Re: SUO: ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience

["Pierre Grenon" <pierre.grenon@ifomis.uni-leipzig.de>]

> Pierre,
> 
> To repeat:  I believe that Cyc is a very important experiment
> from which I and many other people have learned a great deal.
> Furthermore, there is still a lot more that we can learn from
> studying Cyc and comparing it to other approaches, including
> SUMO, DOLCE, etc.  But the following statement (or something
> like it) is one that I have made many times to, among other
> people, Lenat and some of his colleagues:
> 
> JS>(1) "Cyc upper level is a disaster zone"
> 
> PG>Can you give the particulars motivating your opinion?
> 
> Yes, I have in many different forums over the years, including
> discussions with Lenat and some of his colleagues.  I'll do so
> again in much more detail as part of the SUO project, but it
> is not something that can be answered briefly.

Indeed, I was really not asking with whom you have had discussions or coffee. I
was wondering about evidences and arguments. It would be extremely interesting
to have a detailed report on the 'disaster zone'. You also have to provide the
same kind of information regarding DOLCE and why you regard it as inconsistent
with 'usage' in the five items you mentioned. IMHO, DOLCE is pretty
well-founded ontologically speaking modulo its cognitive biases (biases which
are recognized and defended by the italian themselves). I think the burden is
on you to defend your claims.  

> PG> It would be quicker to start from positive claims and
> > consistent theories which are not gratuituosly poopooed.
> 
> Not necessarily.  There is a great deal of positive value
> in Cyc, and even the top level, which I believe requires
> serious revision, tells us a lot about the kinds of choices
> that must be made and their possible consequences.

I am a little leary about this. Looking at a few legacy systems leads you to
think for instance that universals may not be spatiotemporal entities. Somebody
made such a remark earlier as if it was an elementary assumption, which is not.
It is a piece of doctrine. Incidentally, Cyc is in the process of revamping -
as cyclists like to say - the treatment of properties. So you'll just get some
confused and contradictory notion that you would have gotten straight from a
textbook in metaphysics by looking at Cyc or SUMO. DOLCE takes you to different
grounds, fair enought, but again this panel is not representative of the range
of choices here. And this is one of the most general and foundamental
questions. 

I did not emphasize that I agreed with one of the purported use of the legacy
systems: providing some isolatable (don't know if that's a word) bits which are
deemed relevant or stable and not reinventing the wheel when dealing with
formalism for instance. I'm glad that you agree with this idea, I put it
forward in earlier discussion of your motion as an evidence that the registry
was ludicrous. I find now that you have a schizoid (no harm meant, just a
limitation of vocabulary) view of the use you intend for 'starters' or 'expert
contributions'. 

> >Assuming these are so bad. Do you really think we can profit more from bad
> 
> >sources than from good ones? .....
> 
> We can often learn more from other peoples mistakes than
> from their successes.  And I believe that there is more good 
> than bad in Cyc -- that is one reason why it is important to
> focus on correcting the bad points.

People can learn from their own mistake, although not always. It is harder to
learn from the mistakes of the other. Especially when you don't know what they
are. 

Looking at what people did to find the mistake is always harder than trying to
get an informed opinion in the first place before judging the work of others. 

What do you do (I don't know if that's grammatically correct) when you realize
that an intricate or complex demonstration led to a conclusion you find
doubtful? If you go over your demonstration, there's good chances you won't
find the mistake, if any. I've learned to redo the demonstration from scratch.
If you succeed the second or third time, there's not much motivation for
looking at the erroneous attempts other than curiosity or self gratification. 

Pierre

> John
> 
-- 
Pierre Grenon
IFOMIS Uni Leipzig
Haertelstr. 16-18
04107 Leipzig
http://people.ifomis.uni-leipzig.de/pierre.grenon/
pgrenon@ifomis.uni-leipzig.de
phone: 49(0)351971672
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