Turning now to my favorite hobby horse: It is not enough to know how to build bridges between universes of discourse, or how to anchor the endpoints of such bridges on solid ontological foundations. It is also necessary to build many, many instances of bridges, and to maintain them (when possible) across the ontological equivalent of hurricanes, earthquakes, and all other kinds of change. That would entail creating the economic foundations of bridge-building, bridge-maintaining, and bridge-anchoring enterprises. Such a knowledge-ecosystem would reward those whose opinions about what's what are measurably and publicly the most reliable for the most cases.
Could you illustrate this exciting argument with some specifics – domains of discourse, economic foundations, objectives, technical solutions?
Bruce Schuman
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Newcomb
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 8:56 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ontolog-forum] What is ontological malpractice? (Was: Re: More by and about Turing)
On 07/19/2015 07:33 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> In *every* branch of science, engineering, medicine, law, etc., the
> work by professionals in that field is the *gold standard*.
At the risk of generating more heat than light, I wish to point out that in every branch of information technology, there is vacuum where there should be something resembling the accounting industry's "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices" and certifications, or the many non-proprietary certifications for practitioners in the healthcare field, or the licensure processes required by many states to practice medicine, law, and engineering.
In the context of all this public-interest vacuum, it is not hard to explain the parlous state of the security of critical IT infrastructure, or the general engineering uproar we call the "World Wide Web", or the absurdity of consequential government webservers that won't accept any "secure" protocol other than one known to be insecure (TLS 1.0), not to mention the other craziness that all of us know, and that each of us may know.
In cases perhaps dearer to the hearts of readers of this mailing list, the lack of accountability for IT "professionals" can also explain the lack of economic and technical infrastructure whereby experts in multiple universes of discourse can work as tour guides and bridge-builders among them.
Turning now to my favorite hobby horse: It is not enough to know how to build bridges between universes of discourse, or how to anchor the endpoints of such bridges on solid ontological foundations. It is also necessary to build many, many instances of bridges, and to maintain them (when possible) across the ontological equivalent of hurricanes, earthquakes, and all other kinds of change. That would entail creating the economic foundations of bridge-building, bridge-maintaining, and bridge-anchoring enterprises. Such a knowledge-ecosystem would reward those whose opinions about what's what are measurably and publicly the most reliable for the most cases.
Individual multi-domain experts would, in fact, be playing fiduciary roles. Such a scenario requires that a definition of malpractice be defined and maintained, so that the finger of blame can be pointed consequentially, whenever things go awry in some consequential fashion.
It is up to ontologists to figure out how to make that meaningfully possible. Nobody else has a prayer of doing it, and it's hard for me to imagine a more worthwhile endeavor. It's also, obviously, a major project with major risks, and one that would be disruptive whether or not it succeeded. Not for the faint of heart!
Steve Newcomb
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