). But if you know of a particularly instructive paper, I’d love to see it.

For those interested in a basic example, Skousen provides the following. One wishes to know whether to expect outcome x or y from a specific choice of three features, abc. “abc” is the context. Since the combination abc does not appear in his data set, he makes rules that are generalizations of the available data. For example, -bc, where - can be anything. Combinations such as “-bc”/“a—”/etc. are called supracontexts, or rules.

Each rule may have many or no data items that fall within its scope. If all the data items for a given rule predict just x or just y, then it is homogeneous. This might not always be the case, and if not, the “uncertainty” of the rule is determined as described above. All rules with the same minimum uncertainty have amplitudes according to their number of data items, the rest have zero amplitude. A pointer to a data item within a homogeneous rule is selected at random, and the outcome of that rule—x or y—is chosen to be the guess for the outcome of abc.

One immediate application that comes to mind from this example alone is determining the POS of unknown words using a database of word chunks (groups of say, three or more words). Skousen mentions applications with indefinite articles, the form of the past tense (in English and Finnish), and “various problems in Spanish morphology”, which is how I imagine you found this method, Andy.

This thread has become a textbook example of a “Garden Path” discussion, going from talking about Siri (an Iphone app) to Quantum Mechanics, and who knows where, from here, with several other “stops” in between. As a moderator, I should remind everyone to try to stay on topic, and maybe even split the thread, but I feel that these “Garden Path” types of threads yield some amazing information. Plus, where would I begin splitting threads? And how many threads would I eventually split this monster into? Far better I should just change the title, I think.

Carry on, folks. This is interesting.

Thanks Dave, for the “green light” for us to continue. I have always been interested in QM and to participate in a discussion as diverse as this one is still another reason why I am so happy I have found this forum.

My pleasure, Laura. Like you (though I barely understand even the simplest of basics), I find Quantum Mechanics fascinating; a large part of my desire to let this thread continue to spiral further off topic.

Just bear in mind that there needs to be a “balance”, so I’ll be cracking my whip (so to speak) in other threads, making sure they stay on topic.

Sorry, like I said, I can easily get caught in ramble mode.

Related to earlier ramblings: I think I got the definition of “uncertainty”, Q, wrong in my brief description of QAM above. The sum can’t be over features—each combination of features produces one output, x. The sum is over data that obeys the rule. So each data set has a set of features, say “abc” in my example, and an output x. So rule “-bc” would match data “bbc”, “qbc”, etc. Each of those data sets would have some output, “bbc”—>x, “qbc”—>y, etc.

Actually it seems to get a little more involved, but that’s the gist.

CR, I would like this add another thought to this previous post since we are all now walking down this “Garden Path” together.

The following abstract was taken from the General Science Journal: May, 2010 on
QUANTUM PARTICLES, CONSCIOUSNESS, UNIFIED FIELD THEORY AND RELATIVITY

Consciousness or “mind-force” is evidently a potent force in
nature. The mind is part, an indispensable part, of nature.
Scientists such as David Bohm and Werner Heisenberg, as well as
many other scientists, evidently understood this fundamental
aspect. Classical philosophers such as Berkeley and Hume had
wondered whether the existence of any object was independent of
the existence of the mind or consciousness: If I had never seen
(never been aware of) an object, does that object exist?
Thus, even if a unified field theory or theory of everything were
obtained, it will still not give a complete picture of nature if
consciousness were excluded. There should therefore be a
complementary General Theory of Consciousness. This General Theory
of Consciousness will be a very important aspect in our search for
the ultimate truth. Many scientists, e.g., David Bohm, Wolfgang
Pauli, John von Neumann, Arthur Eddington, Roger Penrose, George
Wald, etc., had declared that the universe is mind-stuff. The
capabilities of the human mind are so unique that no intelligent
machine or artificial intelligence can ever fully duplicate them,
according to Sir Roger Penrose, who had authored the books, The
Emperor’s New Mind, and, Shadows Of The Mind. Could a Supreme
Being have created a mind which is capable of questioning its
creator, the Supreme Being itself? Will one ever be able to find
a computer questioning its creator, the human being?
The unified field theory is only concerned with the following
four forces of nature: gravity, strong nuclear force, weak
nuclear force and electromagnetism. There may be more than the
four forces at work in nature. Some scientists are resurrecting
the ether which Einstein had done away with. Can the ether, which
is the theoretical medium in which light travels, be a fifth
force? Can the centrifugal force of the rotation of the earth be
another force affecting nature? Can consciousness, mind power, or
psychic energy, be regarded as another force (this evidently
applies at the quantum level - recall that according to
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle the experimenter affects the
experiment and vice versa and the experimenter is part of the
experiment as well, and, in David Bohm’s “looking-glass”
universe, the observer is the observed, the part is the whole and
different things are really one thing)?

So, in revisiting my previous statement:

Communication is not predetermined as well, only when facilitated by language or other means of entanglement where there is an actual link that exists between them. Where I am going with all of this gibberish is explained with the Unified Field Theory. UFT is the fabric that binds the quantum states and facilitates communication between the particles

Since we do not know for certain of all the forces at work within the Unified Field, then it would be safe to assume that we we can not exclude the UF influences in regards to QM.

I googled this “General Science Journal” since I’d never heard of it before. This is not a peer-reviewed publication. In fact, in the website‘s “Purpose” section, it explicitly states as much—even suggesting that this is somehow a positive:

The original and continued purpose of these pages is to provide an opportunity for public presentation of scientific theories without prior and arbitrary assessment, criticism or rejection by the recipient.

So let’s begin with the understanding that we are talking about a paper that has gone through none of the normal channels that stand as the pillar of good research across every scientific discipline. In fact, anybody who wished to make any tenuous or hokey claim could find a home in a “journal” such as this one.

Secondly, as I said before, questions such as “Does an object exist if it isn’t being measured?” cannot be addressed by quantum theory, for reasons I’ve stated before. Berkeley, Hume, and their current disciples may have all the fun they like, but they are not discussing physics and they are not developing scientific theories.

A theoretical description of some aspect of the physical world should have some sort of formal construction. In fact, any extension (or replacement) of quantum field theory should include quantum theory as some limiting case, considering its vast success in explaining measurable physical phenomena. All good theories should address that which came before. For example, special and general relativity can be mathematically shown to reduce to Newtonian mechanics in the limit that (|velocity|)/(light speed) << 1.

David Bohm, mentioned in this abstract, is one of the lead proponents of non-local hidden variable theories, which I briefly mentioned before. I’ve met physicists who are sort of closet Bohm fans, because they like the kind of physical picture that goes along with the math. Bohmian mechanics is understood today not so much as a true hidden-variable theory as a restatement of quantum mechanics. And kind of a clunky one at that.

Ones doesn’t learn anything new from Bohmian mechanics, nor can it be distinguished from QM in its predictions. As a consequence, it also does nothing to resolve the “spooky action at a distance” that so troubled Einstein about entanglement. (There are those who have more fundamental problems with Bohm’s formulation of QM, but I do not have enough knowledge of this work to comment.)

If anything, Bohmian mechanics re-emphasizes the point I made before about not mistaking the “movie” for the media it’s printed on.

As for Penrose, his work is absolute bologna. He seems to base his theories more on what would sell a book than good science and sound theoretical work. This guy has claimed that it’s not the brain’s neurons which allow it to perform computations, but rather that entangled QM states of molecules in the brain are the workhorse of thought.

Boy, wouldn’t I and a whole community of physicists just love to see an entangled state at room temperature that doesn’t decohere faster than the time it takes to perform the type of calculations Penrose thinks the brain can. It would certainly revolutionize computing as we know it. A former undergrad professor of mine had some fun writing a refutation of this idea. You can find it here.

Some scientists are resurrecting the ether which Einstein had done away with.

As for the ether, I give more credit to Michelson for this one than anyone else, but then, I’m an experimentalist.

Can the centrifugal force of the rotation of the earth be another force affecting nature?

This statement right here should be setting alarm bells off in your head. The centrifugal force arises due to the fact that any acceleration of inertial mass feels indistinguishable from a force to someone inside the accelerating frame. But translating to another, non-accelerating reference frame reveals that these forces are simply the consequences of accelerating the frame of reference. That is, it isn’t a new force causing an object to look like its being deflected, it’s that the apparently constant background in which the object moves is in fact accelerating, making it look like the object is accelerating.

One might as well state that the Coriolis effect represents some fundamental new physics. Also relevant.

As an aside, remember that the word “force” is simply a mathematical definition made up by Newton. It has the units of mass times acceleration. Doesn’t matter if that acceleration is caused by a fundamental interaction (gravity/EM/weak/strong) or simply a consequence of the motion of the object (the spinning earth, for example, causing the acceleration of its surface). One can completely describe Newtonian mechanics in terms of energy with out invoking force at all.

In fact all of modern physics can be represented without once involving a force, instead describing fundamental interactions using fields, either quantum mechanical or classical depending on what you’re interested in looking at.

Since we do not know for certain of all the forces at work within the Unified Field, then it would be safe to assume that we we can not exclude the UF influences in regards to QM.

Lol, physicists are having a hard enough time trying to unify the four that we’ve got, let alone throwing other hypothetical forces into the mix. Forces moreover with no measurable qualities nor influence on the physical world.

But if we want to play fun hypothetical games, here’s one of mine. Now, this is a belief. It is tied intimately to what I want in my heart of hearts to be true, but I have no concrete reason to support. Here we go: I don’t think dark matter exists. I think dark matter represents a failure of general relativity to describe the motion of galaxies and that a more general description of gravity—perhaps one that incorporates QM, but not necessarily—will adequately solve the problem of dark matter.

To some extent my belief is a “hypothesis” in that it can be shown experimentally to be false. (Though not as easily to be true!) There are experiments underway to measure dark matter. Of course, indirect measurements of the motion of visible objects confirm that something weird is up, but I mean measurements actually trying to detect dark matter interacting with other matter via some fundamental force other than gravity. If they fail to detect dark matter, it may simply mean that this form of particle does not interact with photons/gluons/W’s or Z’s. Or it may mean that dark matter just isn’t there. At any rate, my belief isn’t truly a hypothesis—a hypothesis should have more reasoning behind it than really wanting an idea to be right.

Let me tell a story I like to think serves as an analogy for dark matter. Ever heard of the planet Vulcan? Precise measurements of Mercury’s orbit in the 1840’s revealed that it deviated from the path predicted by Newtonian mechanics. So far, the other planets had followed predictions to a “T”. So what was wrong with Mercury? La Verrier, who made the failed calculations, posited that another planet must be disturbing the orbital path.

Many astronomers began looking for this mysterious little guy. That it must be so close to the sun sure made the venture difficult. Several people claimed to see it. A formal announcement of discovery was even made.

But nope. There is no planet Vulcan, just an incomplete theory of gravity at the heart of this mystery. So close to the sun, the differences in orbital paths for Newtonian mechanics and general relativity become measurable, even by 19th century standards.

I see dark matter as sort of the new Vulcan. When the theory of gravity breaks down, simply insert more mass to correct! Only in the case of dark matter, it is a helluva lot more mass.

I may well be wrong. Like I said, it’s a belief not really a hypothesis. But it sure is fun to think about.

Language is infinite. As soon as you dream up a concept, you can apply words to it. You can also use words to come up with concepts you would never have thought of otherwise (negative numbers, complex numbers, irrational numbers, etc.). Once you have words, you can manipulate the concept in ways you can’t when it is just a nebulous, inchoate wispiness in your brain.

I think the ancient Indian idea of namarupa expresses my point of view: “The Hindu philosophy behind this is the idea of nama-rupa (name-form), which supposes that all things, ideas or entities in existence, within the phenomenological cosmos, have name and form of some sort. [...] The supreme (para) brings forth existence through the Word (Shabda).” (http://veda.wikidot.com/mantra)

Robert,

100% agreement.  Representations (words, pictures, symbols etc) greatly affects our cognitive and creative abilities.  A classic example is the ease at which people could suddenly perform math functions with the introduction of the hindu-arabic system from the roman numeral system.  Developing and learning something like integral or differential calculus would be very difficult if we just kept the fuzzy ‘concepts’ in our head, and not creating a nomenclature.