I think you've correctly found a flaw in Paul's conceptions (a 'gap', if you will). The flaw in thinking is that the inventor of such a translation device already knows owns an English translation of the foreign work in question, and as long as the translation device is carefully programmed, there should not be much difficulty in inventing such an amazing device.

The reason, I suspect, that Paul is taken in by this kind of trick is that the translation device obeys a relatively straightforward algorithm, so in his mind, I'm guessing, the algorithm could only work in such a straightforward manner only if it found the underlying algorithm that separates the foreign language from English. Hence, he assumes (I guess), that the translator would be able to work for other foreign books yet to be translated.

The flaw in this manner of thinking, and it is a severe flaw, is that the translating device's algorithm (used to translate the foreign book into English) was inputted into the machine manually. This algorithm was nothing other than a dictionary of those foreign terms into their English equivalent. Any future foreign translation would fail since a different dictionary (algorithm) is required, one that the translating device inventor did not program into their machine. Therefore, when the translating device starts to decode a new book (this time in a different language), the machine comes back and says "translation algorithm not available: please input". Of course, this is what science quacks do. They are often busy taking existing dictionaries and programming their devices with those dictionaries (e.g., new symmetry relations, wave form functions, etc) and then amazing audiences with such clever translation abilities. Although, they can only do so after the dictionary has been laboriously written by a team of translators (scientists).

Dick's translating device has the dictionary of Newtonian physics, relativity theory, and large sections of quantum physics, but the foreign language of QED, QCD, and new physics have not been programmed into his device. Paul is hoping that a younger qualified generation can take Dick's clunky machine (with an 8086 processor) and somehow do quantum computing with parallel processing with it. Unfortunately, this is a severe misconception on his part. Sell the 8086 DICK language translating processor and buy a HARV quantum computer. It's more philosophically robust and won't flip out when given a series of numbers.

• Wonderful, Harv! - tourist - September 24, 2003 - 19:56 UTC
  • snake oil - harvey1 - September 24, 2003 - 20:04 UTC
    • (i.e., they aren't getting enough oxygen) nt - harvey1 - September 24, 2003 - 20:05 UTC