People are naturally curious about why things happen the way they do. Sometimes the reasoning chains involved are fairly straightforward, and sometimes they are rather convoluted and mysterious. The Sherlock searching agent attempts to unravel mysteries in a given event, and the Socrates agent attempts to lead the user to the obvious answers to his questions.
These agents need access to causal information relating aspects of an event to aspects of other events. The Socrates agent must be aware of patterns of reasoning that are typical in a given situation, and attempt to match those patterns to the current situation. Thus, for example, if Socrates knew that wars are often caused by economic issues, it might search for information about Iraq's economic situation prior to the war. If the Sherlock agent knew that one mystery of the war was what happened to Iraq's air force, it might search for situations where the strategy of hiding one's power proved historically effective in war.
• Sherlock Holmes: "What are the anomalies in this story? What are their explanations?"
• Socrates: "What are the expected outcomes of this situation?"
Where am I in the content of the book?
