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RE: SUO: Universal Time, other universals, and cultural contextof SUO.

Pat,


You said (snipped from your bigger reply below) : "I am simply uninterested in NL applications, and do not regard them as centrally important.", and that you want to focus on more productive uses of ontologies than NLU.


I respect your interests of course. But please don't forget the overall purpose of the SUO. To remind you, take the time to (re)read (at least the last line of) the description of what this work is all about. I don't recall this specific purpose having been voted out.

You are absolutely correct, and I had indeed not noticed that. This is probably because I joined the SUO rather late in the overall process, and had no part in framing this statement of purpose. Now I read it more carefully, I see that my views have hardened in opposition to it since taking part in the SUO discussions.

Since the statement of purpose is so clear on this, and other issues that I think are wrongheaded (that an SUO can be 'neutral'; the idea that particular applications are 'constructed on' the upper-level concepts), misguided (the idea that there can be an SUO for education - horrifying, in fact) , just plain technically mistaken (that an SUO - emphasis on U - will produce interoperability; the error in B3 that confuses an ontology with a notation) , and pointless; and since my sincerely held belief has always been that the world would be *much* better off with no 'standard' upper ontology than with a bad one, and since the current process seems more and more likely to produce an extremely bad one, I think it is probably best if I follow Adam's advice and withdraw from these SUO activities. Bad standards will eventually succumb to rational users, even if they manage to waste a lot ot everyones time on their way to oblivion, so no lasting harm will be done; and in any case, in the words of a Zen master, which is better: to wear shoes, or to try to cover the world with leather?

Let me therefore reverse all my earlier advice. Go ahead, y'all, and mis-use modal ideas, confuse 4-d representations with continuants, have inconsistent theories of substance, time, process, and shape, jumble together set theory and mereology, and generally create conceptual havoc. Jim, get them whipped into shape, hurry them along, publish the result as soon as possible, declare it be an IEEE standard; and Adam, have plenty of amusing conversations with whoever beats a path to your door.

Pat Hayes
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