An Idea About Information Encoding.
                                   Alan Grimes


        People have looked at me in a puzzled sort of way when I say that
people can communicate through a self-contained system consisting of strings
of numbers. How can strings of numbers communicate anything they ask? The
answer lies in encoding.
        The first level of encoding, which has not yet been duplicated outside
the human skull, is that of thought. This is then encoded in the form of words
in a language that can be transmitted via the hand or the mouth. Computers know
nothing but numbers. The words you are reading, even if they have been printed
out, at one time were encoded in the form of a string of numbers. This encoding
is a very simple and crude cypher that merely substitutes numbers for letters.
On most computers the letter 'A' is assigned the number 64.
        Lets play with this a little. We will begin with an idea about cats and
mats and stuff.

(1)                     IDEA [ Cat Mat ]

The relationship between the cat and the mat is implicit in the idea. We must
encode it in language before it can leave our respective skulls. The encoding
we choose is this:

(2)                   "The cat sat on the mat."

Now finally it is reaching you through the computer cypher that I mentioned
earlier. Here I will present a simplified version.

(3)      String[25] = ( 20, 8, 5, 0, 3, 1, 20, 0, 19, 1, 20, 0, 15, 14, 0,
                        20, 8, 5, 0, 13, 1, 20, 27 )

Then through a process that is the mirror immage of the one I just outlined
the reader can read it.
        Lets examine (3). As I have shown it claims to be an encoding of (1).
This is the encoding computers work with when they try to translate this
sentance into chinese. Chinese the most radically different language I can
think of when it comes to verbal and written expression. This is not the case
as the poor performance of machines which have nothing but numbers and a set
of rules of replacement to work with. Human translators are able to convert
(2) into a version of (1) that is very similar to the orrigional and then into
any altered version of (2).
        Suppose we gave (3) to a chineese mathematician and asked him to
discover its meaning. Assuming he had no knowlege of the English language he
would probably guess that it is a cypher for some sort of symbolic
information given the fact that the string (20, 8, 5, 0) is repeated. Now to
give him the same rules of replacement found in a typical translation program
you would find his final result identical to that of the computer not counting
for human error.
        I don't believe that the problem in understanding is not in the cypher
used in (3). It is a fully information preserving translation of (2). The
problem is that (2) is a *hash* of information stored in the brain of the
reciever. That is each word is taken and replaced with a concept that it
referrs to and the syntax of the sentance is used by the listener to formulate
some approximation of IDEA[].
        A more radical example of non-understanding is that of a tentacle alien
given an english dictionary and this message and asked to identify a scene that
most closely matches it. It would make all kinds of incorrect identifications
that could still be prooven with the information it had been given. One
difficulty it would probably encounter is that it has no notion of "to sit"
because when it stops in one place it arranges its tentacles just so and
settles down.
        The fundamental problem is that the string of numbers I have discussed
so far is far from self contained. It relies on a standardized hashing function
to re-create the idea it represents. What I intend to do is find a way for the
sender to encode his concepts from (1) directly into (3) so that there is no
information loss and the string would be ordered in such a way as the IDEA is
unambiguously communicated.
        Such a system would provide a facinating new method for programming
autonomous robots. After a fair ammount of education in the mechanics of cats
and mats and such you could generate a string for "GET THE [darn] CAT OFF THE
MAT!!!" The robot would then use that simple message and what it already knows
to generate a program of any arbitrary complexity for removing the cat from
the mat. Wheather the final solution would be humane or not would still be
debatable.

        Anyway. I hope you enjoyed reading this and didn't find it a waste of
time. I expect that it will take me quite a while to develop the system
outlined here but then I'll be as famous as Turing! =) Anyway, Have a nice day.