Re: rdf inclusion

On 5/23/02 13:29, "R.V.Guha" <guha@guha.com> wrote:

> [to Jeff Heflin]
>
> About the issue of RDF & RDFS being hard to extend --- let us be
> *very*  clear on this. RDF & RDFS were designed to be Cyc like systems
> [1]. They were *not* designed to be DL like systems. You are finding it
> hard to reconcile the two. Cyc-like systems are extensible and have been
> extended, though not in a fashion that is consistent with DL
> model-theories. Yes, the clothes  don't fit the person. Maybe the
> problem is with the clothes and not the person.

Hi all..

It's unclear what Cyc's model theory is at all.  So if you pick some model
theory T, it's a fair bet that Cyc's model theory, whatever it is, is
inconsistent with T.  At it's base, the Cyc engine is a resolution theorem
prover augmented with special purpose modules (many of which have fixpoint
semantics) and the argumentation system for NM reasoning, so you have some
minimal model stuff thrown in.  I would defy anyone, even including Keith
Goolsbey who wrote the thing, to tell me what all of that *combined* means.
In my view, this is nothing to crow about.

Cyc is an amazing system - it does lots of incredible things.  But what is
unclear is what it doesn't do or what it gets wrong, or how long it takes to
do some given inference, etc.  All of which are undesirable properties,
IMHO, for the Semantic Web.  When I go to Google, I have some reasonable
expectation that what its crawler has seen, I will find, assuming I use the
right terms.  I would like something of the same assurance with the Semantic
Web and I wouldn't bank on a Cyc-like system giving that to me.

 .bill

Received on Thursday, 23 May 2002 16:44:43 UTC