WildThings? (WildIdeas@TDWG17)

Thing1:Embrace MultiplePossibleWorldsThing2:Abandon Techno-ligion

BertramLudäscher

Sothereisonly1possibleworld?• “…buildthe backbone,buildthe consensustaxonomy,…”– Whatifonesize/solutiondoesn’tfitall?– Canwereasonwithmultiplepossible

worlds?

2

Sothereisonly1possibleworld?

• Ifyoubelievewhatyouhear,thereonlyseemstobeonepossiblegovernmentcoalitionafterthe2017Germanparliamentaryelections:

• Jamaica!– CDU+FDP +Grüne

3

Notsofast:Thereare31possibleworlds!

4

Only5logicrulesneededtoencodeallthesemantics!

1-linertocountpossibleworlds:31

…still16worldswhenexcluding “GroKo”coalitions(=GreatCoalitionofCDU&SPD)

5

AbandonTechno-ligion:Greatideasaresimple;frozenaccidentsaren’t…

• Heliocentricmodel• Naturalselection• StructureofDNA• Geneticcode• Relativity• …• LogicF =A |F/\F |-F |(exx)F

6

vs

Theevolutionoflanguage-- PhilWadler

7

The Evolution of Language

2x (Descartes)

�x. 2x (Church)

(LAMBDA (X) (* 2 X)) (McCarthy)

<?xml version="1.0"?><LAMBDA-TERM>

<VAR-LIST><VAR>X</VAR>

</VAR-LIST><EXPR>

<APPLICATION><EXPR><CONST>*</CONST></EXPR><ARGUMENT-LIST>

<EXPR><CONST>2</CONST></EXPR><EXPR><VAR>X</VAR></EXPR>

</ARGUMENT-LIST></APPLICATION>

</EXPR></LAMBDA-TERM>

(W3C)

1

Commandments Suggestions• MakeThinking &Logic GreatAgain:– Putmeaning backintosemantics:

• Don’tbeafraidtousenaturallanguage(English,French,...)• Agreetodisagreeandwriteaprogramorquery!• ASP(answersetprogramming)formultiplepossibleworlds.

• AbandonTechno-ligion:– Pay$1intopiggybankforeachuseofXML,RDF(S),SPARQL,OWL,JSON,ASP (whoops!)...machine-readable,...

– Topple yourtechnology(e.g.sem-web)stack• …and play technologygolf!(e.g.writeaquery…)

8

References• Thing1:EmbraceMultiplePossibleWorlds

– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_set_programming– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world– github.com/EulerProject/EulerX– github.com/EulerProject/ASP-examples/tree/master/jamaica

• Thing2:AbandonTechno-ligion– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web_Stack– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic– Theevolutionoflanguage(PhilipWadler)

• homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/language.pdf– TechnologyGolf:

• Ifyoucan’tagreeonameaning/questioninnaturallanguage,writeaminimalprogram/query toexplorethealternatives!

• TechnologygolfislikeRegEx golf(xkcd.com/1313)orcodegolf(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf ):findtheshortest,simplestexpressiontosolvethegivenproblem

• Simple&powerful(example):www.sqlite.org

9