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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: NPR, Godel, Semantic Web
 The semantic web doesn't trip on godel or incompleteness. It trips on authority. No one sensible has said that Prolog-style knowledge bases don't work. They do. They are just expensive to build (to make complete in the sense that all terms have definitions, and that all definitions that need to be closed are), to maintain (hard to keep any system of definitions bounded), and conflicts in authoritative definitions (you say tomato i say tomato) have to be resolved. Then you get to the really expensive part: the logic layer. I expect money to be made there. The problem of the semantic web isn't mathematical; it is operational. "And now what will you pay for the ginzu knife? But wait, there's more!!" We will need a standard that says something about the QOS of the metadata and its handlers. That is why we talked golems last year, just trying to get an understanding of the qualities we need for the software that supports this. Really folks. Rolling back ten years and grabbing yetAnotherNicheFrom the history of compsci isn't a big NEXT STEP (hear the W3C trumpets, see the garlanded hero, the whisperer, the dogs, the children, the triumph). It is just another engineering task. Metadata systems have their uses. They just cost, require domain expertise, and *a common system* for interoperation. Actually, that last bit is ALL I got from the Scientific American article: this is another standards effort to declare another common system to be tied to the web: adding knowledge bases to hypermedia. So, 1985? The crockness of it isn't the doability; it is the need to do it now. Good topic for research, good topic for discussion; perhaps not the initiative by which all other tasks before the W3C et al should be measured or circumscribed. Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 9:49 AM To: Robert C. Lyons; xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: NPR, Godel, Semantic Web At 10:31 AM 5/7/01 -0400, Robert C. Lyons wrote: >For a simple explanation of Godel's Theorem, see > > http://www.nadn.navy.mil/Users/math/meh/godel.html. Thanks! >Here's a site that describes a couple of "common but fallacious >conclusions" that people make from the theorem: > > http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/notebooks/godels-theorem.html Since a lot of what the Semantic Web proposes to do is precisely "deduction from axioms", I suspect these claims don't fall into the "common but fallacious conclusions" area. If anyone knows where they do fall, I'd love to hear it. 
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