Rationality in Soar
Rationality in Soar
Soar's
elaboration phase is
a parallel and exhaustive attempt
to bring all knowledge immediately avaliable in the current situation to bear.
In this sense the system is rational. However,
some knowledge may be only indirectly available (e.g., internal simulation)
and requires additional
decision cycles
to develop this knowledge. This
situation leads to some irrationality in Soar: the system may have
behaved differently had the indirect knowledge been brought to bear at the
same time as the immediate knowledge. This results because an
impasse must drive the retrieval of
the indirect knowledge. Without the occurrence of an
impasse, this additional
knowledge will not be retrieved. The system may recognize this lack of
knowledge (a form of
meta-knowledge) and, given sufficient
time, bring the indirect knowledge to bear. Thus, the time available to the
system for
reasoning directly affects the
rationality of its conclusions. This is an example of
bounded rationality
in Soar.
Soar's
associative memory retrieval may
also present a source of irrationality. If the current elements in
working memory do not correspond the the conditions of some
production in long-term memory, then
the production's knowledge will not be brought to bear even if it is
appropriate. Examples of this kind of irrationality occur when
overspecific chunks are created.
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