DOMINO: Trivalent Logic Semantics in Bivalent Syntax Clothes

摘要

The paper describes a rather general software mechanism developed primarily for decision making in dynamic and uncertain environments (typical application: managing overbooking). DOMINO (Decision-Oriented Mechanism for "IF" as Non-deterministic Operator) is meant to deal with undecidability due to any kind of future contingents. Its description here is self-contained but, since a validation is underway within a much broader undertaking involving agent-oriented software, to impair redundancy, several aspects explained in very recent papers are here abridged. In essence, DOMINO acts as an "IF" with enhanced semantics: it can answer "YES", "NO" or "UNDECIDABLE in the time span given" (it renders control to an exception handler). Despite its trivalent logic semantics, it respects the rigours of structural programming and the syntax of bivalent logic (it is programmed in plain C++ to be applicable to legacy systems too). As for most novel approaches, expectations are high, involving a less algorithmic, less probabilistic, less difficult to understand method to treat undecidability in dynamic and uncertain environments, where postponing decisions means keeping open alternatives (to react better to rapid environment changes).