Re: Working without being ambushed by Ambiguity (was: issue-57 background reading for F2F (short required reading)

On 20 October 2012 10:41, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

> An interesting e-mail by Tim Berners Lee on ambiguity on the web.
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > Resent-From: www-tag@w3.org
> > From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
> > Subject: Working without being ambushed by Ambiguity (was: issue-57
> background reading for F2F (short required reading)
> > Date: 15 October 2012 20:53:55 CEST
> > To: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
> > Cc: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, David Booth <david@dbooth.org>, "
> www-tag@w3.org List" <www-tag@w3.org>
> >
> > (I guess this is one of these things which is perennial.  I have not
> > studied much of the history of philosophy but I do find one
> > needs to be prepared to jump in in order to keep the  course
> > of what I otherwise regard as engineering still on track…
> > as I have said before, this is philosophical engineering we are doing...)
> >
> > The point which David Booth has brought up, not for the
> > first time, and which Pat has expounded very well, that
> > no symbol can ever have completely unambiguous meaning
> > is, yes, quite valid.  There are several such points which
> > we have to go over every now and again (preferably out of the critical
> path of
> > working group work) and agree we all understand it and
> > agree that we can all continue in practice without it.
> > And indeed continue in theory without it as well.
> > And Pat, you have lead us through that journey from
> > philosophical foundationlessness to logical foundations
> > before and maybe you can help us again or just point
> > to where you did before.  And Graham you make an
> > important distinction.
> >
> > There are lots of models, I am sure, one can make of
> > ambiguity and language and communication which will
> > allow us to do this, and they may differ in how they work
> > and it probably is best that we agree they exist but not get
> > hung up arguing about which one is "right". They
> > will all be imperfect, but good enough.
> >
> > PHYSICS ANALOGY
> >
> > I have before and will now compare this with classical and
> > quantum physics.  We go through our young lives with
> > classical physics, and are taught that a billiard ball
> > has a given diameter, a given mass, and a given position
> > and a velocity, all of which we can measure.
> > We learn how to build houses and drive cars
> > all based on this physics. And then we get older and people
> > tell us that actually a billiard ball does not have a well defined
> > diameter.  Not only, if you look closely at it edge,
> > is it a mass of atoms, but also those atoms in fact have only
> > a probability of being in any one place at any one time.
> > And even the billiard ball itself, if we measure its position too
> > accurately in principle we can only do it by losing knowledge of
> > its momentum.   Now the naively pedantic response may be to insist, that
> > everything we learned in Classical Physics be
> > thrown away.  This is the response which says
> > that it is no use talking about the position of a ball anyway,
> > as its atoms could in fact just randomly move 3 inches east
> > at the same time.  So it is that those who see that
> > in a deep enough analysis almost given term admits of ambiguity
> > might say that the Architecture of the WWW" is useless as
> > it says URIs should only be used to denote one thing.
> >
> > But in fact we really need to use the physics we have learned.
> > We need to keep all we know about the way billiard balls
> > interact at human scale.  Even though we have to be aware of
> > quantum effects every now and again, when we find light
> > being diffracted through a grating instead of being scattered,
> > or electrons tunneling though a thin layer,
> > we have ways of going into the details of the quantum effects
> > where appropriate, and interfacing that thinking with the
> > classical thinking.  So it is with denotation by names.  We need to
> > keep the models of ambiguity in our back pocket  and
> > bring them out when we need them, but not use them
> > to ambush any discussion in the classical form.
> > We should not use them to suggest that any use of the idea of a name
> > having something it denotes is to be thrown away.
> >
> > Ok, so in physics there is maths which allows you to show that
> > in the large scale, the quantum model of the world in fact gives
> > rise, to a very high degree of approximation, to the classic model.
> >
> > VARIOUS WAYS OF DEALING WITH AMBIGUITY
> >
> > So now how do we construct a practical ability to use
> > terms like the thing that a string denotes from the morass
> > of ambiguity which is communication?
> > There are a number of models, none of which is perfect.
> > What have we?
> >
> > 1) The Authoritative Dictionary model.  The guy who puts together
> > the Oxford English Dictionary just knows more than anyone else
> > about how people use words, and we all make sure we use words
> > just as they are described there.  If we don't find a use in it we want,
> > we sent him a note.
> >
> > (This is perhaps the model we have in kindergarden)
> >
> > 2) The naive "meaning as use" model, sometimes blamed on Wittgenstein.
> > You use terms however you like, as meaning is use, and so you can never
> be using them inconsistently with their meaning.
> >
> > (Sometimes this may be -- who knows -- a response to realizing that the
> model 1 is not perfect)
> >
> > 3) The Expertise model.  The OED applies as above, but
> > also we send lawyers to school for several years to agree on a set
> > of terms which are more closely defined so we can use them
> > in cases where we need unambiguity, like in contracts.
> > To know what something means, ask a lawyer and if necessary
> > go to court to add enough extra definition to be able to continue.
> >
> > Pat describes some of the great lengths to which lawyers sometimes
> > have to go
> >
> > 4) The Areas of Expertise model. As above, but add in
> > groups of people with expertise in given areas.
> > Ask them to write anything you need in that area, and in
> > court  bring them in as expert witnesses.
> >
> > 5) The Standards Committee model.
> > A committee writes a standard for use in a particular area
> > writes it using a mixture of words which it feels are well enough
> > defined in models 1 2 or 3, and terms which it defines
> > specifically locally for its own use within the standard specification.
> > It discusses and ruminates until it feels it has found a set
> > or terms which are all mutually well defined and tight enough
> > to make a standard which people will use without undesirable
> > consequence through misunderstanding. (Not a standard
> > which everyone will understand unambiguously in exactly the same way,
> note).
> >
> > (From time to time, the group may share its work with others
> > and be horrified to find it has in the now larger community involved
> > go through much longer discussion and rumination.)
> >
> > There is recourse in that others can, while the group is extant
> > in some form, challenge it to resolve perceived ambiguities in
> > the terms it uses or the things it writes.
> >
> > A FRAMEWORK WHICH ALLOWS THESE WAYS TO MIX
> >
> > A common facet of all these models is that they
> > do not give complete unambiguity at all, just a good enough
> > definition.  "Good enough for government work" as they saying goes.
> > Where "government work" is defined within some community
> > of some size (See http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Fractal).
> >
> > We can continue listing these sorts of models.
> > More importantly, we can engineer them.
> > The initial philosophers seemed to treat language as a
> > natural or god-made thing to be investigated not
> > engineered invented things,
> > but in fact dictionaries and court procedure and standards bodies
> > are all engineered systems.  So we can design the ones we need.
> >
> > We therefore can improve on these systems,
> > and, given that there is so much violence and counter productivity
> > in the world and that much of it one might imagines stems from
> > misunderstandings of some sort, it may behoove use to improve
> > on them.  That said, lets talk about this for URIs and
> > specifically the Semantic Web design.
> >
> > The Semantic Web meta model.
> >
> > In a way the semantic web out-metas the model question.
> > By focussing on the interchange of data in a restricted
> > normal form, it can treat mathematically the systems
> > above -- and other systems -- in a logical way impossible
> > with natural language terms.
> >
> > The semantic web itself is a design, not a philosophical observation
> > about how language works anywhere else.
> >
> > It decrees that there should be terms defined in the
> > http: URI space, and decrees that the DNS
> > be part of a system of delegation of Ownership
> > of each term.  (I'm not going to quibble here about
> > whether ownership of terms delegated within domains)
> > By realizing that there are many communities of people
> > using all sorts of combination, and allowing people
> > to create new terms very easily and being able to
> > avoid re-use of the same string,  it allows us to set up
> > a system where the participating parties agree
> >
> > - The DNS, and further systems within many domain's http spaces,
> > allow a social entity to allocate a name in HTTP space.
> > That social entity is deemed the "Owner" of the name.
> > Ownership is defined
> > - The network and the HTTP allows a machine to look up
> > the name and get information back
> > - This information you get back provides elucidation in two forms,
> > in natural language (with various models of ambiguity relief)
> > and logic (where the core terms such as the syntax of turtle,
> > and rdf:type are defined in mode 5 by the W3C working groups
> > etc).
> >
> > Everyone who uses the semantic web has to then sign
> > up to this meta-model, though they can pick and chose
> > models above.
> >
> > Importantly, implicit or explicit in the information which is
> > returned is information about which mode is used
> > to relieve ambiguity.
> >
> > So the crucial design, then, is that when one agent sends
> > another a message, that agent will pick a set of
> > terms which have different owners who operate or curate
> > different vocabularies using different models above or
> > indeed combination of models and new models.
> >
> > The vocabularies are picked so that the disambiguation
> > is good enough.   Good enough for the situation,
> > for the sending and receiving agent.
> >
> > (We tend to call the information which we get back over HTTP
> > the definition of the term. Well, we would except that we
> > would be ambushed by people who want to use the word
> > "definition" specifically for a definition using one or other
> > particular model).
> >
> >
> > Of course in parallel with the actual looking up
> > of stuff on the web, also people share understandings
> > over beers in bars as they always have done,
> > but the semantic web linked data system is cool in two ways:
> > Firstly, it instantiates the models of disambiguation
> > providing a way to "look up the meaning" of something
> > without having to have a notion that meaning is unambiguous.
> > Secondly, it gives us the ability to write programs to help us,
> > because of the logic interchanged. That's really handy.
> >
> > Now we have to, mainly, get on with the business of
> > building systems, but we have to be aware of when the ambiguity
> > case arises.  We need, in our discussions, to have things
> > to point people to so that naive pedantic arguments don't
> > derail perfectly good discussion and logic based on the idea that
> > names denote things.  But we need to be aware
> > of when the pedantry is appropriate, and have avenues
> > ready to go down.
> >
> > Example 1.
> >
> > In our semantic web based world,
> > When you are using a form, you may fill in details
> > about, say, a seminar you are organizing, and generally
> > the prompts on the form allow you to fill in things
> > like "Date", "Start time" and "End time" without likely
> > damage due to misunderstanding.
> > If you have to choose in a pull-down menu whether to categorize it
> > as a talk or a class or a seminar or a concert, you might
> > be more puzzled, but a good app will pull in comments
> > from the ontology when you hover over it uncertainly,
> > giving you enough more detailed information to make
> > your decision. You can maybe even clock off and follow
> > a link to bring up the detailed information from the ontology,
> > and also you can search for members of each subclass,
> > to see what existing things have been categorized each way and do on.
> > So a user can well use the meaning lookup system,
> > resolve the meaning well enough.
> >
> > Example 2
> >
> > Consider now the person who is creating the form.
> > Each time they add a field, they will hopefully pick
> > an associated property for it.  And hopefully they
> > will pick a property from an existing ontology which
> > will give it wide interoperability.  You want the events defined by
> users of the form  to appear on people's calendars, for example,
> > and feeds of upcoming talks.
> > So at this point the user as form creator is
> > more aware of the different organizations, and the different
> > disambiguation models, which apply to each.
> > The user will at this point quite likely pick a number
> > very standard terms, a few from other ontologies,
> > and then be stuck and have to make up a few properties.
> > This is when the system needs ideally to be able to
> > give the user a feel for the cost of
> > getting others to agree on the ontology, of keeping it up.
> >
> > This is where there should be buttons to invite comments
> > and buttons to form a group, an buttons to to allow
> > one to ask another group to collaborate, and so on.
> > And depending on the sort of group formed
> > and the sorts of groups to be collaborated with,
> > the social processes will be of all kinds.
> >
> > End of examples.
> >
> > So we can build systems which instantiate
> > and enhance the social processes which
> > we use to resolve ambiguity.
> >
> > So yes there many times when all the details of the
> > way the semantic web resolves ambiguity enough
> > for us to be able to talk about names having a single
> > thing they denote, and even having a definition.
> >
> > And we understand the extent to
> > which that breaks and where it affects us and we
> > have a task of creating systems (technical and social)
> > which behave appropriately and allow us to agree
> > enough on the meaning of old terms and new ones
> > to be able to collaborate better and better.
> >
> > But right now these social systems are in place in various forms
> > so we need not be ambushed by the many rat-holes
> > around this, some of which need to be charted and left rarely visited.
> >
> > Tim
>

Excellent post.

Small point.  I think what Tim refers to as a dictionary in linguistic
terms is called a 'lexicon'.  A dictionary being a lexicon + a grammar.


> >
> >
> >
> >
> > * "God created the Counting Numbers, and man invented the rest" -- @@@?
> >
> > ** We don't want to send all the naive pedantic arguments off
> > on the B ark, and then die from an unsanitized telephone.
> >
> >
> >
>
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>
>