[om-list] Re: Cyc example

[Thomas L. Packer]

Luke

    Interesting stuff.

    I think that context and namespace are practically synonymous.  So, I
think I agree with both Mark and Luke here, to some degree.

    "Frames" is the name of one particular knowledge modelling paradigm
popular today in AI.  I haven't studied it yet, so I can't tell you about
it.  But I will soon.  ... I guess Mark did this already.

    Mark, in Predicate Calculus (including first order predicate calculus),
they are called "quantifiers", including the existential quantifier and
universal quantifier.  The variables they quantify are the qualities.  This
is a very interesting subject, because it points out one of the places where
I realised how quantitative mathematics could be unified with qualitative
logic, at least symbolically; but the net cost of my going into this subject
right now is too low, so you'll have to read TMME if you're ever interested
in this.

    I agree with everything else Mark has said.

tomp

Omnia apud me mathesis fiunt.
------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Luke Call" <lacall at onemodel.org>
To: <om-list at onemodel.org>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: [om-list] Re: Cyc example


> Mark,
>
> I too find Cyc very interesting and am still trying to find enough time
> to read more at their web site. One thing I'm not sure of yet is if
> their concept can handle arbitrary knowledge stored in an object model,
> and is able to do all the things in our requirements list. They have
> obviously done a lot of work. I really like the idea of keeping
> everything we do open and free. I recognize that the software to
> maintain our model and the core model are separate, but maybe I have to
> have the software to start playing with the core model to learn about
> it, its limitations, and what it needs to go to the next level. Maybe
> that's just my personal limitation, or maybe we don't want to
> pre-define any taxonomy--our taxonomy is the real world.
>
> I envision a software system that allows anyone to
> easily model whatever they see, think, or observe. So the "One Model"
> name is because the software allows one to easily build a model of
> whatever interests him or her, to enter data manually or programatically
> and it naturally goes into a totally coherent single system. Then when
> the software allows anyone who wants to, to blend their "One Model" with
> anyone else's, we can combine ours or restart a joint version, making
> that model available to others, so they can also enter the data that
> interests them, building on what we have to achieve a network effect in
> terms of geometric value growth.  These models or data stores can be
> shared and blended. And searched etc. (One would want to consider
> security or separateness for any personal or confidential information
> kept in it.)
>
> I often consider that
> the D&C says the earth will be someday be like glass, a Urim and Thummim
> to its inhabitants, showing all things pertaining to a lower order of
> kingdoms etc. etc., which strikes chords in me relative to having one
> massive database with all available truth stored in it. (For what it's
> worth, I also often think of that one phrase near the very end of the
> temple endowment, about all truth. Do you know the one I mean? Probably
> I shouldn't quote it outside there.) We're not there yet but we can
> start small, by building a model, but using the software to do it--to
> enter the data and build things up incrementally. Then when the engine
> is there with a good API and a handful or more of initial data, we
> develop code to import specific domain knowledge from XML stores,
> wrappers to get data from other databases (where desired), grammar
> parsers etc that take existing knowledge stored in all these other
> formats and libraries and systematically import it, with human help when
> needed. Then since it will get huge, maybe we can find distributed ways
> of storing it (that's a big maybe).
>
> If the goal is to store all
> knowledge, then what is knowledge, at an atomic level? I currently
> believe it is an object model of the things in my mind or someone else's
> mind. I don't (yet?) understand how extensive lists of logic statements
> (and surely not statistical sentence comparisons) get you there. To
> create an object model all you may need (at least to begin with?) are
> ways to add objects/classes/attributes/relationships etc., and
> manipulate them, in a way that remains coherent. Again, I am probably
> missing the picture as you see it, but it seems like that's all we need
> to start, then we can study the algorithms to traverse (search) it
> effectively, nicer interfaces, multiuser, bulk data import, and so on.
>
> For example, one of my first test uses of the system will be to input
> the personal organizational things that I now enter into a Sharp Wizard
> and various outline/text editor things I have. Then genealogical
> information and family pictures, etc. I don't want it limited,
> but very flexible and still very consistent. Perhaps others will do the
> same--modeling or recording information from biology, language, or
> whatever interests them, without being constrained by a need to really
> understand any formal system or taxonomy (though there may be such,
> under the hood), but constrained or guided by the software's design and
> constraints which tend to keep everything
> coherent (at least within what Cyc calls "microtheories"--nice term) and
> leads the user in a self-consistent direction.
> I also am hoping that any model our software builds would be independent
> of human language. Of course it has human language terminology tied to
> it, but any object (and/or class, as we've discussed previously) could
> have any number of names, and eventually or system could recognize the
> context of
> the user and thus tie the user's current terminology set to the objects
> being viewed at any given time. Thus, there is no "namespace", just an
> extensive set of related objects, recognized primarily by their
> relationship to the user, or to some searched-for object in the user's
> "personal" namespace (or context), the actual determiner of an object's
> identity being not a name but attributes--place in time and space (and
> genealogy, for people). (I expect it to have a unique key, but this is
> contrived, and independent of any names.) The phrase I think of often is
> "truth is things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come", so
> then our object model seems so big that is is unwieldy to try have a
> namespace to name all data types, except within a given context, where
> collections of objects represent "contexts", or the terminology that a
> given set of users remembers things by (which names may be used by
> another user for a dozen other things, in various other contexts). Some
> objects may not
> have a name at all, but merely a time/place and relationships to other
> objects. There are hierarchies of contexts for different languages,
> domain areas, or even for different periods of a person's life. But I
> don't envision a namespace. (I say all this so you can see where I'm
> coming from, and then how best to correct me.)
>
> I once did a crude example for a data modeling class assignment where I
> modeled "things", each with a uniquely generated key, where each "thing
> had a parent "thing" (like for a part-of relationship), and any number
> of attributes, which themselves were "things", breaking the data into
> separate tables for each data type, so an attribute of a thing could
> eventually be an integer, string, datetime, etc. Most attributes
> eventually got stored in a 2- or 3-column table, mainly consisting of
> the key to the parent, and the datum's value. Things could also have
> 0-n names, which related to the parent "thing" via the unique key, as
> were all the attributes. Things also had a "source", such as "thing"
> which could ultimately represent a human who entered data or some text
> citation. So I envisioned this software tool which lets you enter
> anything (any "thing"), broken down into an object model, and
> traverse/search it conveniently, etc., until you've represented anything
> that's interesting in the whole world, where there really are no
> divisions between subject areas. Sort of like the object model systems
> that weather or other software simulations use, but totally generic and
> open, and eventually capable of doing simulations on the fly. And that's
> why I have not yet seen a need for us to create our own file format--it
> could decompose down to something that can be stored in a 3rd-party
> database (whether OO or rdbms). (Of course we'd have to do import/export
> to/from XML, GEDCOM, etc.)
>
> Most unfortuately, since I don't know formal predicate calculus, it's
> hard for me to know how something like Cyc fits with the above system,
> or where the relative gaps are in the two ways of thinking, or how they
> would fit together.  I do have a nagging feeling that systems like Cyc
> and the other collection of "mindpixels" are useful tools for us, that
> we will want to employ at some point--perhaps as data stores from which
> we further populate (or validate?) our own model. Or something.
>
> Does this make any sense? Maybe with your knowledge you can help me
> understand the failings in what I describe here, how it meshes (or
> doesn't) with what you describe in your email, and/or compare & contrast
> this with Cyc-type approaches better than I am able to.
>
> By the way, what does Cyc mean when they say it isn't "frame-based"?
> Does that mean it uses a bunch of declarations and logic algorithms to
> traverse them, instead of tying all of them together in a unified model
> with relationships running all around?
>
> Luke
>
>
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