Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery

[Benjamin Fleming]

Dear List,

As Enrica Garzilli's post was also cross-listed to the Eurasian list, I will
post my comments from there as well in this forum:

There is a lot of media spin-off from the Rao, et al piece, but little by
way of analysis of the data therein. The suggestion that Rao, "may have
solved the language-versus-symbol question" is dubious in as much as Rao's
analysis compares the ivc script to dna and batcterial protein sequences -
which have nothing to do with scripts or symbols ("tokens" as they call
them) - the analysis is thus skewed in my view. This of course, in addition
to the notable construction of the type 1 and 2 sequences that are entirely
fabricated and don't have any actual resonance with the ivc symbols or to
other actual systems of proto-script (you have to read Rao, et. al,
supplementary material to understand this).

If anyone would like a copy of the Rao article and their supplementary
analysis (where the actual work they did is contained). I would be happy to
send them off-list so that you may evaluate the material for yourselves!

The rebuttal to the Rao, et. al. paper by Farmer, Witzel, and Sproat can be
accessed here:
http://www.safarmer.com/Refutation3.pdf

To be sure, the Rao, et.al study is dependant on an article by Claude
Shannon "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," in The Bell System
Technical Journal 27 (1948), pp 379-423 and 623-656. E.g., their employment
of the phrase: "conditional entropy." Rao, et.al., however, don't even
bother to give the title of this article in their bibliography. The Shannon
article is available here (see esp. pp. 14-15 of that study):
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf

Such media spin-offs, as contained in the Wired article, that do not delve
deeply into the analysis are more harmful than they are informative, in my
view.

Best Wishes,

BF

On 4/24/09 1:10 PM, "Enrica Garzilli" <garzilli at ASIATICA.ORG> wrote:

> I want just to point out this post of April 23 on the Indus Valley C. in
> one of the most important technology magazines, *Wired*:
> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/indusscript.html
> 
> Best,
> 
> Enrica Garzilli
> 
-- 

Benjamin Fleming
Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow, Dept. of Religious Studies
University of Pennsylvania
249 S. 36th Street; Claudia Cohen Hall, #234
Philadelphia, PA 19104 U.S.A.
Telephone - 215-746-7792