Some discussion on whether inference trails are needed or not occurred on the Open-NARS email list .. pasting one of my mails here as it seems relevant...
*** Although -- we still do have inference trails in PLN, and we also sometimes go beyond that and use an auxiliary Atomspace to store the whole inference digraph that gave rise to a given truth-value update... (in which case revision can make a better stab at using inference history to account for dependencies) So unfortunately I think the answer is that sometimes trails (or more complex inference history structures) are what you want, whereas other times you can do without them and let the circular multiple-counting of evidence kinda come out in the wash... Crudely, I feel that large-scale low-accuracy inference ---- like in perception processing, or "unconscious" episodic memory recollection, etc. --- can get by with the "comes out in the wash" approach ... whereas focused precise deliberative reasoning has got to use trails or something more sophisticated I would conjecture that the brain's trail-like mechanisms exist via the cortex-hippocampus interface, and thus are only invoked for inferences where working memory plays a major role ... not for the vast mass of "long-term memory only" background "unconscious" inferences.. -- Ben *** -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org “I tell my students, when you go to these meetings, see what direction everyone is headed, so you can go in the opposite direction. Don’t polish the brass on the bandwagon.” – V. S. Ramachandran -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "opencog" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/opencog. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/opencog/CACYTDBc2PzT_WA0J%2Bbr8dQ4zcsTpbKv%3Dy3%3DVY56XUi29bBKZ2w%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
