Larry Lefkowitz, Stephen Reed, et al, First, Thanks Steve for your pointer to Larry Lefkowitz, and thanks Larry for so much time and effort in trying to relate our two approaches..
After discussions with Larry Lefkowitz of Cycorp, I have had a bit of an epiphany regarding machine knowledge that I would like to share for all to comment on... First, it wasn't as though there were points of incompatibility between Cycorp's idea of machine knowledge and that used in DrEliza.com, but rather, there were no apparent points of connection. How could two related things be so completely different, especially when both are driven by the real world? Then it struck me. Cycorp and others here on this forum seek to represent the structures of real world domains in a machine, whereas Dr. Eliza seeks only to represent the structure of the malfunctions within structures, while making no attempt whatever to represent the structures in which those malfunctions occur, as though those malfunctions have their very own structure, as they truly do. This seems a bit like simulating the "holes" in a semiconductor. OF COURSE there were no points of connection. Larry pointed out the limitations in my approach - which I already knew, namely, Dr. Eliza will NEVER EVER understand normal operation when all it has to go on are *AB*normalities. Similarly, I pointed out that Cycorp's approach had the inverse problem, in that it would probably take the quadrillion dollars that Matt Mahoney keeps talking about to ever understand malfunctions starting from the wrong side (as seen from Dr. Eliza's viewpoint) of things. In short, I see both of these as being quite valid but completely incompatible approaches, that accomplish very different things via very different methods. Each could move toward the other's capabilities given infinite resources, but only a madman (like Matt Mahoney?) would ever throw money at such folly. Back to my reason for contacting Cycorp - to see if some sort of web standard to represent metadata could be hammered out. Neither Larry nor I could see how Dr. Eliza's approach could be adapted to Cycorp, and further, this is aside from Cycorp's present interests. Hence, I am on my own here. Hence, it is my present viewpoint that I should proceed with my present standard to accompany the only semi-commercial program that models * malfunctions* rather than the real world, somewhat akin to the original Eliza program. However, I should prominently label the standard and appropriate fields therein appropriately so that there is no future confusion between machine knowledge and Dr. Eliza's sort of inverse machine knowledge. Any thoughts? Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
