SUO: Mindset & Structural Intent
> Having a laundry list of items to be considered is useful.
> But without a very serious answer to all these questions,
> it should not considered as anything that has any more
> structure than a laundry list.
>
> John Sowa
What kind of structure can a laundry list have? I've given a lot of
thought to the kinds of structure that we might intend. I attach an
illustration below describing different kinds of structural intent. I'm
curious where they might fit in the SUO. My own feeling is that it
would be very helpful to tackle the structural relationship between
thoughts, before delving into any semantic relationships. It would be
great if all information was structurally transparent, for example, with
regard to sequences, hierarchies, networks. This is the
goal of the Mindset standard, http://www.ms.lt/mindset.html Our working
group, ourownthoughts@yahoogroups.com, is always looking for new input.
Our laboratory, Minciu Sodas, is drafting a Mindset modeling language
to help us import/export our thoughts between tools for organizing
thoughts, such as http://www.thebrain.com, http://www.mindmanager.com,
http://thoughtstream.org, http://www.memes.net
We use Mindset to model our thinking.
As authors of our thoughts, we are sophisticated users.
Often we don't know, or can't explain, what we mean. An assistant,
whether human or not, knows even less what we have in mind. As
thinkers, we purposefully use structures - such as sequences,
hierarchies, networks - to organize our thoughts structurally, even
before we know concretely how they might relate. Typically, these
structures are ambiguous, and often we violate them, anyways.
Therefore, we find it crucially important to record our "structural
intent". For example, we may intend each relationship to be a step in a
sequence, but they may form a cycle, nonetheless. We want to record our
intent, regardless of what the structure came to be. Our intent is what
helps us shape our thinking.
In Mindset, each thought [in XTM = subject/topic] is modeled as six
"mental
levers":
Content [ResourceData]
Prompt [BaseName]
ID
FromID [of Associated subject/topic]
ToID [of Associated subject/topic]
Intent [Association type]
"Content" sustains our thought, it's what supports immersive thinking.
It's the information by which our thought maintains our attention.
Content has nontrivial internal structure that engrosses us. Content
may be a paragraph of text, or any other expression of an idea, perhaps
as an image, file, code, data.
"Prompt" evokes our thought, it's what supports reflective thinking.
It's the information by which our thought evokes our attention. Prompt
refers us to the Content. Prompt is succinct enough so that we may view
many Prompts at once. Prompt may be, for example, a name, address or
sign.
"ID", "FromID" and "ToID" plot our thought locally, they're what support
dynamic thinking. Together they let us interpret our thought
(identified by ID) as the movement of our mind from one thought
(identified by FromID) to another thought (identified by ToID). We do
not require that thoughts exist for which ID=Y or ID=Z. In general, we
place no restrictions on ID, FromID or ToID. In particular, they need
not be unique. We consider thoughts to be interchangeable if they have
the same value for ID.
There are eight "reserved" Intents, illustrated in the diagram I
attach: Independent Thought, Unordered Hierarchy, Nondirected Network,
Acyclic Network, Closed Sequence, Open Sequence, Directed Network,
Irregular Structure. Intent gives the global "spirit" of the local
structural relationship, and so they are not validated in any way, and
the author may create additional intents.
Currently we have an interpretation in terms of CSV, and would like to
also have one in terms of XTM, XML for Topic Maps,
http://www.topicmaps.org
Andrius Kulikauskas
Director
Minciu Sodas laboratory
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
+1 (559) 735-0262
in Visalia, California
through June, 2001
