undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnjharman5y ago0 comments

less than lay person, but in your example

> "no evidence of cancer" and "evidence of no cancer" are very different things.

Why is it not as simple "no belongs to the word it precedes" ? like unary operator, ! (not), in typical computer languages.

0 comments

DenisM5y ago

- evidence of no liver cancer

- no textbook evidence of cancer

Statements have structure, parsing them with simple rules like this is akin to parsing C++ with regular expressions.

tsimionescu5y ago

Or even HTML

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

munk-a5y ago

You need to actually build up noun comprehension though, because "evidence of no remaining cancer" or other qualifier words can greatly confuse the situation.

You'd also have quite a bit of fun trying to parse the phrase "no means no" or other usages where "no" is being used as a noun... And for bonus points, folks talk to search engines in broken english all the time so "shirts no single striped" is a totally reasonable query to submit to a server and expect to be parse-able.

bad_user5y ago

The broken English aspect also happens because we know search engines don't understand English anyway.

munk-a5y ago

I don't know the usage stats on AskJeeves but that search engine specifically purported itself to do well when asked a question in english. Now, the tech at the time wasn't even near close to being able to support it, but their advertising targeted it. That all said I never typed in "Who is Derek Jeter?" and I don't know anyone who did.

I think the basic issue is that people just don't respect machines and want to minimize the amount of effort spend on communicating with them - I don't say "Alexa please bring up songs by Death Grips if you don't mind" I shout "Alexa! Play! Death Grips!" and then yell at it when it misunderstands.

d1str05y ago

Because theres a big difference between english and computer/query languages. You can deduce a lot from a query language, but not necessarily english.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

DenisM5y ago

- evidence of no liver cancer

- no textbook evidence of cancer

Statements have structure, parsing them with simple rules like this is akin to parsing C++ with regular expressions.

tsimionescu5y ago

Or even HTML

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

munk-a5y ago

You need to actually build up noun comprehension though, because "evidence of no remaining cancer" or other qualifier words can greatly confuse the situation.

bad_user5y ago

The broken English aspect also happens because we know search engines don't understand English anyway.

munk-a5y ago

d1str05y ago

Because theres a big difference between english and computer/query languages. You can deduce a lot from a query language, but not necessarily english.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse