SUO: Re: article on the pitfalls of metadata
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
[Reposting after 6 hours]
John,
The mainstream is mostly a circular flow, and you know where that goes.
Having swum a sufficient number of cycles in the eternally recurring
literature on "discovery", or whatever it's being called this month,
I have learned a criterion for recognizing the contributaries who
are least likely to repeat the same old set of trials and errors
eternally, and that is whether they have done their homework.
Doing your homework means reading something beyond the 5-year
window on the literature that is de rigueur mortis in some
fields I know, that keeps them eternally rediscovering
what they eternally discredited just 5.5 years ago.
A good rule of thumb, as I know you know, is to
look in their bib or index and see if you find
the name of Peirce figuring there. Filtering
on that admittedly fallible feature leaves
me with still more than I can mine my way
through in this brief life, and so I will
focus mostly on that radioactive residue.
Jon Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> I strongly agree with the following point:
>
> > One of the main hangovers is analytic philosophy, that continues
> > to promulgate the tardive delusion that you can conquer significant
> > problems by dividing them into just two classes, the "already solved
> > in principal" and the "illegitimate".
>
> The so-called illegitimate problems are usually the most important
> ones that really get to the core of the issue.
>
> As an example, I believe that the worst mistake of the formalists
> (whose papers I continue to read and even contribute to from
> time to time) is the identification of logic with deduction
> to the nearly total exclusion of any attention to induction,
> deduction, and analogy.
>
> I agree with them that deduction is important, and then they're
> happy to accept me as a fellow traveler. But as soon as I add
> the point that induction, abduction, and analogy are equally
> important, they lose interest and classify me as somebody who
> is "not in the mainstream".
>
> Unfortunately, what they call the "mainstream" is a little
> brook, which happens to flow into the Mississippi, which
> later flows into the Gulf of Mexico, which is connected
> to the much bigger oceans.
>
> For some further thoughts on this issue, see the slides of
> my talk at the UQAM Summer Institute on Cognitive Science:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/uqam.htm
>
> Categorization in Cognitive Computer Science
>
> Later that week, I presented a few more slides as an
> intoduction to a panel session:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/uqam2.htm
>
> Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
>
> These slides end with some embarrassing questions about
> why none of the current work on machine learning
> can begin to compete with a 3-year-old child.
>
> John Sowa
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o