- From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 17:23:04 -0500
- To: "R.V.Guha" <guha@guha.com>
- Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>patrick hayes wrote: > >> >>No doubt the inventors of RDF did not intend to impose global >>consistency; such an ambition is obviously slightly insane. >>However, as a matter of fact, this insane assumption is built into >>the very architecture of RDF as it exists. RDF provides no way to >>make any other assumptions. It provides no way to agree or >>disagree, no way to define, no way to negotiate, no way even to >>question, any content. It only provides a simple way to make >>elementary assertions using a global vocabulary. It is obvious that >>this will not work unless there is some global coherence to the >>assertions made using the global vocabulary, unless there is some >>way to negotiate content and handle contradictions. > >Pat, > > You seem to be making the assumption that a processing agent >somehow has a "global" view of all the data on >the SW. There is an alternate view, one I would argue is the only >one which makes sense, i.e., that at any time, >any particular agent can only see small windows of this giant net. >It is not unlike the web, where no one has >ever seen the entire web (no, not even google). Different agents, >see small parts of it. OK, I agree so far. But what you seem to be assuming is that each such small 'view' will be taken in isolation and dealt with, one at a time; whereas what worries me is that inferences will be performed and derived conclusions published, and then read by others, so that long chains of inference will be set up which will trail across these little windows, connecting them together and finding who knows what connections between pieces of scattered content. Right now, the web is huge but very shallow, like a kind of giant Everglades: most web access fetches a page and delivers it immediately to a human reader. As soon as software agents start reasoning with pieces of retrieved content, the depth will change from something people can safely paddle in, to something more like an ocean of inference, and I'm afraid of the kelp forests. >And hopefully, these >small parts will be internally consistent Why? That is, why would one expect them to be internally consistent? Using 'consistent' now in a tight, formal sense. >(yes, yes, rdf doesn't deal with the last part, but that is not the >point of this >message). I don't expect it to deal with it, but I wish it could at least recognize it. But OK, another thread. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Thursday, 23 May 2002 18:22:35 UTC