robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (04/20/84)
References: One point of view seems to have been neglected in this discussion. Suppose we build programs smart enough to "realize" that 'Ohio and Indiana' really means 'Ohio <inclusive or> Indiana'. Then what happens to the poor user who really means 'Ohio AND Indiana'?? Suppose the original poor user in this story had been trying to weed out duplicate accounts? It seems to me that the best you can do is: (a) Make a semantic decision based upon a much larger context of what the user is doing, or: (b) Cath the ambiguity and ask the user to clarify. We can deduce from the original story that many users will become furious if asked to clarify, by the way. - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) allegra!eosp1!robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison princeton!eosp1!robison