Many MaybesMean ( Mostly ) the SameThing

At the core of soft computingis the intuition that from impreciseknowledge, we can still make reasonableinferences.Thispaperoffersexperimentalandmathematical evidencefor this intuition. Basedon a literature review and a newly developedmathematicsof ”r eachability”, it is arguedthat searchesthrougha spacecontaininguncertainties,mostof the reachableconclusionswill be reachedvia a small numberof ”master variables” in a ”narr ow funnel”. Such narrow funnelscanbe foundusingverysimple randomizedsearch methods.Consequently , whenusingN soft reasoningtools,it is bestto at leaststart with thesimplestandonly complicateyour soft reasonerif and only if that initial simpletool somehowfails you(andreachability theorypredictsthat it won’t oftenfail you)1.

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