SUO: Re: ontology as science
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Sensitive Browser Advisory! The Next Exchange Contains
Bits of "Burned Out Friday Afternoon Repartee" (BOFAR).
Chris Menzel wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 02:56:50PM -0400, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> >
> > I know most of the ways that theorem provers, human or machine,
> > can crash, and I know what has to be done to pick up the bits.
> > When a few other inference engineers catch up on this, then
> > maybe we can start having some "experienced" discussions.
>
> Jon, since it is critical that we begin having these "experienced" discussions,
> something really needs to be done. Thus, to get all those bumblers in the
> automated reasoning community back on their feet -- guess they've been
> tripping on all of those loose bits! ;-) -- I'd suggest that you send
> out a nice mass emailing to them in which you offer to (i) point out
> all of the howlers they are making and (ii) help them to pick up those
> "loose bits" (so clever!) and fix their crash-prone inference engines.
> They obviously don't seem capable of doing it on their own without
> someone of your insight and experience, and their persistent errors
> are impeding genuine progress in the discipline.
>
> It's really amazing to me that they don't seem to know about you.
> But I guess it's because they have such a long way to go before
> they "catch up"!
>
> In all admiration and respect,
>
> -chris
Chris,
Please understand, I know you do, I don't actually have all the answers yet,
sorry to disappoint, but what I do have is a long list of things that I'm
pretty sure won't work, from the sadder budweiser "experience" of having
once given them both the old college and the true believer's try, and
so one thing I know is that I myself will not be going down those
particular roads again, and, hey, I'm just trying to report what
I saw when I did. I do have a few Monday-Mourning QB guesses
as to why these things just keep on failing, and yes it has
come to surprise me of late that "some people" just keep on
trying the same old, same old pricipials and expecting
a different result -- but there's a name for that.
Again, let me stress that it's not the whole AR community that is doing this --
mostly just the "dominant in their own mind" (DITOM) tarditions of the so-called
mainstraum. Indeed, several of the math and comp sci teachers that I had umpteen
years ago were already very critical of the "Resolution Unification Revival" (RUR),
and what they had to say about Prolog, even when folks did bother to implement it
with all the occur-checks in, the only thing that makes it even halfway sound, well,
I can't repeat, not even in this BOFAR mode of diss-coarse.
But that's just picky stuff, and I'm sure that they were
all ignorant morons, anyway, so let me put all that aside.
If we back up a little bit, all puns always intensional,
and look at the actual practice of mathematics -- God in
His heaven forbid! that we should reflect, since FO logic
is by its own classical definition "non-reflective logic",
and thou shalt not do what FO logic does not sanctify --
but if we do it anyway, then from our new perspective,
now outside the Garden, of course, we can observe some
things that were always obvious in their way, but that
we were blinded by the beatific splendors of Paradise.
And what are those? Not the splendors, of course,
for those I've forgotten in my Fallen condition,
but the splinters (ouch!) of our Humane estate?
Well, that must be subject of my Sunday sermon,
for now the light is growing dim, 2-dim, 2-dim.
Jon Awbrey
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