Episode 8.50: Learning new things when there are no precedents, and especially new words.

We consider the relationship between words, meanings and understanding in the circumstances where a word is new, and not one that we have met or used before. Perhaps even a circumstance when nobody has used it before, as happens when the human race invents a new word to deal with a new circumstance, such as the rise of the Internet. We consider the way we learn by using words even when we don’t understand them, and ask whether we are right to be dismissive of the idea that a chatbot doesn’t understand the words either when we consider all the ramifications of this example.