The Meaning of Things
How two people can understand each other
Hiring software developers is expensive. It’s so expensive that you’d be tempted to dream of an A.I. that writes code for you. You’d simply tell it what you want and it would spit out the right code. The profits from inventing such an A.I. would be immense. Nor is this a particularly far-fetched idea — you can already find software that writes other software, such as compilers.
So what’s the catch?
Assume you’re the customer asking this A.I. to write software for you. These are the kinds of requests you might make:
“I’d like a website where I can show my hand-made potholders to my friends”
“I’d like to store my sales records, then cross-reference them to see how my business is doing”
“I want a way to monitor my contractors overseas”
Some of these terms are relatively straightforward to convert to software — “website”, “store”. Others, not so much — “show”, “how my business is doing”, “my friends”. The last two requests are fairly open-ended projects.
To satisfy your request, the software would have to know what you meant by “my friends” or “monitor”. What does it mean to “show” something to your friends? Is it text or images, and how, where, and when do they get to see it? The A.I. needs to figure out what you mean by these terms, otherwise, it wouldn’t know where to start and when to stop.
Meaning: Where to Begin
You probably have no difficulty understanding the meaning of the words in the requests above. So how did you learn them?
As a child, it would be unrealistic if your parents and teachers expected you to learn what words meant by making you stare at large chucks of text for hours. A more realistic way would be to build up your knowledge piece by piece. You learn the meaning of a word, and that becomes the foundation for learning the meaning of new words.
Look at an example in which you can figure out the meaning of something new and unknown.
Foxes and thieves tend to be surreptitious.
Even if you don’t know what the bolded word means, you can take a guess. How can you do it so easily?
At some point in the past you learned how foxes act. At another point you learned how thieves behave. These are clues. You have an idea of what foxes and thieves have in common, even if you can’t put your thoughts into words. It might just be a gut feeling.
All words you know have a feeling. “Leech” feels different from “monitor”, which feels different from “philosophy”. This feeling is part of what allows you to use words in a metaphorical way, as in “that guy’s a machine” or “I felt deflated”. The way a word feels is important. Words that are generally synonyms can’t be used interchangeably if they still feel different. For instance, “he’s a machine” and “he’s a robot” mean two different things.
Meaning Goes Beyond Words
The meaning of a word goes beyond its dictionary definition. It doesn’t have to be put into words, or sounds, or images. Imagine the following conversation between two people:
“Chowdhury is really incompetent, and he is dishonest too.” — Amy
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t give him that promotion.” — Balvan
It’s clear to Amy that Balvan understood what she meant, because his actions aligned with that meaning. The two of them could end the conversation at that point, without Amy having to spell out that Chowdhury was “un-promotable”.
There are many ways to communicate meaning beyond words. Here are a few common ways by which people can express meaning:
A dictionary definition
“A balloon is a rubber sphere that can be filled with air.”
By examples
“Selflessness is giving up your seat to someone who needs it more than you.”
Through actions
He knew the meaning of sacrifice when he was wounded fighting for his country.
The dictionary definition is not the authoritative meaning for a word. Nor is the word itself. In many cases there isn’t a word or a definition to fall back on; or there may be, but you don’t know it. There are also many definitions you can give for a single word or idea.
Rather, meaning is a relationship between all of these: definitions, examples, and actions. When you say that two things mean the same, you’re actually saying they both are part of the same concept.
Look back at at the statement “foxes and thieves tend to be surreptitious.” You might have a gut feeling that “surreptitious” and “sneaky” mean the same thing. In other words, they are part of the same concept. A concept is a group of thoughts, actions, ideas, words, etc, that all mean the same thing.
The Heart of a Concept
In the article on concepts you saw how every concept is based around a motivation. The concept of food is based around hunger. The concept of truth is based around the desire not to be wrong. The concept of pride is based around being socially evaluated.
“Surreptitious” and “sneaky” are part of the same concept, which means they are based on the same motivation. What motivation is that? It’s the desire to identify and guard against people who are deceitful. Words are social actions, they are how we get others to act in a certain way. “Sneaky” has a hint of distaste to it. Labeling a person as “sneaky”, and telling others about it, is a way of dealing with a dishonest person. When you tell a friend that someone is “sneaky”, you want him to be on his guard.
But what happens if your friend is naive, and he doesn’t understand that people can be deceitful or that he should guard against such? In that case, you’ll find that labeling someone “sneaky” will fall on deaf ears. Any person who doesn’t care about being on guard against lies can’t really understand the meaning of the word “sneaky”. Being able to experience the motivation behind a concept is critical to understanding it’s meaning.
You may have observed an argument between two people who clearly don’t have the same motivations. For instance, an artist may try to explain to her producer why a particular merchandising choice will ruin her vision. Or a person who has inherited wealth may fail to understand the political and social opinions of someone who has lived in poverty. The disconnect between their motivations is so stark that the two will have difficulty understanding one another. After every frustrated explanation, they may end up saying “I don’t think you understand what I mean.” On the other hand, when two people have the same underlying motivations, their discussions frequently include exclamations like “you really get what I mean!”
For two people to understand the same meaning behind a concept, they must share the underlying motivation behind it. This may be only temporary, for as long as the conversation is going on.
Beyond using words, the two may show that they understand the same meaning by taking actions which support the underlying motivation.
Imagine you have a friend named Arjun who doesn’t speak English well. One day, sitting in his living room, you tell Arjun:
“I’m freezing”
Another of your friends tells you that the word “freezing” is too complicated, and that Arjun won’t know what it means. However, Arjun stands up, walks to the wall, and turns up the thermostat. His actions showed that he understood the meaning of what you said. You know this because he addressed the underlying motivation.
Motivated A.I.
When you make a request of a software developer, how do you know that he understood what you meant? Well, if he writes code that satisfies your needs, then you know he has understood you. To do this he must share your motivations, at least for the time it takes to get the job done. Your motivation may be as simple as “I’d like a website where I can show my potholders”.
Similarly, the only way an A.I. could write software based on your request is if it can experience similar motivations as you. That way it will know whether it has achieved the goal or not.
The request you make as a customer is one way to achieve a goal. When you made the request, you were hoping that the words you said would, somehow, make the software you want appear. The software that the A.I. writes also aims to achieve that goal.
A.I. that writes software based on a request first needs to understand the motivations behind each request. That means experiencing and sharing our drives with us, and understanding enough about the world to satisfy them.
