[ruby-talk:14372] Re: SV: Re: how change instances class

On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 01:36:16PM +0900, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
> > Let me give an example of a (maybe) natural class-change operation, in
> human
> > dialog context: (This is purely fictional. I include it only in case that
> > someone might be interested)
> >
> > Language input .......Human Language Interpreter does:
> > I see something => instance of Something
> > It is a person   => change class of the instance to Human
> > It is a woman     => mix-in Female
> > No, it is a man => un-mix Female and mix-in Male
> > He looks Asian => mix in Asian
> > He is smiling     => indicate that smile is active
> > It is Haruki Murakami! => check if there is merge viloations, if not then
> > merge the instance into the Haruki Murakami instance, which does already
> > exist in the knowledge bank.
> >
> > Is the smiling person an author? => Yes. And a famous one too. [references
> > to the mentioned person are changed to Haruki Murakami instance,
> > which has an Author mix-in]
> >
> > Is Haruki Murakami smiling? => Yes, he is smiling. [information merged
> > from the temporary instance into the Haruki instance]
> >
> > Does Haruki Murakami exist? => Yes, [in the knowledge base, he is
> > represented by an instance of subclass of Something]
> >
> 
> I find this example fascinating. It does sound difficult to implement,
> though...
I am a newbie in matters like this so maybe I have it wrong but... it sounds like we already have this. Namely, I think that this is analogous to having an instantiated object whose type we don't know. i.e.

I see something
	the object already exists and now we are going to find its type

It is a person
	we have retrieved some information about its type. Perhaps by a person? method?

It is a woman
	we ran object.woman? and it returned true.

No, it is a man
	someone needs to fix the woman? method. Somehow or other we found out it was actually of type Man.

and so on...