RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Re: [topicmaps-comment] Re: on the Manhattan project for the Knowledge Sciences

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

I agree with most of what you say, Len, but I do think Paul's 
initiative can be a fruitful parallel effort, and since it is aimed 
at a five-year time frame, is likely to evolve over time, as these 
efforts always do. The characterization of a "Manhattan Project" 
style effort, I take to as a measure of itsintended importance and 
comprehensiveness, or as comprehensive as it can be, given the 
current context. The importance I agree with, and have written about, 
and discovered that the media, at least the tech media, is just not 
interested, and so I have desisted. (I will confess to not 
understanding when people refuse to acknowledge that a group has 
stated its intention to simply outright murder them, but I'm not 
going to waste my time trying to break through that crust of denial. 
I mean no offense to anyone who simply thinks that this is the wrong 
audience for such messages, I just disagree. We all die just as dead 
as the next innocent.)

In essence, all of the efforts to which this thread has been posted, 
contain parts of a solution that will, I think, of necessity be both 
less tightly coupled and comprehensive as perhaps Paul thinks 
necessary and less loosely coupled than Len thinks necessary.

For my $.02 about the overall context of these efforts, I see 
HumanMarkup as the glue that holds together the human-centered 
informational matrix within computing, and TopicMaps as the glue that 
holds together the overall matrix of informational resources, which 
is how I happen to think of Knowledge Management/Theory in practical 
terms. Both have clear commercial applications which I assume will 
not be noticed until someone starts using them in a successful 
manner--something I hope to encourage as well as the not-for-profit 
aspects.

Since this thread has concerned an outreach for participation in 
Paul's effort initially, I would also like to add that I have been 
hoping to develop interest within the HumanMarkup community for a 
closer tie to and related effort for the combined area of TopicMaps 
and RDF, which in my view is required for utilitarian purposes for 
getting the resources HumanMarkup applications, such as you and Paul 
and David, and I and others have envisioned, need aligned and quickly 
available, in the Semantic Web manner, so to speak. My emphasis is on 
the quick and easy aspect for such purposes as validating cultural 
practices in terms of tracking how accurate any particular cultural 
description is. I'm a lot less interested in developing inferential 
systems based on that. Getting the related information together so 
that it can be correlated and analyzed, however an application author 
cares to analyze it, is what is important to me.

That also means that I will get the kind of access I need to such 
resources to develop semi-automatic behavior of human simulations of 
characters, individuals, agents from a particular culture or 
sub-culture.

Ciao,
Rex

At 9:03 AM -0500 6/3/02, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Human Markup is focused on enablers or observables.  Not inferencing.
>This is critical and key.   A real time system for analyzing the
>observables in order to make recommendations to analysts and policy
>makers is not beyond the scope of applications of HumanML.  It is
>beyond the scope of the markup itself.
>
>A stratified policy system is not unlike the kind of policy analysis
>scenario simulations that have been used for some decades now and
>have even been topics of televised programs on PBS (Arthur Miller
>hosted these as I recall).   Factors of human indifference, different
>focus, different agendas, were surfaced by the questions the host
>mediator posed during the debate.  Note the criticality of a mediator
>trained to change the problem under observation to enlighten the
>participants to the fundamental differences in their viewpoints.
>Note also that they did not make decisions; they evolved a
>consensus on a recommendation that was then forwarded to a human
>empowered politically to make a decision: the commander in chief.
>This works in accordance with the highest principle of our
>philosophy of republican government:  of the people, by the
>people for the people.  Leaving people out of the intelligence
>equation is to abandon all common sense and much of common decency.
>
>To repeat a saying from olden AI days, the principle of rationality
>is a weak predictor of human behavior.  Yet it is the over reliance
>of depending on a common definition of "rational" that is weak.  To
>the terrorist who developed in a refugee camp, a world view of
>western domination and corruption, the act of flying an airliner
>into a building is rational.  It represents an exchange of value
>for effect; life for notification.   While of interest to delve
>into the deeper meaning of that notification, this will not prevent
>the act itself.  To do this, the individuals with that definition
>of rationality, with the means to act, and the acts that prepare
>for an act must be identified.   The concept that regardless of
>the internal motivation, the pattern of behaviors that precede
>an act of a declared type is the working definition of emergence
>is the behaviorist view.   This view is sufficient to enable
>public safety systems to work in concert to defend against such
>acts.
>
>There is no perfect security.  Just assessments of risks and
>costs of managing these risks.
>
>The costs of HumanMarkup beyond the tool costs are the direct
>costs of using analysts from different fields to provide information
>into a common framework of markup declarations such that *different
>computational approaches (including biological models)* can be applied
>to real time and near real time information.   The basic problem
>that our technology must solve in the domains of defense are asset
>management, asset dispatch, post-hoc analysis, and identification
>of pre-call for service events that may in fact, predict emergence
>of a call for service.
>
>We don't yet need a Manhattan Project.   We must very quickly and
>somewhat loosely couple existing systems to enable better use of
>existing assets.   Then and only then should we be looking to
>more exotic or emerging systems to strenghthen that capability.
>
>The single best move will be to enable and train the neighborhood
>watch systems.  Human intelligence is the only real intelligence
>at our disposal.   Better enabling it must be the goal of any
>program or project attempting to add to the list of solutions for
>our current problems.
>
>len


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