Open Heart Logic (was Re: [Aleader-dev] Open Heart)

[Joshua N Pritikin]

[This is a quick overview of design issues which I
wrote up over the last 1-2 days.]

I am ready to get started, but there are some important
design decisions which should get resolved at the beginning.
Your opinion is needed because I am relatively weak in
statistical inference and ontological engineering.

I played with Open Mind (Common Sense).  I also looked at
Mindpixel.  Technically, these kind of sites are really
easy to implement (assuming we don't need natural language
parsing).  I bet I can do the basic stuff in 2-5 months.

Entering knowledge in Open Mind is somewhat boring.  It is
somewhat more fun to compare my entries with related knowledge
which other people have entered.  In section 4.1.5 of your
thesis, you mention something about this in "assignment of
participants to conditions" (p. 71).  I do not completely
understand the issues.  Even if we try to test people
individually, I am skeptical that we can prevent people
from seeing each others' question/answers.

In other words, what is our statistical methodology?

Can we assume a single methodology or are many different
statistical approaches possible?

What I imagine is that we'll ask a question like:

  Tracy wants a banana.
  Mummy gives Tracy an apple.
  ->
  Tracy is sad because she wants a banana.

  Believable?  (Yes) (Somewhat) (Not really) (No)

Then we'll show the user stats about how many people voted
for each evaluation, adjusting for ablation.  (?)

What other testing formats do we want to accomadate?
A good prediction about this can save us redesign later.

I think we can avoid running the computer model in real-time.
All the questions and predicted answers can be computed and
translated to English by a nightly cron job.

We can automatically notify users via email when the model's
opinion changes vs. their opinion.  Will we allow people
to change their answers?  Should we keep record of all
answers (old & new)?

I want to include multiple KR models, but it would be cool
if there was maximum compatibility between the models.  For
example, my pronoun-desirability questions should be
a compatible extension of your simple desirability.
On the other hand, I want the KR interface as separate as
possible from the web stuff so that we can theoretically
plug-in something unique like ThoughtTreasure without
architectural indigestion.

I anticipate that our database will grow rather slowly
compared to Open Mind since we are much more vigilant
about the quality of our information.  One side benefit is
that we probably don't have to worry about getting hosted on
a super powerful computer.

Once we have something basic working then we will be able
to publish an article such as "The [Open] Heart Logic
Initiative" with a call-for-participation.

-- 
A new cognitive theory of emotion, http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/aleader