John - (01)
On Jul 11, 2012, at 5:26 PM, John F Sowa wrote: (02)
> I discussed these issues in my 1984 book, my 2000 book, and numerous
> papers about how to map language to and from logic. And the answer
> about paradoxes is that you fix them. Database administrators have
> probably faced more such examples than philosophers have dreamed of.
> They sometimes make mistakes -- called bugs. And they fix them. (03)
I think I disagree... I would argue that what database administrators
actually do is continually make up "new" names—often in the form of
homonyms—since there's no good mechanism to know what's already there. (04)
The basic situation which I have only seen get worse since 1980 is
that people needing "meaningful names" (meaningful to whom & for how
long?) simply make up new ones on the fly. (05)
My standard example being an insurance company with 70+ names for the
concept "policy number"... in 1980. The standard retort on the 70
number is: "Well... they must not have been looking very hard." (06)
Going into SemanticWeb—being suckered by the "semantic" label—I had
hopes there would be something to help with this persistent semantic
sprawl. I have been disappointed. (07)
Maybe bigdata@CSAIL will address it? (08)
___________________
David Eddy
deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (09)
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