Everyone Speaks

My nine year old son failed a grammar test at school. He is an A student so this was unusual. In talking with him about it, most of his mistakes were careless. Some mistakes were the using of non-words like “funner”. The conversation gave me a spooky feeling of déjà vu. It is exactly what I would have done at his age.

At that age, I would have used the non-word “funner” because it seemed logical to me. I would have looked at “more fun” as an arbitrary and confusing. I would have been suborn about this and frustrated my teacher.

Now that I am older, I have a deeper understanding of grammar that I wish my teacher could have explained to me. It is based on a simple and obvious observation: everybody speaks.

We do not all speak that same language but we all speak a language. We do this naturally, no matter our culture or education. Language is a natural capability of the human brain and thus so is, to some extent, grammar. It is located in the temporal lobes. It is not logical the way a computer is or even the way the cerebral cortex is. It is the product of evolution. The brain’s rules of grammar are, for the most part, not explicitly known.

The grammar we learn in school is a social convention that attempts to place rules on the brain’s grammar. It is full of exceptions because the way we naturally speak is full of exceptions due to the structure of the human brain. The non-word “funner” just naturally sounds a bit awkward compared to “more fun”. That could be due to some difficulty in hearing or pronouncing the double “n”. Or it could be due to something in the temporal lobe of the brain that science has not yet figured out.

The grammar conventions are important so we can talk to a very large number of people easily and automatically and without the distraction of unexpected grammar. If I had this insight when I was nine years old, I would have understood the value of learning grammar and put more effort into it.

Being aware of your temporal lobe is an opportunity for creativity. You can play with words like “You are funner than the funnest funster.” This awareness and cross-connecting of different parts of the brain is the essence of deep thought.

Moore's Law

In 1970, when I was in third grade, I went on a field trip to a laboratory at Stanford. A scientist showed me some little gold chips and said something like “remember these, they will be important in your life”. I did not understand at the time but I remembered and he was right.

In sixth grade, my teacher was giving me a hard time about my inability to spell. I remember telling her that, when I got older, machines would do my spelling.

Moore's Law states that computing power doubles roughly every two years. It is why your cell phone has more computing power than an Apollo rocket. Moore’s law has held up amazingly well for the last 40 years. Many have predicted an end to it and have been proven wrong. But it is mathematically impossible for Moore’s law to continue indefinitely and I think we are reaching the end, probably within the next decade. We are hitting physical limits where transistors are getting close to atomic level in size and quantum effects will prevent them from getting any smaller.

I have never been a big fan of artificial intelligence or what cyberpunk writers call "The Singularity”. It might make for an interesting story but it is not real. Computers are tools with limitations.

As we hit the limits of semiconductor technology, I think we have an opportunity to discover some fundamental truths about the nature of information and about who we are and what we are not.