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On 21/03/14 02:03 PM, Curt Cloninger wrote: > > Something that stuck with me in the dialogue so far which seems important (and I don't recall who introduced it), is the idea of a compiler or an interpreter that simply refuses to compile syntactically malformed code. This really foregrounds the implicit difference between "code" (as in computer programming languages) and "language" (as in "natural" human languages uttered/written in the world). Theoretically, programming code can have all the robust, affective wiggle room of human languages -- in other words, it can have the ability to be "misread." The meaning of Perl code varies by context: http://www.wall.org/~larry/natural.html Multimethod dispatch algorithms deal with resolving ambiguity and intent (if Yaxu is reading this I'm sure he can relate this to strong static type hierachies in functional languages): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_dispatch And if anyone remembers Prolog, that resolves logical constraints and in the right circumstances can give (many) more than one answer to a question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog#Execution Nondeterministic programming languages can simulate the chance and effect drift functions of misreadings: http://p-nand-q.com/programming/languages/java2k/ But these all feel like weak functional replacements for misreading. Which raises the question of whether misreading is necessary to get the effects of misreading: can rewriting or intentional ambiguity provide the same effects, or is there something either functionally or morally unique to the idea of misreading? - Rob.