Monday, August 20, 2007

The song that doesn't end

M Ward's song Chinese Translation sounds like an MIT AI koan from the 70's:
I met an old, old man
beneath a weeping willow tree
He said now if you got some questions
go and lay them at my feet...

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart...

...and then the sun went down
and he sang for me this song

See I once was a young fool like you...
I met an old, old man
he sat beneath a sapling tree
He said now if you got some questions
go and lay them at my feet...

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart...
The song ends before we reach a base case, but notice the trees get smaller, so there might be an inductive measure after all.

1 comment:

Michael Greenberg said...

Well, the sapling came from a seed, which came from another tree; I'm not sure the set is well-founded.