Comments on: Can Nothing Stop Computo!

By: Joshua Glenn

Joshua Glenn — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:04:49 +0000

This is very funny, John! And just yesterday I was holding volume 1 of DC’s bound reissue of the LSH comics. If the pages had been in color, I might have bought it. I was once a big, big fan.

By: Alan Bostick

Alan Bostick — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:00:28 +0000

Domo arigato, Mister Computo.

By: asm

asm — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:44:52 +0000

Somehow, I did not have this particular problem. The opening sentences introducing “instructions” in a “natural language” suggested to me the sense of the word “instructible” in terms of “natural language instructions”, disambiguating them from “regular” robots who read some type of machine instruction/code or the other.

I think it has to do with what words and phrases parse as “technical terms”, and not merely English words and phrases, in your mind as you read the passage. (I remember reading a small bit about some research on this aspect.) If you mentally parse “instruction” as a technical term, then the word “instructible” might then parse as an adjectival form of this term.

By: magistra

magistra — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:42:05 +0000

I read it as ‘indestructable’ too at first, which I think proves that it is a badly worded sentence. Partly it’s that ‘instructible’ is an uncommon word – I had to look it up in my dictionary to check it was a standard word and not just an invention of the authors. But it’s also that ‘indestructable robot’ makes sense as a phrase, while ‘instructible robot’ doesn’t. In a fuzzy sense I think of all robots as being instructible, because you tell them what to do, so that the phrase come across as tautological. It’s only when you add the provisio of the use of natural language, that you can see what the distinctiveness of these robots is.

By: dr

dr — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:37:45 +0000

I also read it as ‘indestructable’, assuming that ‘indestructable’ was a term of art describing some formal aspect of robot brain pans.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:44:39 +0000

Actually, as to the ‘can nothing stop’ problem, I was chuckling quietly to myself as I often do – they said I was mad! MAD! to write this post! – because chapter 7 is “Saying ‘stop’ to a robot”.

By: Hermenauta

Hermenauta — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:28:45 +0000

Subliminal advertising from “Transformers”?

#5: :)

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:39 +0000

From the headline, I was expecting something to do with Alan Turing and the halting problem…
—Can nothing stop Computo?—I don’t know. In fact, it’s logically impossible for me to know, in general terms, whether Computo will stop or not.

By: derek

derek — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:54:45 +0000

There is a web site called instructables.com, that specialises in reader-supplied how-tos in step-by-step form. I keep waiting for the Instructable Captain Scarlet, but no luck.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:24:32 +0000

I had typed the passage wrong, quercus. Corrected now.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:10:25 +0000

People claiming there are no robots may themselves be robots.

By: quercus

quercus — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:03:28 +0000

Hmm. I actually read it as ‘indestructible’ too.
But my mind was otherwise occupied with wondering how “theory, language, language performance, and learning” add up to three parts (my all-too-destructible mind keeps getting four parts).