
Open Cyc (open source common sense)  - fogus
http://opencyc.org/
======
elblanco
The Cyc project, while fascinating, is basically a serious attempt at a
general purpose semantic graph. It's been in the works since the early 80's.

And you know what? It should act as a warning to anybody thinking seriously
about building large-scale semantic systems like the semantic web.

Cyc is pretty much useless (or at least the utility it provides is not exactly
setting the world on fire). Until somebody can figure out how to employ an
already very mature semantic graph like Cyc and do something(s) truly useful
with it, don't waste anybody's time advocating the semantic web.

More imporantly, Cyc is a highly controlled semantic graph, with all of its
information carefully curated. Imagine how terrible the results of semantic
inference engines will be in the wild-west of the web!

~~~
gibsonf1
I looked at CYC a few years ago and found the underlying epistemology of the
effort flawed in such a way that the result is a mass of contradictions in the
project. Their solution to that was to try to zoom in on tiny areas to avoid
the contradictions with other areas - but in the factual world, there really
aren't these contradictions. The other clear sign of serious trouble was their
explanation that adding definitions to the system was taking longer and longer
- if anything it should accelerate if their underlying structure was good.

I think the CYC project should be used only as an example of spending a huge
amount of time and money on a flawed structure as opposed to a condemnation of
semantic approaches.

~~~
stcredzero
_but in the factual world, there really aren't these contradictions._

The internal mental furnishings of most human beings are seemingly full of
these, however.

~~~
gibsonf1
This is why a factual digital ontology corresponding to the real world would
be so valuable as opposed to us fallible human beings.

~~~
stcredzero
Really? So why do so many human beings get paid 10's of thousands of dollars a
years to exercise theirs, while it's relatively few digital general-purpose
"digital ontologies? that are worth paying for.

(The highly contextual ones do pretty well in the market, though.)

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goodside
Before you try to encapsulate common sense in a collection of obvious facts,
you might want to start with a simpler task: Collect a database of elementary-
school math problems and their associated answers until the database is so
large that it coalesces into a fully functioning CPU.

If this seems like a bad idea, it's because it is.

~~~
thesz
You wouldn't believe it, but principal Cyc developer Douglas Lenat started
almost exactly with that. Eurisco, a predecessor to Cyc, was a deduction
machine that operated with minimal human intervention over minimal sets of
number theory axioms. It rediscovered many theorems on its own.

Douglas Lenat: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat> Eurisco:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurisko>

~~~
giardini
Lenat never released the source code to Eurisko. There has always been a
question as to how much he did and how much the program did.

Ideas that Lenat promoted with Eurisko and Cyc have made him successful by
most criteria. But it would be better had he published a proven finished
product, including it's innards. My feeling is that, in publishing, one should
show the code or it never happened.

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some1else
Do I understand this correctly? OpenCYC now offers the entire ontology AND
assertions for free? As I understand, until recently, OpenCYC only featured a
subset of the entire CYC database, just the ontology without assertions. Can
someone please explain this in greater detail?

~~~
SlipperySlope
Easy. The OpenCyc ontology includes all the simple terms (Cyc constants) and
composed terms (Cyc non-atomic reified terms) that full Cyc does. OpenCyc
includes that subset of of full Cyc assertions which match the definitional
statement types of OWL (the web ontology language). E.g. the class cyc:Action
is a sub class of cyc:Event which is a sub class of owl:Thing. What is left
out of OpenCyc, but included in ResearchCyc (full Cyc) are the ordinary
assertions that relate concepts, e.g. cyc:DougLenat cyc:president cyc:Cycorp.

OpenCyc's purpose is to spread the use of the Cyc ontology in the Semantic web
and Linked Data.

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gojomo
When they say, "Release 2.0 of OpenCyc includes... English strings (a
canonical one and alternatives) corresponding to each concept term, to assist
with search and display", do they mean strings like the sentence at their
example URL...

<http://sw.opencyc.org/2009/04/07/concept/en/Game>

"A specialization of DevisedStructuredActivity. Each instance of Game is an
abstraction of a game that is played according to a semi-rigid set of rules.
Each instance includes both the rules (see GameRulesFn) and a specification of
any physical components required for play (instances of GameBoard, Ball,
etc.). Neither Events of playing games (instances of PlayingAGame) nor any
physical components required for play (e.g. GameBoards) are instances of
Game."

Or do they mean something else, and if so, how would I find that something
else (what formats/names) in their downloads?

~~~
iLikeCyc
Both. If you View Source of the page web page you site, you'll see there's
really RDF behind it. The long string you quote is a Comment that's associated
with each concept. But there are also Label and PrettyString clauses that
provide a primary string associated with this concept ("game") and other
strings (here, only "games"), but see
<http://sw.opencyc.org/2009/04/07/concept/en/Dog> for some better examples of
alternative strings.

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jimcog
(non-computer tech here) Critical points taken, but what about the value to
the Cleveland Clinic's cardiology dept.? See article by Clinic's IT semantic
web project staff at
[http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/ClevelandClin...](http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/ClevelandClinic/)
Isn't that the utiility of a deductive reasoning engine - taking disparate
data overwhelming to humans - and cranking through it as queried in human
language terms? I'm just asking.

