Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cyc

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–176 of 176 posts

Re: Cyc

#171

Post by rademaker »

jacquesm wrote: post #110
one_electron wrote: post #10

in my experience, most people dismiss cyc as a failed science experiment. this shouldnt be! after all, many important deep learning concepts have their roots in the 80s, and it is possible that cyc could be revived too.

CYC effectively died the day OpenCYC died. There is no way that an entity that tries to catalogue human knowledge in this way will thrive on a closed set of data, there are only so many people working there. Just like the Encyclopedia Brittanica has found its match in WikiPedia so CYC will find its match in something open. The engine - if the comments here are to be believed as still currently relevant - is a core th…

That is SUMO Ontology (http://ontologyportal.org)! It is open, in GitHub and people can contribute.

Re: Cyc

#172

Post by rademaker »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #12

I immediately recognized the headline even though its been 15 years since I last read up on Cyc. I still think the potential of lambda calculus in knowledge representation and logical deduction is high and under-represented in research. Just theorizing, but I think a large part of the problem is the difficulty in interfacing this knowledge base with manual, human entry. Another pitfall is the difficulty in determinin…

I have been working on that direction with Lean Theorem Prover (https://leanprover.github.io). There is also works using Coq (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-35786-2_...)

Re: Cyc

#173

Post by yters »

inimino wrote: post #168
yters wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that setup the evidence makes the uncomputable partial Oracle the most likely hypothesis, since the space of uncomputable partial oracles is much much larger (infinitely so) than either computable minds or perfect halting oracles.

Well, no. That is the same kind of error as Zeno's paradox. One assigns a prior to a class of hypotheses, and the cardinality of that set does not change the total probability you assign to the entire hypothesis class. If one instead assigns a constant non-zero prior to each individual hypothesis of an infinite class, a grievous error has been committed and inconsistent and paradoxical beliefs can be the only result.

Sounds like then you can just arbitrarily divide up your classes to benefit whatever hypothesis you want, leading to special pleading. I think to remain objective one has to integrate over the entire space of hypothesis instances, using an infinitesimal weighting in the case of infinite spaces.

Re: Cyc

#174

Post by yters »

perl4ever wrote: post #166
yters wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every instance of problem solving I encounter involves conscious intentionality. As an analogy, when I get a drink from the fridge, there is a lot going on in my body to make that happen that I do not consciously control. But, overall it is taking place due to my conscious intentional control. I argue the same is going on in the mind, a lot of subconscious things going on that I do not directly control, but the overa…

That doesn't seem like a good analogy to me, because intrinsically problem solving is about something you don't understand in the first place, whereas reaching for something you do already understand what you are doing. If I use a mechanical grabber aid to reach something, then it isn't figuring out how to do anything. But if I ask Wolfram Alpha the answer to a math problem, it isn't me doing it.

Sure, it depends on what level your intentionality is involved. But, my experience is my intentionality is quite intimately involved with my intellectual processes. I cannot just will 'answer my math problem' and my mind pops out the answer. There is a lot of intentional, mental actions that take place to arrive at an answer.

Re: Cyc

#175

Post by yters »

inimino wrote: post #167
yters wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it is the other way around. If people are truly unbiased whether we are computable or not, then they would give my argument consideration. It is those with a priori computational bias that will not be phased by what I say.

You're right, but people tend to have strong priors one way of the other, often unconsciously. This is one of those classic cases where people with strong, divergent priors will disagree more strongly after seeing the same evidence. So if you want to convince people you'll have to try harder than most to find common ground.

And that's why I'm not concerned with convincing anyone. The proof is in the pudding. If I'm right, I should be able to get results. If not, then my argument doesn't matter.

Re: Cyc

#176

Post by inimino »

yters wrote: post #173
inimino wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no. That is the same kind of error as Zeno's paradox. One assigns a prior to a class of hypotheses, and the cardinality of that set does not change the total probability you assign to the entire hypothesis class. If one instead assigns a constant non-zero prior to each individual hypothesis of an infinite class, a grievous error has been committed and inconsistent and paradoxical beliefs can be the only result.

Sounds like then you can just arbitrarily divide up your classes to benefit whatever hypothesis you want, leading to special pleading. I think to remain objective one has to integrate over the entire space of hypothesis instances, using an infinitesimal weighting in the case of infinite spaces.

> integrate over the entire space of hypothesis instances, using an infinitesimal weighting in the case of infinite spaces.

Agreed.

However, when you write:

> the evidence makes the uncomputable partial Oracle the most likely hypothesis, since the space of uncomputable partial oracles is much much larger

you seem to argue that a hypothesis is more likely because it represents a larger (indeed infinite) space of sub-hypotheses. Reasoning from the cardinality of a set of hypotheses to a degree of belief in the set would in general seem to be unsound.

Post reply on HN