Phil Henshaw wrote: > you kept coming back > with the additional levels of distinctions that a careful application of > categories to physical things must encounter. Do you have a method of > doing that, or is that part of the method of the Cyc data format > somehow? I don't have an algorithm for that, but it seems mechanical enough. Imagine taking the scientific literature from a field and converting it into a set of machine readable assertions and propositions. Now take that large and dense set of assertions and propositions and combine it with a large common sense ontology database and logic engine like Cyc. It seems to me one ought to be able to do some strong automated consistency checks, find terms that aren't well connected to other terms (probably suggesting they are under-described), terms that are handles for deconstructable composites of other ideas, and relative vague connections to other ideas thanks to Cyc's general and domain-specific databases.
I'm really just brainstorming about how to approach semantic data mining to find, for example, terms that are reflexive and ways that they might reasonably fail to be. I'm certainly not trying to suggest as a general approach to understanding complex systems.. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
