Re: SUO: Re: This is not a forum for political opinions
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 11:07:01AM -0500, Jon Awbrey wrote:
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> Jim Schoening wrote:
> >
> > SUO,
> >
> > This is a professional and open group.
> > It is inappropriate to repeatedly express
> > political opinions in this group.
> >
> > Jim Schoening
>
> Jim,
>
> I have been busy with other work for the past three months,
> but I have spent some time reviewing the events of the past
> week on the SUO List, and it appears to me from that review
> that what has transpired is a bit like this:
>
> You introduced a proposal that the SUO Working Group begin to work
> in collaboration with a classified United States Goverment Military
> Research and Development project of an otherwise necessarily very
> vague character.
Perhaps I read Jim's proposal with my own prejudgments, but I don't think
that Jim proposed a collaboration between this group and a classified US
gov't project. I thought what was proposed was something like commentary
from individuals on strengths and weaknesses of various starter documents.
This is something that would be good in any event.
Now we have an 'evaluations' link that will facilitate commentary
(hopefully).
Best,
John Velman
>
> The details of the proposed collaboration remain unclear to me,
> and evidently to many others. Indeed, it seems to be the nature
> of the case that the application domain must remain unspecified
> for an indefinite period of time, but your proposal appears to
> be in the nature of submitting documents tantamount to RFP's
> and blind "pig in the poke" types of evaluations, perhaps
> concerning the suitability of our SUO Starter Proposals
> for this necessarily very vague purpose.
>
> If my description is lacking in any specifics that
> you may supply, please assist me in clarifying it.
>
> In the mean time, I will submit these following
> provisional questions, observations, and opinions:
>
> Observation 1. In my assessment, all of our current starter proposals,
> including the very diverse maturities of methodology that produced them,
> are very undeveloped at this point. Their only conceivable utility is
> to contribute to the formulation of general principles, such as might
> be expresed in a general-purpose standard, and even the first hints
> of progress in that direction are clearly some years in the future.
> In short, they are all of them, whatever their diverse merits,
> unsuitable for any purpose at this time, far less the sorts
> of critical but vague applications that you are proposing
> we engage our lives and our sacred honors in at this time.
>
> Question 1. Is it standard practice for any Standards Body to be serving
> as a short-term buffer between immature methodologies and vaguely specified
> but extremely critical and highly politically charged applications?
>
> Question 2. Is the engagement that you recommend an appropriate activity
> or even a feasible activity for the Standard Upper Ontology Working Group
> in particular?
>
> This brings up an incidental matter that I have also seen arise on the List.
>
> Political Opinion 1. It is not possible to have an apolitical opinion.
> That is to say, almost all of our most basic beliefs have some bearing
> on what we regard as valid conduct in civil society, the Polis, as the
> philosophers customarily state it.
>
> Corollary 1. In making your proposal, you have expressed a huge number
> of political opinions, explicit and implicit, examined and unexamined.
> For instance, you are saying that a certain activity is a worthwhile
> activity for a rather diverse society of persons to engage their
> volunteer energies in. Incidental to your championship of this
> political mission -- in the heat of contesting for its value,
> no doubt, and we all understand how that is -- you have also
> expressed opinions about what constitutes appropriate
> conduct in an "professional and open" society.
> These are are your political opinions, that
> rational persons may have a diversity of
> their own political opinions about.
>
> Theorem 1. Tolerance is of the essence.
>
> Recommendation 1. In the interest of not only social harmony,
> but also to make it possible to attract freely and graciously
> volunteered energy and expertise, I suggest that we return to
> what has been the long e-stablished custom in this e-community,
> of having tolerance for each other's signoff lines, which are,
> after all, about as e-gregious as wearing a slogan t-shirt to
> one's volunteer job.
>
> Recommendation 2. I personally believe, and this is just an expression
> of my personal sense of what constitutes valid conduct in civil society,
> that you owe Murray Altheim an apology for in any way suggesting that
> his conduct has been contrary either to civility, professional values,
> or the spirit of an open society.
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Jon Awbrey
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> inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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