[Heartlogic-dev] Re: short-term vs long-term goals

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 02:40:21PM -0600, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> Well, I still would think it nice if we had a reference document.

Yes, the time is ripe.

http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/heartlogic/doc/freeform.txt?rev=1.1&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

> I like definitions and lots of examples....How's this:
> 
> Goal, AntiGoal, and NoGoal are *relationships* that agents have
> with respect to certain potential states of affairs.

Except that I would delete the word "potential" since we have not yet
discussed in detail the transition of a _future_ goal to a _fulfilled_
goal.

> For example, through (most of?) 2003....
> 
> (1) The relation between Howard Dean and "Howard Dean wins Democratic
> Nomination" is the Goal relation.
> 
> (2) The relation between Howard Dean and "Wesley Clark wins Democratic
> Nomination" is the AntiGoal relation.

Since I am clueless about 2003 politics, this makes little sense to
me.  In the reference doc, I used the examples you provided in earlier
emails.

> (3) The relation between an infant and "Wesley Clark wins Democratic
> Nomination" is the NoGoal relation.  (This is true bc infants
> have no cognitive capacity for an understanding of politics).
> 
> ...am I groking these guys correctly?

Yah, I think so.

> On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> > Most people have a long-term goal like: "I want to be successful in my
> > life."
> 
> Or, more precisely...
> 
> For each person P, the relationship between P and "P is successful" is the
> goal relation.
> 
> ...right?  (Btw, KM has "Self" which is similar to Java's "this")

Nitpick: Sure, except that it might not be true for all people.

> > or a long-term no-goal like: "I have no grand plan for what I
> > want to do with my life."
> 
> Or, more precisely....
> 
> For each person P, the relation between P and "P has a grand plan for
> P's life." is the NoGoal relation.

Instead of an explicit NoGoal, can we intepret a empty result set as a
NoGoal?  I think so.  If the set of Goals and AntiGoals for a given
state of affairs is empty then we can presume a NoGoal relation.

Or maybe not.  Regardless of the exact implementation (explicit and/or
implicit NoGoals), it does seem like we have a consensus on the
meaning of NoGoal.

> > Can we associate a long-term anti-goal with
> > a suicidal outlook?  I think so, or at least such a long-term anti-goal
> > would be highly dysfunctional.
> 
> You said can we associate *a* long-term anti-goal with a
> suicidal outlook.  There exist many long term anti-goals that can
> be associated with a suicidal outlook.  Sure, one example of such a long
> term anti-goal is "Fred has ``Fred lives a long life'' as an anti-goal."
> Clearly, Fred has a suicidal outlook.  But there are also long term
> anti-goals that are the opposite of suicidal.  For example "Bob has ``Bob
> dies early''" as an anti-goal.

Yes, of course.  I'm an idiot.  Another example of a (non-suicidal)
long-term AntiGoal is: "I don't want to pursue the same career as my
father."

> > Short-term goals, on the other hand, are more diverse.  For example, I
> > may have a short-term anti-goal of "study for my chemistry exam"
> > because I want to achieve a slightly longer-term goal of "getting a
> > passing score."
> 
> Okay, now I'm baffled.  Hopefully this is merely a typo.  Hopefully you
> meant to say "I may have a short-term *goal* of "study for my chemistry
> exam".

I forgot to mention that I hate chemistry.  I don't want to study for
my chemistry exam.  (That's why it is a short-term AntiGoal.)
However, I must force myself to study because I have a slightly
longer-term Goal of "getting a passing score in chemistry" which is
part of an even longer-term Goal of "graduate with a degree".  Does it
make sense now?

To go one step further, can we label the condition of "a Goal is
forcing me to fulfill an AntiGoal" as an affective state?  Perhaps the
affective label is "diligence", approximately?

-- 
Victory to the Divine Mother!!         after all,
  http://sahajayoga.org                  http://why-compete.org