Dear Ken, Doug and John, et al,
Ken wrote:
…
we could come up with numerous other examples where action was needed and what
we believe would have been a worse situation was averted by those
actions. Some are fairly clear cut; others are the grist for historians.
Agreed; it isn’t a simple model for
most situations of interest. But knowing how deeply self interest is
layered on emotions, we could develop models.
The many explanations of observed behavior
differ by the Observer, who is not able to reliably match the next Observer’s
model. It is our own projections we build into our models. But by
finding ways to develop and test models, we become able to distinguish among
those that work within some validatable boundaries, and those that simply don’t
work.
While doing R&D at Hughes, I sometimes
worked in electronic warfare. That is, EW is the art of listening
electronically to emissions. From those emissions, EW designers are able
to model the behavior of the emitters. But the emitters belong to somebody
who is very interested in who is watching them. A jeep with a radio
bouncing down a jungle trail, compared with a map of the trails in the area,
can be used to predict where the jeep is going. Tracking multiple
vehicles with emitters let the situation be more clearly modeled, and let the
predictions be analyzed, improved, eventually validated. So jeep drivers
have an interest in minimizing their emissions.
Submarines no longer use active sonar, not
EVER. They now listen to outside noises, and use algorithms and databases
to model the observed emissions. You may remember about ten years ago
that a submarine surfaced right into a commercial vessel, drowning
dozens. The commercial vessel must not have been running (no mechanical
sound emitted). It must also not have been radiating radio frequency
emissions. The vessel must have been completely stopped in the water and
quiet on every available emission band.
Radar was once active, sending pings at
regular intervals and measuring distance that way. With the EW advances,
major power militaries learned to detect emissions without their radars,
sonars, and other sensors emitting recognizable pulses that the emitter could
recognize. Sending out pings gives away the position of the radar, the
jeep or the submarine, because the pings are emissions themselves, which give
information about the sensor to the observed targets.
Stealth technology was developed to
improve the defense situation. By not emitting or even reflecting
emissions, stealthy devices can remain unobserved.
The point is this. We can use the
many refined EW techniques to model self interest.
This process can start with things we can
reliably sense, and then construct models of the situation we believe is
indicated by those sensible things. Models that match the evidence
detected by the Observer can be kept, but those models which don’t validate
can be revised, improved and tried again in various situations. Ultimately,
with a lot of work, we can determine which models are valid for which situations.
The usual discovery process is shown below
as adapted to reflect the linguistic mining of messages. The process is
described in much greater detail in my patent, the 7,209,923. Said patent
is attached to this email if you are interested:
To repeat your statement:
…
we could come up with numerous other examples where action was needed and what
we believe would have been a worse situation was averted by those
actions. Some are fairly clear cut; others are the grist for historians.
Yes, we could. So recording those
actions and objects as sensed by listening to the emissions is the way to do
it. The most likely source of those actions and objects are human
Observers. The Observer needs tools to develop the models, to organize
the data, to fully discover whatever is observable, generating a theory that
validly models the actions, the situations before the actions, and the
situations that occur after the actions.
That is the way I see a Self Interest
Ontology being developed. The ‘923 describes how I am doing so with
the USPTO patent database. Even very mechanical documents such as patents
exhibit subjective judgments, by each Observer (e.g., inventor, examiner,
attorney, agent, litigator). The file history of a patent is a document
that is also public, easily accessible, and available on the web.
One example source of information which
is, unfortunately, only in voice emissions, not easily converted to text.
That source is a TV series call “In Treatment” which is also
available on the web. It details stories in handy thirty minute chunks
with only two people 90% of the time. The dialog is direct, honest
psychological treatment of unusually conflicted individuals. The
vocabulary they use, the syntax they use, is of limited scope, and the characters
are deeply developed by the plot.
Also, there are many, many shows
available, for example:
http://btjunkie.org/torrent/In-Treatment-Season-1/4358f915d28d17f71174da3167fb318d1505c96e0f87
That URL will download forty three shows
in one season.
The point is that there are available ways
to gather empirical data, to construct models that describe it in FOL, and to
have Observers discover new linguistic realities that can data mine human self
interest based on the emissions. That would of course have to include the
Observers doing the modeling, because their idiosyncratic actions and objects
have to be nulled out of the model.
JMHO,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Ken Laskey
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012
4:05 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self Interest Ontology: Emotions in
animals
It is easy to point
to examples where intervention seems to cause more problems than we suspect
would have happened by leaving the system to sort itself out. However,
I’m sure we could come up with numerous other examples where action was
needed and what we believe would have been a worse situation was averted by
those actions. Some are fairly clear cut; others are the grist for
historians.
Unfortunately, our
what-if scenarios don’t really tell us whether what in hindsight looks
like success or a disaster would, in fact, have a better outcome if different
action/inaction occurred.
Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kenneth Laskey
MITRE Corporation,
M/S
H305
phone: 703-983-7934
7515 Colshire Drive
fax: 703-983-1379
McLean
VA 22102-7508
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012
6:08 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self Interest Ontology: Emotions in
animals
Dear John,
You wrote:
Things
would have been far better for the Afghan people, Pakistan,
the US,
the Russian people, and the entire world if Reagan and the CIA had done
nothing.
Yes, in generalized form, the
conclusion I draw is that organizations err on the side of doing too much,
especially as suggested by the ideas of Isaiah Berlin as documented by Curtis, and as
supported by the numerous examples which he shows.
So more generally, the consistently
human error is in doing too much
when we think we are in the right. That has held true for so many
examples in history that it can assumed that every organized plurality of
people with a common self interest will eventually go too far if not
stopped.
The notion of checks and balances is
sometimes thought to limit just how far the organization can go. Jefferson was the architect of the American system of
checks and balances. In Brittain, Cromwell hanged the then king for
treason. There was a period of time when England did without a king, but the
upper classes, I am told, wanted to cement their roles as ruling class, and
reinstated the royal line after Cromwell's death. Britain's
political structure of parliament and elections were intended to provide checks
and balances there, I am told by historians.
Dictatorships of all persuasions seem
to appeal to the self interest of the dictator and those few forces that keep
him in power. The word "dictate" from Latin simply means to
state, much like dictation machines in the old technologies of the
fifties. The connotation is that the dictator has the power to make his
statements become real. The rest of the citizens can dictate until the
llamas and camels come home, but there won’t be a reality that
corresponds to their dictations. Syria is the most contemporary
example I can think of.
Democracies spread the base of power
somewhat by letting citizens express their choice through voting within a
limited set of options. That means the self interest of the electorate
has a greater voice. But it doesn’t mean democracies are any less
subject to Isaiah Berlin's
warning. Athens
warred on other city states, forcing their own self interest to be
realized. The North invaded the South in the American civil war to
enforce their economic interests.
So the only concept of which I am
aware that can limit the power of any organization is some kind of well
constructed set of checks and balances, but even that is not sufficient.
It is only a step in the right direction until we can come up with a better way
to limit organizations more effectively.
But there will always be zealous
advocates who persuade organizations to do too much. Sad, but true.
I don’t see a way to stop said organizations from doing too much.
But by modeling self interest, we may be able to learn how to detect, perhaps
even automate the detection, of when the organizations are going too far.
JMHO,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 1:38 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self
Interest Ontology: Emotions in animals
On 1/3/2012 1:58 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
> But the very righteousness that
drove the revolutionaries,
> they felt, justified taking
inhumane steps to force people
> to be in line with their plans,
since they felt their plans
> would bring good. Instead,
their convictions turned out
> to be the cause of their
downfall.
Fundamental principle: never trust
anybody who claims
to know the will of God or anything
else that is too
complex for anybody else to
understand.
> The Sandinistas, for example,
which even Reagan supported.
Reagan also funneled money through
the CIA to support
Osama bin Laden in the fight against
the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan. He even sent
money to the Taliban to
recruit and train more fighters
against the USSR.
That was another example of people
who thought that they
were doing what was right.
Things would have been far
better for the Afghan people, Pakistan, the US, the
Russian people, and the entire world
if Reagan and the
CIA had done nothing.
John
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