RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Processing Model Considerations

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

I'm not sure I'm addressing the topic at hand. 
I want to point out that some problems such as 
security vetting are tangential.  I doubt we 
can do more than aid such systems and even then, 
only by augmenting existing means.  There isn't 
a one sized fits all approach to security.  Markup 
can help but won't in and of itself solve this.

The primary problem of markup is pre-parse, and 
pre-system.  It is the human activity of symbol 
grounding; essentially, given a zebra and a giraffe, 
there is no overlap at that level of naming which 
would cause us to confuse one for the other.  At 
the level of two spheres whose only difference 
is a variation of size of small value, if each 
is observed in isolation from the other, it is 
impossible without prior grounding to makde 
that discrimination.   This sort of categorical 
error occurs daily and may be solved in learning 
systems.

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad97.textures.html

We can create a semiotic markup which essentially 
enables signs to be declared, nested, and categorized. 
But this is only the beginning, creating a tool for 
organizing named sign systems be they concrete, gestural 
or whatever.  XML parsing only enables us to get these 
into forms that are processable; it says nothing about 
the post-parse processes that are to be applied 
to validate categorical processing.   XML Doesn't Care. 
This isn't an XML problem; it is an XML application 
problem.  XML tells you how to mark it up; not what 
the names are, why they are marked, what they "mean".

Our first problem is to create the semiotic markup 
language, then to apply that experimentally.  The 
critical test is to discover how well it helps, hurts, 
or doesn't affect the category learning problem.

There is a lot to be said for the position that 
human mental processes are holonomic, not algorithmic; 
but eventually, a computer model must be the latter 
in its basic models, even if the former in the 
higher models.   One can view this as a polarity 
problem type; it is not solved, simply managed. 

In the problems you pose, this means that given 
filters or controls are applied.   These may be 
emergent in that the filters themselves have to 
be fabricated given a category which has been 
recognized, but not yet understood.   Identity is 
not an inherent quality outside philosophy; in 
a system, it is assigned.   Assignment based 
on uniqueness of a member in a set presupposes 
that one can perform the identification process. 

That is easy until one gets a near boundary 
member where the identity at some level of 
nested sets is easy, but for a process that 
puts that member near a boundary with overlapping 
members, this is harder.  Security systems use 
role based assignments of privileges over data 
and processes and that works reasonably well 
given a vetted process owned by a recognized 
authority.  Recursion can occur (the schrodinger 
cat problem), but that is an identifiable pattern.

So yes this is a process problem in very many 
ways, and not universally solvable (local 
policies prevail and one ends up fielding a 
configurable toolkit) but I assert that the 
solution to this is not in semiotic markup, 
although a symbol-grounding system can help 
implement local policies.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]


Hi Everyone,

First, no, I'm not even close to done with the Wolfram book, but it 
is clear that it is going to take longer than I thought, and given my 
own track record wrt getting back to unfiinished business, I decided 
to stay with the approach of annotating as I go, rather than pushing 
through a first reading to get the gist then going back for depth. 
That said, I can't let other work languish while I'm busy deciding 
whether this book is going to necessitate a change in my thinking or 
our work taken separately or together.

So, as we, in HumanMarkup, get ready to launch into Len's proposed 
experiment with a semiotic processor, I offer this article:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/03/13/processing-model.html

A question I think we need to ask is: Do we need to specify a 
processing order within a semiotic context for HumanMarkup in an a 
priori fashion for any application document using HumanMarkup?

I have long thought that some sort of preflighting of resources for 
any given application-specific xml operations on the web needs to be 
addressed even before or perhaps simultaneous with parser validation 
of a document invoking those operations. Our position on this needs 
to be noodled out before we start thinking about how or whether 
HumanMarkup-based or -supported applications documents SHOULD order 
parsing of applications document-specific operations.

In practical terms, what this means is that, for example, a web 
service being requested by an end-user needs to have all connections 
tested for reliability, security and availability before an 
end-user's HumanMarkup-enhanced personal preferences information is 
passed, and that needs to occur immediately after any single-sign-on 
identity authentication, which takes place first before a connection 
to a service is confirmed. I mention this in concrete terms so that 
we know that we are talking about clearly concrete issues, and not 
just a theoretical experiment. So, we need to cast the experiment so 
that it tells us the answer to these questions, in addition to more 
purely intra-HumanMarkup concerns.