%0 Report %D 1998 %T Conversational Adequacy: Mistakes are the Essence %A Perlis, Don %A Purang,Khemdut %K Technical Report %X We argue that meta-dialog and meta-reasoning, far from beingof only occasional use, are the very essence of conversation and communication between agents. We give four paradigm examples of massive use of meta-dialog where only limited base dialog may be present, and use these to bolster our claim of centrality for meta-dialog. We further illustrate this with related work in active logics. We argue moreover that there may be a core set of meta-dialog principles that is in some sense complete. If we are right, then implementing such a set would be of considerable interest. We give examples of existing computer programs that converse inadequately according to our guidelines. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-96-41) %I Instititue for Advanced Computer Studies, Univ of Maryland, College Park %V UMIACS-TR-96-41 %8 1998/10/15/ %G eng %U http://drum.lib.umd.edu//handle/1903/824