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From: ISCLIMEL@NUSVM.BITNET (Jenny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: so what about plausible reasoning ?
Message-ID: <8706300554.AA22179@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 30-Jun-87 02:40:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8706300554.AA22179
Posted: Tue Jun 30 02:40:44 1987
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As I read articles on plausible reasoning in expert systems, I come to the
conclusion that experts themselves do not exactly work with numbers as they
solve problems. And many of them are not willing to commit themselves into
specifying a figure to signify their belief in a rule. The deductive process
that occurs in their brain can never be replicated by any known plausible
reasoning models. The expert system technology is already a weak one per se,
why introduce further complexity and more bottleneck in the acquisition of
knowledge, knowing fully well that the numbers are probably inconsistent ?
If one obtains two conclusions with numbers indicating some significance,
say 75 % and 80 %, can one say that the conclusion with 80% significance is
the correct conclusion and ignore the other one ? These numbers do not seem
to mean much since they are just beliefs or probabilties.


Lim Eng-Lian
National University of Singapore
-- this opinion is my own and is not influenced by the color of my office