Re: Cyc Subject Predicate Object

Mark Montgomery wrote:
>  
> A fairly common and in my view accurate position coming primarily from 
> education related scientists suggests that the guild has become so 
> effective in modern times that it would protect itself against 
> an Einstein or da Vinci from ever being discovered, who today many 
> believe may never make it through public education due to the 
> dysfunction of our institutions.

Ontology being the study of ta onta, Greek for what there is, what you 
wrote could conceivably count as a contribution to ontology by asserting 
that there is a guild and giving its attributes.

You're quite right about the guild.  It is alive and well today, and 
continues to work to protect itself against the likes of CYC.

Just don't underestimate the guild of a century ago, which managed to 
protect itself against Einstein himself by granting faculty positions to 
three of his fellow graduates in 1901, leaving Einstein to scramble for 
a job in the patent office.  At least he got a job -- in Galileo's day 
he would have been sentenced to house arrest (assuming he recanted) for 
anything so radical and obviously wrong as relativity.

That's not to extrapolate that now the guild is greatly weakened. 
You're right about the power of the guild, just as L. Ron Hubbard was 
right about the power of SMERSH.  The Guild today will be The Matrix of 
tomorrow, able to protect itself against a Larry Lessig or Jerry Yang 
from ever being discovered.  Today's luminaries are lucky not to have 
been born a few centuries earlier by the evidence of history, nor a 
century hence by the evidence of your reasoning.

I should know: I work for The Guild.  See my efforts to protect it 
against CYC at http://boole.stanford.edu/cyc.html

Vaughan Pratt

Received on Saturday, 17 February 2007 07:29:07 UTC