Ron_Hardin comments on Extensions and Intensions - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2008 09:34PM

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Comment author: Ron_Hardin 05 February 2008 10:29:50PM 1 point [-]

It's easy to teach a dog what words mean, provided the dog has some interest you can quickly show in the thing meant.

I wrote out on a napkin, one day when she was two, all the words and phrases that my Doberman Susie definitely knew in context, and came up with 200.

All of them were for things that involved her somehow. The most direct naming of things was for toys ; but commands and so forth, and the ever-versitile ``fetch the ...'' where ... is something fetchable, provided a link to lots of items you could name. Her interest was then in fetching, and indirectly to the name of the thing.

People are no different. To teach what red is, you need some interest in red.