RE: [Heartlogic-dev] new idea (fwd)

[William L. Jarrold]

On Thu, 5 May 2005, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 18:23 -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > Cyc believes that "Vienna is wet." is true.
> >
> > Cyc believs this assertion because it concluded it based on an
> > inference.  The following facts and rules caused Cyc to conclude
> > "Vienna is wet."
> >
> > (1) "Rivers are a kind of water."
> > (2) "If water touches x then x is wet."
> > (3) "The Danube is a river."
> > (4) "The Danube runs through Vienna."
> > (5) "If a river runs through a region it touches that region."
> >
> > (Note that these are represented in Cyc not in English but rather in a
> > logical computer language.  We have translated these facts and rules
> > into English to make them easy for you to understand.)
> >
> > ......END OF FEEDBACK TO USER PAGE MOCK UP.....
>
> As I mentioned in another email, it seems like such detailed feedback
> will have to wait until we are actually using Cyc.
>
> What kind of "feedback to user" can we actually do now with minimum
> effort?

Not much.

But I don't think the detailed feedback is a big issue.

Our goal is simply this:

Get a few items on on the web.  I am talking between 10 and 100.  These 
will be hand generated.  These will help us debug interface and see what
kind of data we can get from average humans working for free.  This is 
the kind of thing I mean by a pilot study.

At that point we can make a decision about what direction to go next.
E.g. whether or not to put a real AI behind the item generator OR
whether or not to throw ourselves into the "Turing Challenge" idea OR 
what.

Usually, anything novel one tries is 10 to 100 times harder than one
thinks it is starting out.  I had a very smart prof tell me, for your
master's thesis you should propose an idea that you think you can execute 
in an afternoon.  For your dissertation, propose something you think you
can execute in a day.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.

And I may be preaching to the converted already since we've been over this 
before, I just want to make sure that I reply to each and every email in 
my inbox in recent memory.

Bill


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