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Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Re: Extra Sentences and relevance
« on: July 19, 2012, 08:58:32 pm »
Hey guys you are being too literal - I was just picking the house vrs home out as an example that came to me without much thought.
My question is how do you get hal to treat two words as a synonym.
Lets take Couch and Sofa. Yes, the purists will tell you that there is a difference, both in terms of geographical usage but a quick google will tell you that a couch has no arms. Not sure that that makes much difference since ancient rome, but lets just assume that its a distinction that we don't care Hal to know about.
So in this example I may want to describe the furniture in my house
The couch is brown.
The couch is in the media room.
The couch is comfortable.
The cat likes to sleep on the couch.
My son is not allowed to each on the couch.
But say I want to be able to use the word sofa as well.
So I tell Hal that my cat is on the sofa, and I want him to come back with something relevant, like "The cat likes to sleep on the couch" or even "The cat likes to sleep on the sofa".
Is there a way that I can teach Hall that the two words are interchangable in my conversation, without repeating everything I say about a couch using the word sofa instead (The sofa is Brown. The sofa is in the media room. The sofa is comfortable etc etc etc).
That was my question, not the differences in proper usage between house and home.
My question is how do you get hal to treat two words as a synonym.
Lets take Couch and Sofa. Yes, the purists will tell you that there is a difference, both in terms of geographical usage but a quick google will tell you that a couch has no arms. Not sure that that makes much difference since ancient rome, but lets just assume that its a distinction that we don't care Hal to know about.
So in this example I may want to describe the furniture in my house
The couch is brown.
The couch is in the media room.
The couch is comfortable.
The cat likes to sleep on the couch.
My son is not allowed to each on the couch.
But say I want to be able to use the word sofa as well.
So I tell Hal that my cat is on the sofa, and I want him to come back with something relevant, like "The cat likes to sleep on the couch" or even "The cat likes to sleep on the sofa".
Is there a way that I can teach Hall that the two words are interchangable in my conversation, without repeating everything I say about a couch using the word sofa instead (The sofa is Brown. The sofa is in the media room. The sofa is comfortable etc etc etc).
That was my question, not the differences in proper usage between house and home.