zlacker

>>fogus+(OP)
Before you try to encapsulate common sense in a collection of obvious facts, you might want to start with a simpler task: Collect a database of elementary-school math problems and their associated answers until the database is so large that it coalesces into a fully functioning CPU.

If this seems like a bad idea, it's because it is.

>>goodsi+42
You wouldn't believe it, but principal Cyc developer Douglas Lenat started almost exactly with that. Eurisco, a predecessor to Cyc, was a deduction machine that operated with minimal human intervention over minimal sets of number theory axioms. It rediscovered many theorems on its own.

Douglas Lenat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat Eurisco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurisko

>>thesz+79
Lenat never released the source code to Eurisko. There has always been a question as to how much he did and how much the program did.

Ideas that Lenat promoted with Eurisko and Cyc have made him successful by most criteria. But it would be better had he published a proven finished product, including it's innards. My feeling is that, in publishing, one should show the code or it never happened.