[HN Gopher] Ontology Is Overrated - Categories, Links, and Tags ...
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       Ontology Is Overrated - Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2025-03-09 19:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
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       | jmugan wrote:
       | I've finally come around to this way of thinking for two reasons.
       | 1. Our concepts seem to overlap too much to ever explicitly lay
       | them all out like a periodic table. 2. Our concepts seem to be
       | too situationally dependent to ever be defined in a concrete way.
        
       | MPSimmons wrote:
       | I work with someone who is obsessed with ontology, and it can be
       | exhausting to discuss naming schemes, categories, etc at length.
       | I do think there is a place for it, and having also lived in
       | worlds where there was no appreciable consideration for how
       | things are named and categorized and organized, I appreciate that
       | he cares as much as he does.
       | 
       | I mostly rubber duck and let him build castles in the sky which
       | we'll probably never reach, or which will be overcome by events,
       | but it's not the worst way for someone to spend their time. I'm
       | not sure it's always productive, but I don't think it's harmful.
        
       | kelseyfrog wrote:
       | Explicit ontology construction is overused and implicit ontology
       | construction is under-recognized.
       | 
       | What made ontology click for me was that OOP is explicit ontology
       | construction. Carving the world into similar types of things so
       | we can use words to talk about referants is implicit ontology
       | construction. The linguistic world is not isomorphic to the
       | physical world but it has enough utility that we find it useful
       | to confuse the map and territory.
       | 
       | This confusion is one of the greatest sources of human conflict.
        
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