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From: KVQJ@CORNELLA.BITNET
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: common sense
Message-ID: <8607031718.AA14552@ucbjade.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: Wed, 2-Jul-86 20:18:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbjade.8607031718.AA14552
Posted: Wed Jul  2 20:18:00 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Jul-86 23:25:54 EDT
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I have been thinking a lot about the notion of common sense and
its possible implementation into expert systems. Here are my ideas;
I would appreciate your thoughts.
Webster's Dictionary defines common sense as a 'practical knowledge'.
I contend that all knowledge both informal and formal comes from
this 'practical knowledge'.
After all, if one thinks about Physics,Logic,or Chemistry,much of it
makes practical sense in the real world. For example,a truck colliding
with a Honda civic will cause more destruction than 2 Hondas colliding
together. I think that people took this practical knowledge of the world
and developed formal principles.
It is common sense which distiguishes man from machine. If a bum on
the street were to tell you that if you give him $5.00 he will make you
a million dollars in a week, you would generally walk away and ignore him.
If the same man were to input it into a so called intelligent machine,the
machine would not know if he was Rockefeller or an indigent.
My point is this, I think it is intrinically impossible to program
common sense because a computer is not a man. A computer cannot
experience what man can;it can not see or make ubiquitous judgements
that man can. We may be able to program common-sense like rules into
it,but this is not tantamount to real world common sense because real
world common sense is drawn from a 'database' that could never be
matched by a simulated one.
Thank you for listening.
                       sherry marcus kvqj@cornella