[Heartlogic-dev] Re: short-term vs long-term goals

[William L. Jarrold]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 03:49:32PM -0600, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 address@hidden wrote:
> > > There is a correspondance (to some extent):
> > >
> > > unfulfilled    fulfilled
> > > -----------    --------------
> > > goal           happy
> > > anti-goal      sad
> > > no goal        indifferent
> >
> > Sure.
>
> Since we seem to be on the same page here,

Sort of.  I still feel fuzzy about what an anti-goal is.

But I am *very* glad that you are going slow here and writing
bite-sized emails.  I've often found that what seems obvious and
true to me is not so obvious and true to another.  By the time
I've slogged through the whole thing with them, the original
idea is often refined quite a bit.  Thus, I think it is good
that you are starting with what seems obvious to you (e.g. I
refer to your use of "obvious" below).

> I would like to discuss
> another issue which is relevant to goals.

Okay.

>
> Hopefully there won't be any big surprises here.  I'm just trying
> to widen the bridge.

Okay.

Well, I still would think it nice if we had a reference document.
E.g. I forget the original source material for goal, anti-goal,
no-goal.  I like definitions and lots of examples....How's this:

Goal, AntiGoal, and NoGoal are *relationships* that agents have
with respect to certain potential states of affairs.

For example, through (most of?) 2003....

(1) The relation between Howard Dean and "Howard Dean wins Democratic
Nomination" is the Goal relation.

(2) The relation between Howard Dean and "Wesley Clark wins Democratic
Nomination" is the AntiGoal relation.

(3) The relation between an infant and "Wesley Clark wins Democratic
Nomination" is the NoGoal relation.  (This is true bc infants
have no cognitive capacity for an understanding of politics).

...am I groking these guys correctly?

>
> Most people have a long-term goal like: "I want to be successful in my
> life."

Or, more precisely...

For each person P, the relationship between P and "P is successful" is the
goal relation.

...right?  (Btw, KM has "Self" which is similar to Java's "this")

> or a long-term no-goal like: "I have no grand plan for what I
> want to do with my life."

Or, more precisely....

For each person P, the relation between P and "P has a grand plan for
P's life." is the NoGoal relation.

> Can we associate a long-term anti-goal with
> a suicidal outlook?  I think so, or at least such a long-term anti-goal
> would be highly dysfunctional.

You said can we associate *a* long-term anti-goal with a
suicidal outlook.  There exist many long term anti-goals that can
be associated with a suicidal outlook.  Sure, one example of such a long
term anti-goal is "Fred has ``Fred lives a long life'' as an anti-goal."
Clearly, Fred has a suicidal outlook.  But there are also long term
anti-goals that are the opposite of suicidal.  For example "Bob has ``Bob
dies early''" as an anti-goal.

>
> Short-term goals, on the other hand, are more diverse.  For example, I
> may have a short-term anti-goal of "study for my chemistry exam"

Okay, now I'm baffled.  Hopefully this is merely a typo.  Hopefully you
meant to say "I may have a short-term *goal* of "study for my chemistry
exam".

> because I want to achieve a slightly longer-term goal of "getting a
> passing score."  I hope this is pretty obvious.

Good.  I like it when you have a high ratio of obvious to non-obvious
stuff.

As you've probably noticed, I try to put a lot of obvious stuff
in what I say.  It acts as a continually recurring "parity check."
I've found I've been misunderstood *so many times* in high fallutin'
conversations about ontology or some other technical thing, that
I now move very slowly in conversation.

>
> Usually when I talk about goals, I am implicitly talking about
> short-term goals.  I usually assume "normal" or common-sense
> long-term goals.

Okay.  When all is said and done, as an ontologist, I like to have
operational definitions of "short-term" versus "long-term" (tho these
definitions must, of course, vary as context changes).  A long term
goal for a hyperactive 5 year old might have a lifespan of 1 day. Where a
long term goal for a wise old man might have a lifespan that is 2-3 orders
of magnitude longer in duration....However, my sense is that it is
premature for me to ask for an operational definition of "long term"
versus "short term".

And we'll also eventually need to not sweep the definition of "normal or
common-sense long-term goals" under the rug.  But again, keep making your
point, and we'll fix the stuff under the rug later.

>
> --
> A new cognitive theory of emotion, http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/aleader
>