Chaos Magnet

Semantic web blues

I commented more extensively on Clay Shirky's The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview over on InformIT, but I have one more point to question.

Clay's talking about syllogisms, and uses this one as an example of why thy don't work:

"Consider the following assertions:

- Count Dracula is a Vampire
- Count Dracula lives in Transylvania
- Transylvania is a region of Romania
- Vampires are not real

You can draw only one non-clashing conclusion from such a set of assertions -- Romania isn't real."

Excuse me? I think the main problem is that he's mis-understanding the difference between

A are B

and

All A are B

I commented more over at InformIT.

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