Re: Demo: Modelling Cost of Travel Paths Between Towns

"Neo" <neo55592_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:4b45d3ad.0411171216.5586f1dc_at_posting.google.com...
>
> Mary likes John
> Paula likes John
>
> Assuming user already knows John, Mary, Paula and likes, the above is
> the correct way for a user to express/view the two relations, ...

What does it mean to say "[a] user already knows ... likes." This makes no sense to me.

> > > > > In your example, you stored john (a fact) twice.
> > > >
> > > > You call 'john' a fact?????
> > >
> > > Yes, 'john' is a fact. In fact, a, b, c ... are facts.
> >
> > All my arguments to the contrary are here:
> > http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=fact

Saying "John" is a fact is contrary to both common usage and the definition from logic. It seems to me you use the term "fact" to mean what everyone else means by symbol.

> I will accept that 'john' or 'j' may not meet your or Webster's
> definition of a fact, which is irrelevant since representing a thing
> (ie "john like mary", john, 'john', 'j') twice is redundant, typically
> leads to data-dependent refs and limits the flexibility to represent
> things in the future as was the case with yours and Celko's RM
> solutions.

The problem is that this is incompatible with the idea that John is a fact. If each representation can only appear once in the computer, we can't ever mention anything twice, which means we can't express both Mary like John and Paula Likes John. Any attempt to do so is, by your definition, redundant.

Marshall Received on Thu Nov 18 2004 - 06:41:32 CET