RE: SUO: ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience
Thanks for your comments, John.
Please see below:
<snip>
> JS> .... The main
> > problem with existing ontologies is that the main candidates
> > don't have solid foundations. In fact, Doug Lenat is the first
> > to admit that the Cyc upper levels are not very important.
>
> >[ELP] I've found that John S. the consensus builder bends over
backwards
> >to makes conciliatorily general technical statements for building
> >consensus. But I've also got the sense that the specific technical
> >opinions of John S. might be far from what could be wrongly
interpreted
> >from his general consensus building statements.
> >
> >Perhaps Doug is falling victim to this here.
>
> I don't know what you mean by that. I frequently criticize
> Cyc for many different reasons, and I say good things about it
> for many other reasonhs.
[ELP] Sorry. I wasn't all that clear.
But rather than clarifying, I'll just point out that paraphrasing Doug's
comments as you did is hearsay and too easily used out of his intended
context.
Do you really think that he doesn't think OpenCyc is the best candidate
as a starting point for an upper ontology? We can ask him. I'm sure
he'll tell us.
<snip>
> >Also, I have no problem with Cyc-bashing if it is done in concrete
> >verifiable specifics. I think they would appreciate that kind of
> >feedback -- but one should warn them first or they might be quite
> >startled ;^)
>
> There are quite a few Cyclers who subscribe to this list and
> post comments regularly. I'm sure they're aware that many
> of the Cyc features have been criticized.
[ELP] My only point was that one can get startled by specific verifiable
criticism when it comes so rarely.
>
> > But if ontology is science as you say, and if you want to
> >be fair minded, which I fully believe you do, shouldn't your
criticisms
> >reference specific axioms and make claims for which you have already
> >supplied concrete proofs.
>
> There is an enormous amount of work to be done in analyzing Cyc.
> I and many other people have done some of that work over the
> years, including the joint review of the Lenat and Guha book
> on Cyc (AI Journal, vol. 61, 1993). Lenat told me that my
> review raised some painful issues that they were aware of
> and hated to see discussed in public, but he considered it
> the fairest one of the bunch.
[ELP] Please see http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg10034.html
<snip>
[ELP]
FWIW,
-Eric