Experiencing the Infinite.

[Originally proposed in Oct, 2006, but was not successful in articulating it, so here's a second try]

Have you ever thought of the experiences that we live through everyday, how that they are so infinitesimally small comparing to the idea of infinity? How small we are and are limited we are in comparing to infinite?

A question was raised in my linguistic class about whether or not machine will ever be able to comprehend and produce the "infinite set" of human languages either for the purpose of translation and/or communication. And many holds the view that it is not possible to to represent the gigantic amounts of information that our brain processes. And harder yet, the creativity that humans have in communication and translation. Many holds that even with large and smart storage of information on top of stochastic learning process given corpora of a language cannot even get close to the human experience.

My question is, human beings are not all powerful and all knowing: what makes us better creature to produce "infinite set" of linguistic stuff than the machines? Of course we have to consider the fact that we humans are sentient beings that seeks to understand ourselves and each other whilst machines don't unless they're told to.

In this light I would like to consider the argument that even as creative sentient beings ourselves, we humans, still do not possess the infinite: in fact it is the sum of all humanity's creative product that may surmount to something close to the infinite. And I would like to argue that as individuals, we each are a slice of the infinity. An analogy would be the whole humanity as a cake and each individual as a tiny piece of it: significant but not the only thing, no one person can represent the entirety. And I would like to argue that even though we're not infinite beings, it is possible to experience a ginormously amount of stuff but just not all at once, and that by estimating the big stuff from pieces of small stuff, we seem to have a higher sentient status than the machines that we make. But given the right setup of equipments, I believe we can make smart machines that can talk and understand some basic human interactions. Notice I used the word smart, not wise; smartness on the machine doesn't make it wise and able to contemplate existential questions...at least there's nothing in my technical understanding of what existential/sentient contemplation actually is... and for many of us, this contemplation is only meaningful in respect to God, whom is beyond space and time, only He is able to perceive and understand what we're looking at as infinity. And only through God whom infinity is, can we come to understanding of ourselves and the world around us. So in that respect, it may be a vain effort in trying to assess the infinity; but as a comparison, we humans are exactly all that powerful machines that could create the infinite... because there's always more when you've made up 7 gozillian different sentences using all kinds of cool grammar devices.

We can only experience the infinite through our finite senses. And that is not to say we will be able to grasp the whole reality of infinite. We may take many cracks at it, but that doesn't make us closer to the truth...not a guarantee anyway: but that is how we work, from small finite things we piece together bigger things, and that is how we're making our machines nowadays.

Just a thought. I had a hard time trying to articulate this stuff in class, so I thought I should write it down someday and think about it.

Post Scriptum: even the ordinarily repetitive things sometimes can give us different experiences...well, that's another closely-related story...