| Martin Pichlmair on Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:41:55 +0200 (CEST) |
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| [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Internetontology (2x) |
hi josh & all!
some more thoughts ..... i hope, they are not too offensive, since i tend
to get rather "emotional" sometimes .. take it as a mean of "getting to
the point" - sometimes i'm wrong and talk loud and the truth is said as an
reply
> > another detail: where does a fact become knowledge.
> > in this case,
> > knowledge has to be defined as "worth of being
> > entered into this
> > database". is it as soon as someone cares about it?
> > as soon as someone
> > pays for it? in my opinion, this is NOT the
> > definition of knowledge i
> > learned on the university.
>
> Here lies much of the problem. We live in the age
> of information, unfortunately not the age of
> knowledge. Information/Data != Thought.
if you define knowledge as "what someone knows", everyone always lives in
an age of knowledge. if you define knowledge as "what is approved and/or
derived from approved knowledge" we also live in an age of knowledge. yet
you seem to define knowledge as "what is approved and/or derived from
approved facts and saved and accessible for the public [ that has an
internet connection ]". ok. that was a bit sarcastic.
sure information != thought, yet, rules <- information == thought
and that is, what the cyc tries to realise, yet the problem is, that one
information [ or the same set of informations ] may lead to contradictory
facts. will this database handle those? is the recipient able to decide?
> > but historical "events" where people decided, what
> > reality is (and defined
> > knowledge through this), always tend to redefine
> > knowledge by neglecting
> > the opinions of critics and accepting those of the
> > defining ones (often
> > without proof). from this view, it seems like ANY
> > attempt to define
> > knowledge has to be "repressive" against someone.
> > take the catholic church
> > in europe in the medieval ages for example.
> > knowledge can so easily be
> > misused, when it is based upon opinions and not
> > facts (so, redefined).
>
> Well, this is a complex dynamic and many people have
> spent thier lives trying to explain and/or "solve" it
> and all I can say is that using some kind of thought
> system or belief to marginalize others and "opress"
> them is of course, wrong. These opressive systems are
> usually characterized by the limiting of access to
> "knowledge". It also seems that increasing the means
> to trade information does not increase the total
> amount of "knowledge".
sure, if 2 people know the same thing, the "amount of knowledge" is not
increased. yet - the amount of knowledge is also not approved, if someone
AND cyc inc. knows the same thing. and cyc inc. effectls DOES limit the
access to knowledge, as described on their website.
i also believe in the fact, that means of communication at least increase
the POSSIBILITY of enlarging the global pool of knowledge as a whole.
i recommend the theories of claude levy about realtime communication.
> > i really wonder how this database handles contrary
> > points of view. do they
> > give different meaning a kind of "weight" or
> > "propability factor". to
> > reflect the situation of the real world, i would
> > suggest a mixture of
> > random and a link to "culture profiles". we are
> > getting close to where we
> > don't want to get.
>
> It doesnt handle contrary points of view. As I
> said, lenat plans on consilidating and discrepencies
> or multiplicity. If Cyc does take off, I would love
> to see what would happen if religious fundamentalists
> got thier hands on this stuff. Another interesting
> scenario with the use of this technology, would be if
> there were in fact huge multiple databases of
> knowledge. We could then pit the AI's against each
> other and allow them to interrogate themselves
> automatically and give us a readout of thier
> fundamental differences.
hmm .. to see fundamental differences, i recommend to walk the streets of
jerusalem, peking or wherever the wto visits :-]. sorry, i'm getting
sarcastic again.
i see little sense in letting AI's determine the difference of knowledge
databases. even if they know the meaning - it will take 100 years until
they will be able to determine the "real world weight" of a statement.
to gain valuable information [ knowledge ? ] it would be necessary to
extract the value of a differing "defined fact".
> > if you want to read more about how to define what's
> > a fact and what's
> > nonsense, what is DECIDED to be real (as part of the
> > reality), i recommend
> > the book "troika" by the strugatzky brothers
> > (russian scifi authors). in
> > german it is available as part of the fantastic
> > "fantastische bibliothek"
> > by suhrkamp verlag.
>
> Hmm is there publication in English? HAs anyone
> ever read the Polish Sci-Fi author Stanislaw Lem? he
> has some really interesting stuff( his most known is
> Solaris )...
lem is wonderful. i love ijon tichy's adventures [ in german
"sterntagebuecher" ].
another important sentence about this problem : "die welt is alles, was
der fall ist" [ the world is "all that's the case" - please look up a
better translation ] wittgenstein / tractatus logico-philosophicus.
martin
>
> -josh
>
> >
> >
> > martin pi
> >
> > ps: as i always have to post :: don't mistake bad
> > english for bad
> > thoughts!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, josh zeidner wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Hi Brian!
> > >
> > > Are you familiar with the Cyc project lead by
> > Doug
> > > Lenat? It is essentially an attempt to construct
> > an
> > > ontology for the ENTIRE WORLD. They have actually
> > > managed to encode quite a bit of data. A small
> > subset
> > > of it is available as open source.
> > >
> > > http://www.cyc.com
> > > http://www.opencyc.org
> > >
> > > I think that there is something drastically
> > flawed
> > > with the ideas behind projects such as these. To
> > > assume that knowledge is empirical or fixed would
> > > result in a sort of tyranny of thought, where only
> > one
> > > particlar system of signification dominates( the
> > one
> > > that is cheapest to purchase? ), and its
> > > interpretation would be the monopoly of those who
> > have
> > > access to the physical device. Many would say
> > that
> > > this flaw would eventually make itself evident in
> > > operational shortcomings, but Im afraid this may
> > not
> > > be the case. Should enough people have thier
> > vested
> > > interests in such a technology or thought
> > paradigm,
> > > then it will be FORCED on people, much the same
> > way an
> > > inferior technology like MS-DOS is popular simply
> > due
> > > to commercial reasons. And when people become
> > > immersed in it, they mistake it for the truth.
> > >
> > > Lenat also expressed an interesting concern.
> > The
> > > owners of Cyc released a part of it as open source
> > > with the hopes that developers would independently
> > > develop new ontologies using thier(proprietary)
> > > encoding syntax. What Doug Lenat was concerned
> > about
> > > was that there would be conflicting ontologies, or
> > > possibly even a informational schism resulting in
> > many
> > > cyc databases of knowledge. What Lenat hopes to
> > do is
> > > to have the company consolidate the data as it
> > sees
> > > fit. Will Doug Lenat be the final say on "life,
> > the
> > > universe, and everthing?".
> > >
> > > Right now, the project seems fairly harmless. I
> > > actually applied for employment there recently.
> > But
> > > could we, in the future, have a centralized
> > hierachial
> > > database of real world knowledge that cannot be
> > > challenged simply because "thats what it says"( if
> > the
> > > computer says so it must be true! )? Sounds like
> > the
> > > catholic church of the middle ages. Hello dark
> > age
> > > part II.
> > >
> > > naturally, the military has taken interest in
> > the
> > > project for some reason or another.
> > >
> > >
> > > -josh zeidner
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > >ShelfLife, No. 8 (28 June 2001)
> > > > >
> > > <...>
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
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> > > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
> > >
> > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use
> > without permission
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> > criticism,
> > > # collaborative text filtering and cultural
> > politics of the nets
> > > # more info: [email protected] and "info
> > nettime-l" in the msg body
> > > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact:
> > [email protected]
> > >
> >
> > : martin pi
> > contact :
> > [email protected] : 0699 10443742
> > johann strauss gasse 32 / 7 : 1040 vienna
> > :
> > http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e9626313
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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>
>
> - ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:54:45 -0400
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: BOUNCE [email protected]: Approval required:
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:44:58 -0800
> From: brian carroll <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> internetontology
>
>
> hi Josh, interesting URL and ideas you share.
> my language abilities are faltering, so i will
> be abstractly brief in my observations...
>
> ontology, in my experience, has been closely related
> to developing 'generalist' content online, such as
> a glossary, architectural portal, and now a portal
> for electromagnetic information and ideas. what i've
> run into in the coding of these projects are decisions
> upon how to structure relationships between words and
> their conceptual relationships. for example, archiving
> all primary disciplines which use electromagnetism is
> one huge assumption, as there are competing taxonomies
> and that science-humanities split still needs stitching.
> so too, architectural texts, and ideas. one resource
> that always stuck in my mental-atomspheric has been
> the archivist/librarian, which is why i enjoyed the
> foucoultian 'archaeoknowledge', as it is practical.
> Getty's library does a significant job at categorizing
> the fields in detail. yet there is always a sense that
> the structure is like matter, and the anti-matter is
> really where knowing occurs, where guesses and hypo-
> theses and experiments turn mystery into understanding.
> but there is always an uncertain certainty, given the
> language, so it seems. that constant subject viewing,
> thinking, acting, verbing along. but not so with science,
> with mathematics, with numbers, or not nearly as so in
> their absolute sense, in that they already are beyond
> the question of authority and do hold authority, even
> if it is not warranted. but do so by power alone, often-
> times, and despotically so.
>
> so, as a necessary badness, it may be necessary to find
> a common language for humans, however fuzzy, to be able
> to speak to the ideas that are universalized in numbers
> and statistics, which guide public and private policies,
> and determine the future course of things, as they have
> the past. economics, engineering, physics. whatnot. as
> issues like gene research come up, who can argue with
> the number 1, how can one begin to say it is not right,
> or wrong, or, forbid, untrue? impossible, because it is
> improbable to do so given totally subjective and private
> languaging amongst people of sign-i-ficant difference.
> until i=you and this equals we, then and only then will
> we be able to speak in terms of probability, where 1 is
> not true if it is really closer to zero, and not absolute
> at that, however fuzzy our shared language is, it is much
> more reasonable than any mathematician trying to speak
> humanity through a fortress of numerological ideology.
>
> greatest quote of 2001, Bush saying 'we need better science'
> on Global Warming. funny, that. else, say, the PBS public
> tv show yesterday on Air Force One, the plane, with a
> followup advert for Caeser of Rome and his empire.
> given the complexities of language, the complexities of
> communicating, and that of reasoning, false in privatized
> communalities which are pre-supposed to re-present the
> whole while pimping for the authoritarian bureaucracy,
> it is time to lay down the power that is holding back
> simple and basic truthes and move forward, together, on
> shared ideas. without language, there is no way to do this.
> and languages die out. and it seems so has public language,
> any ideas that can break out of the commodification of the
> individual's 'I'dentity, where it is subservient to the
> needs, or at least in balance, with those of the whole
> 'i' of a distributed humanity. make a database, let it
> reverse engineer itself via fuzzy logic, and there need
> be no authority, just as a-life engines. the rules are
> links, and densities, and evolutions and mutations. a
> supercomputer may be the only way to find meaning in
> this muck of intellectual complexity that is thinking
> today, and collaborative inaction on the scales of events.
>
> onto logic, human.
>
> brian
> matter, energy, and in-formation
> http://www.electronetwork.org/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
>
: martin pi
contact :
[email protected] : 0699 10443742
johann strauss gasse 32 / 7 : 1040 vienna
: http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e9626313
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