dihelson,
Some instances where Hal asks if one thing is related to another are not simple black and white answers. The user document that comes with the v1.0 download discusses some of this as does some of the older posts here on the forum.
The user needs to really understand what "related topics" means to Hal. It is best illustrated by example. Here are some related words: beer and ale; ale and lager; malt and lager; beer and alcohol, etc. Seems obvious until Hal asks if two "sort of related" words are related and the user really has to sit there and think about it. No one should ever tell Hal beer and water are related just because beer has water in it. Water is too general and related to just about everything.
When Hal asks if two words are "related topics" or the "same topic" it means the same thing. As an example, Hal just wants to know if you and he are discussing birds should he stay on the topic of birds if you start talking about doves.
Related words are words that are clearly topic related and non-ambiguous. Don't tell Hal words are related if the relationship is abstract or open to interpretation. Act like you are talking to a four year old. A four year old doesn't understand topics in the abstract, neither does Hal.
Examples of groups of related words are:
1) GOOD --> beer, wine, alcohol, lager, ale, malt, Budweiser.
BAD ---> beer, water, head, fizz, German.
2) GOOD --> bird, dove, vulture, tweety, feather.
BAD ---> bird, down, sky, egg.
The "bad" groups of words above have a weak relatedness to each other either because those words can be related generally to too many other things or the relatedness is not very strong or clear. If someone was talking about the sky would a reasonable person think the topic was "birds"? German beer is good, but the Germans do a lot of things besides make beer. Birds lay eggs, but so many other species have eggs including fish, insects, etc.
Just use your best judgment. When in doubt tell Hal the words aren't related. In the grand scheme of things it won't make very much difference. There are enough strongly related words in English for Hal to choose from.
Your example:
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User: Bob is a good teacher
Hal: The topics Bob and Good are related?
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These two topics are too loosely related. Think of it this way, if you were talking about "good" things would you want Hal to start talking about *anything* in the world that is good? There are thousands of things that are good besides "Bob".
Your other example:
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Sometimes, when I am talking about some things I LIKE, for example:
User: I like a good cup of coffee
Hal: Liszt was a great pianist
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This response may or may not be a result of the XTF Brain topic function. Most likely it is just a symptom of Hal's loose pattern matching method. If Hal can't find a response in his brain that has a strong relation to the user's input he will just pick something sort of close or sometimes completely off target. In your example Hal may not known anything yet about coffee so he answers the best he can.
Here is some more general background on how the XTF Brain works that may be helpful:
www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1131Here's another hint. When you talk to the XTF Brain type this in Hal's user window: <dbtopicon>
As you will see the current topic from Hal's perspective will be displayed along with his responses. Type <dbtopicoff> to turn off this feature. Leaving the feature on will not effect Hal's behavior or learning ability. It is just one of several debugging tools I added to the XTF Brain.
Have fun,
=vonsmith=