zlacker

I looked at CYC a few years ago and found the underlying epistemology of the effort flawed in such a way that the result is a mass of contradictions in the project. Their solution to that was to try to zoom in on tiny areas to avoid the contradictions with other areas - but in the factual world, there really aren't these contradictions. The other clear sign of serious trouble was their explanation that adding definitions to the system was taking longer and longer - if anything it should accelerate if their underlying structure was good.

I think the CYC project should be used only as an example of spending a huge amount of time and money on a flawed structure as opposed to a condemnation of semantic approaches.

>>gibson+(OP)
but in the factual world, there really aren't these contradictions.

The internal mental furnishings of most human beings are seemingly full of these, however.

>>gibson+(OP)
I don't disagree re: Cyc.

I am however, trying to draw an analogy between Cyc and an open Semantic Web. If Cyc has issues like the ones you describe, these issues will only be magnified ad infinitum in a completely open graph where there are effectively no controls.

>>elblan+ve
It's a great opportunity for a company to nail the ontology in a scalable way, especially if the solution can use industry standard triple stores like allegrograph. Serious epistemology geeks are needed for the effort, however.

>>stcred+pc
This is why a factual digital ontology corresponding to the real world would be so valuable as opposed to us fallible human beings.

>>gibson+BB
Really? So why do so many human beings get paid 10's of thousands of dollars a years to exercise theirs, while it's relatively few digital general-purpose "digital ontologies? that are worth paying for.

(The highly contextual ones do pretty well in the market, though.)