| … | … | @@ -2,10 +2,42 @@ Evidence |
| 2 | 2 | ======== |
| 3 | 3 | A primary intellectual activity is the gathering of evidence to |
| 4 | 4 | determine the nature and structure of things. It is closely related to |
| 5 | | the task of discrerning similarity, and of reasoni9ng by analogy. |
| 5 | the task of discrerning similarity, and of reasoning by analogy. |
| 6 | 6 | This git repo is a rumination of these tasks, plus an attempt to express |
| 7 | 7 | these ideas as functional code, expressed as OpenCog [Atomese](https://wiki.opencog.org/w/Atomese). |
| 8 | 8 | |
| 9 | Overview |
| 10 | -------- |
| 11 | The process of evidence-gathering and stitching together a story is |
| 12 | used everywhere in human undertakings: examples include journalism, to |
| 13 | put together a news story; jury trials, to determine guilt or innocence; |
| 14 | scientific investigation, to understand the structure of nature. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | An example from biology is whole-genome sequencing: stitching |
| 17 | together snippets of genetic sequences, obtained from PCR, into a whole. |
| 18 | Unlike journalism, jury trials or scientific investigation, genome |
| 19 | sequencing can be machine-automated. It is, however, extremely domain |
| 20 | specific: it can only be used for genetics. It is not extensible to |
| 21 | other domains. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | The goal of the present project is to explore the foundations of |
| 24 | evidence gathering and the weaving together of (coherent) stories, |
| 25 | and to expose this foundation so that it is amenable to algorithmic |
| 26 | processing. To describe the process of construction sufficiently well, |
| 27 | that it can be applied to arbitrary domains and situations. And not just |
| 28 | philosophically or mathematically, but expressed as software that can |
| 29 | actually do "useful things" that "people want". |
| 30 | |
| 31 | The project here is a mash-up of theory and experiment, of philosophy |
| 32 | math and code. The terminology will bounce between abstract concepts and |
| 33 | low-level code. Apologies in advance if it veers off into the opaque. |
| 34 | The topic is difficult. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Genealogy |
| 37 | --------- |
| 38 | A concrete example is in order, one that sits part-way between |
| 39 | abstraction and algorithmic directness. |
| 40 | |
| 9 | 41 | Status |
| 10 | 42 | ------ |
| 11 | 43 | Version 0.0.0. Nothing yet. |