Friday, January 24, 2003

It is said that reasoning on the semantic web must be monotonic. Why is this so ..... From the last call RDF Semantics document ... "All logics based on a conventional model theory and a standard notion of entailment are monotonic. Monotonic logics have the property that entailments remain valid outside of the context in which they were generated. This is why RDF is designed to be monotonic." Nonmonotonic conclusions can be said to be valid only in some kind of 'context', and are liable to be incorrect or misleading when used outside that context. Making the context explicit in the reasoning and visible in the conclusion is a way to map them into a monotonic framework. D'oh! Then why dont we get a way to explicitidly express context in RDF ?? 4:39:27 PM    comment []

Language evolved in a leap (Article in Nature) "The richness of human languages is a fine-tuned compromise between the needs of speakers and of listeners" ... "A language that conveyed all information unambiguously, would have a separate word for every thing" ... would be "ideal for the listener, who wouldn't have to work out any meanings from a word's context." but "Ideal for the speaker is a language of few words, where simple, short utterances serve many purposes." Hmmmm ... I wonder where the compromise is for the AI mechinisms of the Internet to start to understand each other ? According to this, RDF is ideal for the listener (yes it is), but rediculously hard for the speaker (ever try to look up all those URI and their correct namespaces). Me thinks our software tools need to evolve to be able to look up these URI for the speaker, allowing us to revert back to natural language grunts. 11:11:23 AM    comment []