Fuzzy logic sucks.
While watching Jeopardy the other night, I walked into the room just in time to hear an answer ("What is...?") that involved a misspelling, "Pensylvania," in the U.S. constitution. Huh? Unfortunately, I hadn't heard the "answer" but since it involved the constitution, I wanted to know the entire fact: a misspelling in our founding document? This is exactly why I watch Jeopardy.
I immediately flipped to Google and searched on "Pensylvania" and was rewarded with ten-thousand hits regarding "Pennsylvania." Google assumed that *I* had misspelled the state name and wanted to help me out by correcting me. Not helpful. But this is the basis for fuzzy logic: broaden the requestor's search until it becomes logical. Make it "fuzzy.
So, I enclosed my search object in quotes (which, at one time, meant black-and-white "literal"). No difference. I tried several iterations and only received many, many pages of sites regarding wonderful Pennsylvania's tourism, government, history and on and on and on.
I was a programmer for 30 years, beginning before the invention of the Personal Computer. I specialized in database programming where searches are key, not just within the code I was writing but in the creation and debugging process itself. I always prided myself in my ability to fashion the succinct, symbolic queries necessary to yield the exact result (logical or not) I needed without extraneous "hits." You've got to be a geek to understand this logic. And I was born a geek.
What finally worked for the Jeopardy answer was a search on "constitution" and "misspelling" ("Pensylvania" was just getting in the way, it seems.) and I got to read about all the mistakes that went into our country's most famous document. (There's more than one!) But I was pissed that I had to trick the search engine into giving me what I had clearly stated the first time around. It wasn't this way in the early days of the Internet and I like to think I know what I'm doing. So, how does one search for the really esoteric stuff? Beats me.
And then tonight, I read about a man charged with a crime even though he was attempting, in good faith, to save a wild animal's life. I Googled "mens rea," a legal term meaning "a guilty mind," which is necessary for the filing of most criminal charges. And what did my query produce? A million hits for "Men's Reading Glasses." I give up.
Fuzzy logic sucks.
Perhaps your FPs are more corporeal. So, What's Your Flagrant Predicament tonight? (And don't even begin to tell me it's worse than mine!)
