Re: foaf:knows

Quoting Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com>:

> 
> 
> 
> Sandro Hawke wrote:
> 
> >     2. Express feelings in clearly emotional terms.  I usually feel
> >        happy about DanBri walking into a room I'm in, in a social
> >        setting, and in a work setting.  (Some people I'm happy to see
> >        in one context but not the other.)  I just asked my 7-year-old
> >        for a test for closeness among people, and he suggested two:
> >        (1) whether you're excited to see them, and (2) whether you hug
> >        them.
> 
> 
> Test (2) is likely to show cultural variability world wide, but I quite 
> like your approach.

Yes. Not just world wide - membership of one or more sub-cultures can make it
quite context-dependent; I would rarely hug a relative, especially male (though
I would clearly foaf:know them), I would hug a practitioner of my faith I had
just met (though I would clearly not foaf:know them) since I am acting within a
different culture in each case. Blood-alcohol level has an effect also :)

I'm not sure of the bias here as regards to the type of closeness. There are
people I know quite well who make me less happy if they walk into a room! I'm
not sure that "know" should entail "like".
Also I mentioned celebrities as a possible edge case, or rather as a humourous
over-the-edge case. While I would be pretty indifferent to my original example
there are famous people who's work or deeds I admire and I would hence be happy
to see them, but could hardly claim to know them. So "like" doesn't entail
"know" either.

Actually the celebrity case is worth thinking about in that if someone is
famous
or at least well-known in their field it would make someone more likely to want
to claim they know them, even if it was stretching the facts to do so. There
could be a similar advantage in making such a claim in a given context (which is
why we're picking on Dan Brickley in the context of FOAF).

> Maybe we show each have our own *:knows properties that are declared as 
> subproperties of foaf:knows - we could than one to try and capture degrees 
> of closeness.

That sounds like an interesting project; most likely a doomed project, but an
intersting one all the same.

Actually, is there a FOAF list where this would be more on-topic?

-- 
Jon Hanna
<http://www.hackcraft.net/>
*Thought provoking quote goes here*

Received on Thursday, 19 February 2004 12:15:53 UTC