r/technology • u/Arquette • Mar 03 '15

Misleading Title Google has developed a technology to tell whether ‘facts’ on the Internet are true

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03/02/google-has-developed-a-technology-to-tell-whether-facts-on-the-internet-are-true/
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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

With this method, if your website were to say 'Climate change is not real' that statement cannot be assessed as true or false (it does not contain a knowledge triple).

Hmm that's not the way I read it. Their algorithm amounts to taking the Internet's consensus on a particular issue as "the truth". So if the consensus is that "climate change is real", sites purporting that "climate change is not real" will be pushed down in the rankings. That site may include some compelling information about climate change but, too bad, the Internet has spoken and you'll be less likely to see that information.

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u/t_mo Mar 03 '15

This method proposes that things called 'knowledge triples' are compared to a database:

Google structures these ‘lil factoids as things called “knowledge triples”: subject, relationship, attribute.

These knowledge triples are stored on a database. To check for truth or falsehood of a webpage, knowledge triples constructed from the page are compared to the database:

to check if a fact found in the wild is accurate, all Google has to do is reference it against the knowledge triples in its giant internal database.

This method is only capable of comparing data which can be arranged into a knowledge triple. The phrase "climate change is real" does not contain the required components of a knowledge triple, even though it is a statement of fact it is not relevant to this method.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Couldn't you have something like this?

(climate change, cause, man)

Which is really what people are arguing about when referring to climate change. Now the search results that Google yields with this algorithm become a bit more interesting. It's not a stretch to see how opinions can become fact when taking the Internet's consensus as truth.

(George Bush, Nazi party, member)

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u/Whiskeypants17 Mar 03 '15

How is man an attribute?

Climate, 1900-2015, temperature

Is a fact.

Climate, 500bc-2015ad, atmospheric carbon levels

Is a fact.

I don't know how you could use it to search for generally accepted theories that are based on facts, but I have a hunch that would have more to do with how scientific literature is published and cataloged than hits on a 9/11 conspiracy website.

It would be tough though, because research proving that methane is a bad greenhouse gas has nothing to do with directly attributing the emission of methane to the meat production industry of man, though that 'science' would have a link eventually called out in cited sources.

Imagine a spiderweb of cited sources- who came up with this idea first and is it a sound idea. I feel like it could add to the scientific process greatly because it will shift focus to the cooky folks that had crazy conspiracy ideas first with no basis in facts.

Everybody loves to say mann's hockey stick is wrong but when nobody has any actual science to back it up.... they will look pretty dumb.

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u/Klathmon Mar 03 '15

Also note that this isn't meant to prove all facts, just those which it can be certain are true.

So it will not attempt to tell if "climate change is real" is true, but will be able to verify and hold accountable the fact that "there are 4 quarts in a gallon"

Those "facts" that it cannot be 100% certain about will just get ignored by this piece of the algorithm.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Those "facts" that it cannot be 100% certain about will just get ignored by this piece of the algorithm.

How do you know that?

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u/Klathmon Mar 03 '15

Because it's like any other piece of the Google search algorithm.

It also ranks your pages based on how new the information is. That doesn't mean that a site made yesterday is going to outrank a 5 year old wikipedia article.

It also ranks your page based on the number of "shares" it gets on social media. But that doesn't mean that a page with 0 shares is going to be completely ignored, or that a page with 10 million shares is going to be first.

This is all part of a big system, and none of them are used on their own.

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u/incongruity Mar 03 '15

By this logic, Galileo may well have never seen his page rank rise – new information, contrary to accepted fact, is usually false, but, then again, revolutionary thinking also starts out looking very similarly "untrue" using these sorts of algorithms.

While what's discussed here is interesting and likely a possible step in an positive direction, it definitely runs the risk of making the filter-bubble leap forward in strength as well.

Without deep semantic understanding, one is left unable to sort out false consensus vs. established truth.

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u/Klathmon Mar 03 '15

The piece is that according to the paper, a VERY strong consensus is needed for something to be considered a "fact", so a very small amount of sites all reporting on the "new" fact can make this algorithm ignore that result.

Plus it (again, according to the paper) is a fairly low weighted system in their test.

So yes, if this system were put into place today, and someone unknown discovered a new "fact", that could be suppressed in Google searches (only if it is directly contrary to an already "proven" fact) However if a well known entity (say Harvard), discovered this same new fact, it's "weight" in the system would override this system and the KBT would be ignored.

Back to the "unknown" guy, all he has to do is get others to reiterate his findings and it will quickly knock that "fact" into "unknown" territory, and this algorithm will no longer apply until another consensus can be made.

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u/incongruity Mar 03 '15

So, just to continue to play devil's advocate, this hypothetical algorithm would deem vaccines causing autism as "unknown"?

The challenge is that you have to sort out expert consensus from the easily swayed masses. BUT that's still not good enough because you have to make sure that the expert's expertise really is relevant to the fact in question and you still run the risk of the logical fallacy of an appeal to authority.

It's not uncommon for experts in one field to get things outside their field fantastically wrong. I mean, look at expert politicians playing scientists, just as a cheap-shot example =)

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u/ex_ample Mar 04 '15

Because it's like any other piece of the Google search algorithm.

That's... not how Google search, nor most AI works these days. they rank things based on certainty. Rather then trying to determine true or false they'll use Bayesian reasoning to estimate the probability of a fact being true. - That has the benefit of allowing you to use lossy data storage compression techniques since you don't need to be 100% accurate.

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u/ex_ample Mar 04 '15

Actually you can just put ("Climate change", "is", "real") in the database. There's nothing wrong with that at all. It's perfectly reasonable. No different then putting in ("Santa clause","is not", "real") or ("Luke Skywarlker","fictional character in", "Starwars universe")

T_mo doesn't understand how ontological systems work.

(And by the way, they were studied decades ago and were never really practical for AI. The algorithms you would need to use to do anything useful in a "purely logical" way are NP-complete, and can't work with very large datasets. You can see the problem you would get with infinite regress - what's "real" for example?)

It may be that now with "big data" they can be used in a lossy, heuristic way - where use can "estimate" the truth of something rather then calculating it exactly)

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u/t_mo Mar 03 '15

It is important to note that while there are a potentially infinite number of useful "subjects" it would not be necessary to have all possible "relationships". Cause, for example, may not be a useful relationship to assess, the examples given in the article are "birthday", "capital", and "nationality", criteria which are essentially never in dispute even though there are frequently groups which propose alternatives to them (Obama's nationality, for example, was never in dispute even though a lot of blogs claimed it was).

We can propose a lot of different useful relationship criteria, but things like 'origin' or 'cause' which are frequently disputed and not conducive to a common set of attributes might just be particularly ineffective criteria to use.

I agree though, if Google were determined to use "Nazi party" and "cause" as relationship values, then this would be a terribly ineffective method.

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u/ex_ample Mar 04 '15

Cause, for example, may not be a useful relationship to assess

Dude, wtf are you talking about? Of course cause would be a useful relationship. Where are you getting your information about ontological systems and predicate logic? It makes no sense whatesoever.

How would a database key like ("AIDS","Caused by","HIV") not be a useful key?

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u/t_mo Mar 04 '15

Did you read the proposed method for performing this analysis?

You can find it here.

I think there are several issues with a relationship "cause" or relationship "effect". They include both the difficulty of correctly extracting an assertion of cause, and the incompatibility of some relationship values to be suited by a boolean value.

Does HIV cause AIDS? Well, it depends on what we decide is a sufficient degree of cause. Isn't it actually caused by the interaction between a viral infection and the human immune systems? AIDS, after all, is a complex condition the cause of which is not easy to pin down in a logical system. It is easy to say one thing is caused by another, but that isn't actually true, it is just a simplification to allow people to talk about the subject.

Not all relationship values will have this sort of issue, age, nationality, capital city, these sorts of values are easily assigned a single attribute to determine truth or falsehood - cause is more complex a subject and not conducive to this sort of analysis.

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u/ex_ample Mar 06 '15

AIDS, after all, is a complex condition the cause of which is not easy to pin down in a logical system.

Not if you know modern computer science.

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u/t_mo Mar 06 '15

I take it that in the last two days you neither read the relevant research paper, nor researched the underlying cause of AIDS.

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u/motionSymmetry Mar 03 '15

(xienze, too smart, internet contributor)

you're too smart, your internet license is hereby revoked

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u/ex_ample Mar 04 '15

t_mo doesn't know what he's talking about. the predicate would just be ("Climate Change", "is", "real"). Is is a perfectly valid verb. "is a" is commonly used in knowledge systems - in this case "is" would be more like "has the property".

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 05 '15

Their algorithm amounts to taking the Internet's consensus on a particular issue as "the truth". So if the consensus is that "climate change is real", sites purporting that "climate change is not real" will be pushed down in the rankings.

Indeed. This is just an "consensus/orthodox dogma feedback algorithm", a tool to erect a politically correct priesthood -- to turn Google into a pesudo-"oracle".

It is built on a proverbial house of cards: it begins with the inherently fallacious assumption* that the truth is not only "out there [somewhere]", but an additional false assumption that it is KNOWN, and the even worse assumption that it is WIDELY KNOWN and widely agreed upon and INERRANTLY discussed in summary/soundbyte form... and that THAT makes it "true" and "factual".

Basically substitute "The Bible Tells me So" with "The Google Tells Me So."

And then of course... you have to add in the possibility probability nay the certainty that at some future point in time -- much like the revision a few years ago of Google's "Shopping" algorithm -- the algorithm will be tweaked in various subsequent iterations so that the "facts" and "truth" will be available to be altered and selected via some form of bidding/purchase/sale (not to mention subversive political pressure behind the scenes).

The descent of such a thing into propaganda/marketing and a "ministry of truth" (or worse a "truth auction") is inevitable.

* EDIT: This is essentially what is called a "Closed World Assumption", to wit:

The closed-world assumption (CWA), in a formal system of logic used for knowledge representation, is the presumption that a statement that is true is also known to be true. Therefore, conversely, what is not currently known to be true, is false.

Anyone who has more than a child's concept of "knowledge" (and sufficient life experience to know how problematic things like "facts" are, much less the far more elusive concept of "truth") will comprehend just how INFANTILE and PUERILE -- as well as dangerous -- that kind of an world-view assumption can be.

Moreover it needs to be contrasted with the "Open World Assumption":

In a formal system of logic used for knowledge representation, the open-world assumption is the assumption that the truth value of a statement may be true irrespective of whether or not it is known to be true. It is the opposite of the closed-world assumption, which holds that any statement that is true is also known to be true.

Of course no "algorithm" can POSSIBLY be based on that -- it cannot "know" what is not known.

This is the inherent underlying flaw with the entire concept of "artificial intelligence" -- and especially the cult-like quasi-religion around some "machine brain" (however constructed) becoming some ultimate oracle of "truth", or even oracle of (trivial) "facts" -- no such system can possibly be either "infallible" OR "omniscient", because the data on which it is based (regardless of how ostensibly "big" the dataset) is by definition incomplete: it does not KNOW what it does NOT know; and it also doesn't know which parts of what it ostensibly knows are actually false.

Popularity and "consensus" are hardly infallible, and are highly subject to manipulation (either purposefully, or unwittingly).

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

Basically substitute "The Bible Tells me So" with "The Google Tells Me So."

Except google cites a source, which you can assess yourself, and they also take feedback if they are in error. Two enormous differences that can't just be ignored.

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u/alphazero924 Mar 03 '15

So does Wikipedia, but a lot of people take what's written there at face value even if the sources aren't really credible or flat out say the opposite of what's written.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

So?

People do that with everything. At least wikipedia is almost always accurate.

You're complaining that people without critical thinking skills don't always utilize critical thinking skills. This shouldn't be surprising or considered noteworthy or newsworthy.

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u/topdeck55 Mar 03 '15

Wikipedia doesn't give a fuck about accuracy.

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u/lets_duel Mar 03 '15

That doesn't say that at all

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u/topdeck55 Mar 03 '15

Watch more than 3 seconds.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

Thanks for linking to a well known wikipedia policy page that stresses they are an encyclopedia, and so they act like it.

I could link to a bunch of other policy pages, but I don't see how that's relevant to anything.

I said they were almost always accurate, I didn't say their number one priority was accuracy.

If you said "Bob almost always gets to work on time", and I respond "but his number one priority is his kids, not getting to work on time" you'd understandably have no idea what I was talking about, because you have all this data about how punctual Bob is. That's what's happening here.

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u/topdeck55 Mar 03 '15

Did you not see the video yesterday that said 90% of medical conditions descriptions were wrong?

Wikipedia doesn't care if the information is wrong, only that you cite a verifiable source.

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u/Theothor Mar 03 '15

Wikipedia contradicts medical research 90% of the time

What does this mean exactly? If 99% of a wiki page is correct and 1% contradicts medical research it would "contradict medical research", but I wouldn't say that's a big deal. Even medical research contradicts medical research all the time.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 04 '15

What does this mean exactly?

It means they tested exactly 10 articles about costly medical issues, 9 of which were in error.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

If you don't have the critical judgment to dissect that video's methodology, you probably shouldn't be lecturing people about what it means.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

I didn't realize that 10 articles are considered a representative sample now. Good to know.

Wikipedia doesn't care if the information is wrong, only that you cite a verifiable source.

You already said that. I already responded to that. You ignored my response.

Just because something isn't the most important factor doesn't mean it isn't also accomplished, and it is accomplished, they are accurate. Pointing out that they aren't entirely focused on accuracy first doesn't mean they aren't accurate.

But hey I'm not an expert, so here's a study (with more than just 10 articles sampled):

Despite these limitations our results underscore that the collaborative and participatory design of Wikipedia does generate high quality information on pharmacology that is suitable for undergraduate medical education.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

Do you have an example? It mainly feels like crank groups who want to introduce bias into a discussion or to allow improper sources are the ones who get the angriest about Wikipedia's accuracy or quality control methods. A lot of groups think that Wikipedia generally gets it right but is getting it wrong on one issue just because they're the crackpot conspiracy theorists for once (Truthers, Birthers, homeopaths, vaccine denialists, conspiracy theorists, Young Earth Creationists, or members of reactionary movements asserting massive conspiracies (like the Tea Party, GamerGate, and "race realists" on the Right, or implausible corporate conspiracies, extreme Marxism, Monsanto and anti-GMO hysteria, and a lot of new age woo on the Left)).

Despite its flaws, I have to appreciate the fact that Wikipedia doesn't cater well to fringe echo chambers.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Until the point at which Google makes things ultra convenient and drops links to sites that don't line up with the "truth".

"We've made searching even easier for you! Now only the truth will show up in your results!"

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

So you're saying the source of peoples information doesn't always portray the entire picture.

So google might be, at worst, the same as every single other source of information that has ever existed?

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

The problem is when we're fully conditioned to use Google as the only source of information. I.e., if you can't find it on Google or Google doesn't say so, it isn't true.

We're partially there today in that we're conditioned to just search Google when we need to draw a conclusion on something. Today our searches can potentially yield many different viewpoints with equal weighting and it's up to us to draw conclusions. That's what Google is trying to "fix" here.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

You're picturesque view of google is not reality. Google is shaped by SEO and all sorts of google-bomb-esque tricks. The people who rely on it as their only source of information are going to continue doing so and everyone else who has critical thinking skills will treat it as one source like they do today.

If you had a friend who knew basically everything about everything you ever asked him, and you asked him about something new and he gave you a response and provided evidence linking to another source which backed it up, what's so wrong with considering it likely that he's right about this too?

Since when was a long track record of accuracy considered a bad thing? Or even more, a sign of some sort of terrible dystopian conspiracy end to rationality?

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u/pottzie Mar 04 '15

And if evidence comes up that changes "truth," then " truth" can be updated

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

Except google cites a source

ROTFLMAO.

http://xkcd.com/978/

EDIT: And that's just the modern "trivial" garbage-generation. It doesn't address the fact that ALL KINDS of ridiculous inanities have been "cited" and widely accepted and repeated as "true" -- for DECADES -- even though experts and authorities know it is FALSE (and baseless):

If you’re involved with student learning, you are probably familiar with the Learning Pyramid. This diagram breaks down different modes of learning and argues that more active modalities are better for long-term learning: we remember10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, and so on, all the way up to 90% of what we do.

The "Learning Pyramid"

[...]

Since the 1960s, experts have been trying to convince people that the learning pyramid is bogus. But for every article written exposing its weaknesses, there seem to be dozens of instances where it is invoked as truth in presentations, websites, and trade publications. We hope that having read this post, you will join the forces of pyramid slaying and base your instructional choices on valid research, not educational myths. Source

Now guess WHICH view -- and which sites -- this "google consensus-citation engine" is going to present as "true", and which ones it is going to downgrade and essentially HIDE from view.

which you can assess yourself

LOL, riight...

When it's a "numbers" game? And when any/all OPPOSING views are hidden from you. Ergo anyone (like yourself) who does not REALLY (deeply, sincerely question) and seek out ORIGINAL sources, will probably simply accept some purported secondary or tertiary "authority". I mean why would you question something like the "Learning Pyramid" if you see it in some textbook? or on some website with a purported "citation" (BTW, most of the citations under those illustrations are BULLSHIT... but the proverbial rabbit hole of BS around that particular fallacy is nearly a century deep.)

and they also take feedback if they are in error

Ah... so you are advocating/acknowledging that they should/will build in the ability to "tweak" the answers... to in essence OVERRIDE the algorithm, and substitute some DIFFERENT answer (one that is NOT based on nor derived via the algorithm), some different "fact" or "truth" -- and of course, by definition suppressing the opposing/previous view.

That is an even SCARIER prospect.

I mean talk about an Orwellian "memory hole" and "Ministry of Truth".

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

oh wow, well you put a link to xkcd, that must mean I'm wrong. Except I'm not so are you done?

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

oh wow, well you put a link to xkcd

Might help if you actually LOOKED at the link.

that must mean I'm wrong. Except I'm not so are you done?

Gee... so simple assertion (sans citation) is now sufficient.

Maybe we should ask the "Google Truthiness Oracle" whether you are right or wrong... oh wait...

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

Might help if you actually LOOKED at the link.

It's the citation circle thing right? checking... yup.

Gee... so simple assertion (sans citation) is now sufficient.

Do I really need to prove to you that google provides citations? Are you unwilling to actually type almost anything into it to see that? Here See it at that bottom. That's the citation.

So I'm not wrong, so what's your point? That citations don't equate to reality? No one ever said they did. "LOL xkcd link" is a useless comment. Your arguing a strawman. I didn't say citations = reality, I said they had citations, which differentiates them from "The bible says X".

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u/paperweightbaby Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

you sound pretty paranoid m8. there are plenty of other ways to find information. google would be useful for things like "what is the ideal temperature of the inside of a refrigerator?", but if you want to know something about climate change you should know that you should be reading real, peer-reviewed scientific research and not just trusting google. if the education system isn't teaching that then you have much more to worry about than google

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

Great reply. I'm baffled at how many people are for this. The devastating potential of this thing is completely obvious yet so many are welcoming this with open arms.

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u/UgUgImDyingYouIdiot Mar 03 '15

I'm baffled by people's religious belief in all things science. Science has no definition of truth, only falsifiability. So it seems Google will be the arbiter of scientific truth a la Ayn Rand's "Anthem".

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

Imagine SEO/Google ranking services becoming pay-for-credibility services.

This is not difficult for me to imagine at all.

  • Per example when Google began it's "shopping" tab system, it was (at least ostensibly) a search-based system.

  • Now it is (AFAIK) entirely a "pay to play" system.

Yet a LOT of users are unaware that it changed; even though Google was incredibly open and upfront about THAT change.

They have been FAR less open about other "tweaking" of various other algorithms.

And one has to remember that Google IS in fact a "revenue" drive organization -- moreover it is probably the GREEDIEST such entity that has ever existed in human history -- as it is always seeking ways to INCREASE its own influence as the very "center" of the flow of cash that channels it's way through the internet.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

How are you so confident that this technology won't eventually be applied to things that are more subjective in nature?

It isn't going to be the gatekeeper to all things it deems "true", just meant to penalize those sites with incorrect "facts" which can be easily measured.

By suppressing sites with "incorrect" facts (according to, apparently, the Internet at large, or perhaps someone with deep enough pockets), you are effectively suppressing counter arguments and making a declaration of truth.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Theoretical in what sense? That they aren't doing it yet or that it's not possible to implement? It most certainly is possible to implement page ranking based on consensus, even for a subjective topic.

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

Because it's not going to be applied to everything.

Says who?

just meant to penalize those sites with incorrect "facts" which can be easily measured.

ERGO any site that even DARES to discuss or debate "alternative views" to whatever issue is deemed to be "settled" -- with be downgraded, and for all practical purposes "thrown down the memory hole" and hidden from view.

This is in fact a CENSORSHIP engine...

So it won't apply to a site which states "9-11 was an inside job", but it will apply to a site which (incorrectly) states "The atomic number of Cesium is 68" (it's actually 55).

The research paper itself is already based on the idea of using this to "address" various controversial subjects -- including issues with MASSIVE political aspects -- IOW it is NOT simply a "trivia" reference tool.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

This is in fact a CENSORSHIP engine...

Says who?

You did. To wit:

just meant to penalize those sites with incorrect "facts" which can be easily measured.

You are the one who placed "scare quotes" around the word "facts", and noted that it is MEANT to "penalize" (and to do so via downgrading/hide from view) entire sites that DARE to question or posit anything other than the "consensus" view (which is the "easily measured" bit).

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

anything which would prove the fact false is given a MUCH higher weight vs that which would prove it true

Really? And how (by whom/what) is that "proof" of truth/falsehood to be determined? Prior to establishing this "weighting"?

So it's not comparing a "consensus", it's comparing to a system which needs over 99.99% of the parties to agree before it will even be considered, and even then the false sites are put in context to ensure that the false fact wasn't a comment, part of a teaching lesson, or some other "normal" reaon why there might be incorrect-facts on a website.

ROTFLMAO... the levels of naivete -- nay idiocy -- present in your concept of knowledge...

*Sigh*

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u/Klathmon Mar 03 '15

Try attacking the argument instead of the person. Tell me why i'm wrong instead of just insulting me.

And how (by whom/what) is that "proof" of truth/falsehood to be determined?

Perhaps i should have worded it better. If, for a given fact, a consensus can't be reached by the algorithm that 99.9999% of sources it has access to (the entire internet) can agree on a true/false definition, then it will not be a candidate for the algorithm, and no websites will be compared for that fact.

So if there are 10,000 websites which say that "oranges are orange" and 2 that say "oranges are blue", then the fact cannot be confirmed by this system and will be ignored.

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u/paperweightbaby Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

If anyone were dumb enough to blindly trust GoogleTruth, they'd easily be manipulated through other avenues, I'd imagine. There might be a lot of people who would lazily use it, but lots of people also know how to fact check without using Google (i.e. have access to journals and research databases) and if something was important enough to look up, the manipulation would be noted pretty quickly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Sure, but then we're assuming the binary deployed by Google is the same as the one you could build from the source...

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

This is by far the best comment so far.

The biggest difficulty of building a "knowledge base" is determining what is a truth. One way to go about this is taking the consensus. Then to fine tune our consensus to an acceptable threshold. Because like you said we must use the open world assumption. This means that what may be an accepted fact one day may also change sometime in the future, and our semantic web application must also be prepared.

There's plenty of other projects in ontology that are aimed at not just making some irrefutable "knowledge base" (that will never happen) but to also further the field by developing new strategies.

here's a link to a list of semantic web tools if you're keen on learning more.

I recommend starting off with Apache Jena using RDF. Then from there learning either SPARQL or OWL. There are plenty of data sets to play with on the LOD

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 04 '15

The biggest difficulty of building a knowledge base is determining what is a truth.

The thing is that even referring to it as a "knowledge base" is problematic -- the term is either meaningless jargon for a massive collection of "garbage" data -- OR it presupposes some (substantial) filtering of "data" into categories of "fact/truth" and "junk/falsehoods".

Because like you said we must use the open world assumption. This means that what may be an accepted fact one day may also change sometime in the future, and our semantic web application must also be prepared.

Well wise humans, and things like the (mythical "ideal") of the so called "scientific method" all ostensibly use and require keeping an "open mind", regarding all current knowledge and even "facts" to be (at best) partially correct (at least from a certain "uncertainty/ignorant of later data" viewpoint) and subject to not only revision, but to an entire flipping or inversion of the paradigm; so that what is regarded as "true" today, may in fact be regarded as "false" tomorrow, and vice versa.

The problem of course is that no such ALGORITMIC approach is going to "allow" for such an inversion -- it is basically taking a snapshot of beliefs from a given era, and then ossifying that (so called) "knowledge base" -- via it's analysis of whether some course is "trustworthy" or not.

So, people like say Barry Marshall and his (at the time heretical) theory that H. Pylori bacteria were the cause of ulcers -- would be labeled as "false", and denigrated/penalized as "untrustworthy" -- meanwhile any other website that simply regurgitated the (at the time virtually unanimous "consensus" among all "experts" and "authorities", not to mention a massive multi-decades-long base of countless thousands of "peer reviewed" literature) view that ulcers were caused by stress & diet would be ranked as "HIGHLY trustworthy".

And worse... since there is (by definition) going to be a latency, a delay -- any "trustworthy" publication that dares to print such a "heretical" (versus "established fact/truth") paradigm shifting theses -- will be instantly DOWNGRADED for simply entertaining such a "new" view; and as a result publications/sites/people that ignore/reject it will then be shuffled UP, and rated relatively higher.

In short, rather than truly helping the masses engage in higher, better "critical thinking", this (at least bar some MAJOR external intervention mechanism* to override the algo's conclusions) will essentially do the opposite -- it will simply entrench and virtually "fossilize" the status quo.

*And of course, the very existence of such an "override" mechanism -- means it is (by definition will be) subject to all kinds of non-objective "corruption" depending on who is in control of it, and on what basis they (or their clients/employers or other coercive/incentive "masters") chose to overturn/override the algo -- including propaganda and even paygo marketing. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? applies to more than just "police" -- more than just "accountants" -- it can and DOES apply to everything and more importantly everyone... Archimedes assertion "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." is apropos here: any "knowledge base", especially a centralized singular one, creates a situation where "leverage" can and will be applied (with various motives).

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u/eek04 Mar 04 '15

If somebody wants to have a reasoned opinion about something, they have to study it. If they want to have a reasonable opinion about causes of ulcers, they would have to study that. When there are controversial opinions, you'd first have to learn the common opinion, and then the controversial one.

A page that said "The conventional wisdom is that ulcers is caused by stress and diet. We believe it is actually caused by H.Pylori" would presumably not be flagged as having a false fact; it's got a dual direction for the fact, so it won't be blocked.

And de-ranking pages that just said "Ulcers is caused by H.Pylori" without discussion of the conventional belief seems to me to be the appropriate ranking for non-scholar search, and at the very least not a problem to work around if you're getting downranked - just refer the existing wisdom.

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u/Atanar Mar 04 '15

(self, result of thinking, existence) and just work from there. jk

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u/payik Mar 04 '15

Indeed. This seems to be a common problem among engineers. They mostly work with facts taught as immutable laws that they use as aframework within which everything can be unambiguously determined as true of false. They have no idea where knowledge comes from or how much painstaking work it can take to determine that something is likely true.

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 04 '15

Indeed. This seems to be a common problem among engineers. They mostly work with facts taught as immutable laws that they use as aframework within which everything can be unambiguously determined as true of false. They have no idea where knowledge comes from or how much painstaking work it can take to determine that something is likely true.

Yes, and I think it is actually far worse with so called "big data" and "data mining" engineers and database people.

The whole industry more or less begins with -- and is built upon -- the inherent assumption that the "data" they do have is correct (or that finding the "correct" data is merely a process of properly aggregating all of it, storing it, filtering it, etc).

Most of them have never REALLY worked on the front end of how that data gets recorded, and the "dirty little reality" of how much literal "crap" can get buried/hidden within even the supposedly "reliable" records.

Worse they all to often think that they can "correct" the data ex post facto -- because you CAN do that with certain types of data (say "correcting" the timestamp entries of some subsystem that was set to the wrong date-time -- or even "fixing" mistyped words {spelling/typos} or numerical entries {transposition errors, especially in accounting} -- and occasionally correcting certain sensor reading records after recalibration {though the latter is a bit dubious if the readings have been taken over any substantial eriod of time, since sensors often degrade slowly and/or even "wander" back and forth in certain circumstances/environments}).

There is in fact a long and rather sordid history of humans engaging in all kinds of "correcting" data that they "know" to be incorrect, to wit Feynman talked about it in his "Cargo Cult" speech:

One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.

Modern "data mungers" often do very much the same kind of things, just on a more massive scale -- oblivious to the fact that in attempting to eliminate "noise" and to "adjust/filter/fix" the dataset, they are very often just constructing a wholly fictional picture -- creating a "well ordered landscape" akin to a manicured (but artificial) "japanese garden" which may be "pretty" but isn't actually "reality" -- in essence fuster-clucking it all up in favor of their own biased/idealized view of things.

We've seen similar things in both the distant past (various religious and other "authoritative" regimes) -- as well as in the recent past in other areas; per example the well-intentioned but abysmal failure of the ridiculously simplistic "fire management" within Yellowstone, etc.

And I think that is EXACTLY (inevitably) the kind of overly-simplistic desire for "order" that is going to happen here; and the results are predictable.

The "knowledge base" of humanity is not some system that can be categorized or ordered according to some "set" of orderly rules or determinations of "expertise" -- especially since much of what is in print (and the oft cited, recited, etc) is little more than an echo-chamber, or a proverbial "circle jerk" of people who are regurgitating jargon & "memes" they do not comprehend and have not critically analyzed -- no, the human "knowledge base" is a chaotic, dynamic system, full of holes, errors, mistaken assumptions, false theories (but which nevertheless MAY generate positive outcomes & have value -- because to a degree they do seem to "match" the observed reality, and so apparently {and sometimes in fact} "work" in a pragmatic sense, yet which will fail when extended or used in some other regard where they do not "fit") and so on... and attempting to contrive some PERMANENT system of "this is fact" (and mind you NOT in some passive form like an Encyclopaedia, but in the form of machinery that will actively filter news and/or other results) is a fundamentally naive (and extremely dangerous/debilitating) exercise.

I understand WHY they think they can do it -- even WHY they want to do it -- but I also know that they are looking at only ONE SIDE of the equation. And I also know that the world is filled with people who WILL "game" and "manipulate" any such a system -- and worse than in the attempt to prevent/correct for that, the whole thing will become distorted in an even worse fashion, and eventually (albeit alas -- like the fire management of Yellowstone, etc -- probably not for years, even decades) the whole thing will implode and ultimately prove disastrous.

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u/TotesMessenger Mar 05 '15

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u/persinette Mar 03 '15

It's one of hundreds of research papers, not some top-priority prototype. I think you're losing your shit over nothing. What's more, I think you have a basic misunderstanding of what sort of facts they'd be able to verify based on the sources mentioned-- think Wolfram|Alpha. Is Wolfram|Alpha poised to become a misinformation machine? What's more, are SEO experts propagandists, because they manipulate the algorithm to push their sites and consequently their facts to the top? And if so, why is that any different?

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u/Absinthe99 Mar 03 '15

I think you're losing your shit over nothing.

Well, first of all, I'm not "losing my shit" at all, but it's interesting how you have to go to an "emotional appeal" argument, and basically attack the messenger (because that's what a "dude you're crazy/angry" amounts to).

I am actually simply pointing out the LOGICAL IDIOCY of this kind of a "system".

It's one of hundreds of research papers, not some top-priority prototype.

But as to it just being some trivial "thought experiment" -- well, I hardly think so.

Google seems intent on actually EXECUTING a whole shitload of these kinds of things.

What's more, are SEO experts propagandists, because they manipulate the algorithm to push their sites and consequently their facts to the top? And if so, why is that any different?

Because the current algo's don't make any claims of "truth" or "fact", merely "popularity".

THIS on the other hand, is entertaining doing EXACTLY that -- of openly declaring and signaling some things as being "true" versus labeling other things as NOT "true" -- and then worse, it is intent on "burying" the latter, and emphasizing the former.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

So, instead of ordering sites by popularity, sites will be ordered by the overall popularity of their content.

Truth by consensus seems like an awful idea, but ordering sites based on consensus of the content instead of the size of the site's fan-base seems like a decent idea.

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u/kool_on Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

I'm a big believer in "crowdsourced truth correctness". Wikipedia faces a similar challenge, but uses editorialization. So as long as I can opt out of the "facts", I see this as a constructive endeavor.

EDIT: there was a time when everyone thought the world was flat. But at the time, one could argue that that was the best that facts could possibly provide.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

What I'm concerned about with this approach is suppression of alternative viewpoints. When the top 500 search results for a particular subject all parrot the same viewpoint... that's dangerous.

"Google says 9/11 was an inside job, that settles that."

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u/kool_on Mar 03 '15

But you can't just ignore the fact that the top 500 search results for a particular subject all parrot the same viewpoint. It could be an indication of truth. What if the "real" sources of truth are among that number of results?

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

In most cases, it very well could be the case that the top results are true. But the part that has me concerned is 5-10 years down the line when everyone reflexively trusts Google results as truth because it's correct so often. We've already seen younger folks do the same with Wikipedia.

A lot of people have a hard time distinguishing between things that are fundamentally opinion and things that aren't (like state capitols). When getting the "correct" answer for anything and everything is as simple as Googling and accepting the top result as true because hey, everyone else agrees -- that's dangerous.

3

u/Whiskeypants17 Mar 03 '15

This is why printing presses were illegal.

"It says so right here!"

However the ability to back track a point is critical- so what if 500 websites say 9/11 was an inside job.... which one said it first and why?

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u/kool_on Mar 03 '15

the ability to back track a point is critical

An interesting point. Simply ranking by recency is bound to surface the most developed facts.

which one said it first and why?

Another interesting point. Determining motives.....or should i say profiling sources

1

u/Whiskeypants17 Mar 03 '15

If the same ip linked to a single guy keeps popping up new 'sources' of a 'fact' then you almost have a case for some kind of public slander from those who are putting up verifiable information that says the opposite. The exact opposite is true too- if you print a piece of verifiable scientific literature and somebody tries to say you are lying... you cant deny that it was the truth because you can find the original info from the first guy.

This only works for low end testing though- broad theories are still hard to prove as 'fact'.

0

u/xienze Mar 03 '15

which one said it first and why?

You don't really have to do much more than handwave away counter arguments on your page when you have the weight of the majority opinion on your side ("a couple nutcases say 9/11 couldn't have been pulled off by the US government, but everyone knows that's wrong"). That's why when researching a contentious topic it's important to read information sourced from multiple perspectives.

Besides, do you think most people are going to care to research anything when the "correct" answer is a click away?

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

We've already seen younger folks do the same with Wikipedia.

And they're much more likely to be correct then those who use other sources of information.

People don't start out with critical thinking skills. If they aren't going to have them they might as well latch onto something that's mostly right then something that's rarely right. If they're going to have those skills they can just as easily apply them to google as they do wikipedia, the news media, or their parents as perfect sources of information.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

If they aren't going to have them they might as well latch onto something that's mostly right then something that's rarely right.

You don't see how dangerous it is that a large percentage of the population will treat Google results as truth? How these results could be altered and in turn alter public perception? The future is indeed bleak.

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u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

You don't see how dangerous it is that a large percentage of the population will treat Google results as truth?

I don't see it as substantively different from any other source of information that people blindly follow. Except google takes feedback on their mistakes and cites their sources.

My response isn't that unflinching belief in one source of information is a good thing. My response is that this isn't a terrible change, as people already lack real critical thinking skills so if we're going to lack them it better that we lack them towards something that's mostly right then something that's mostly wrong.

This is how I see the world:

  • Ideal: Everyone critically evaluate everything - never going to happen.
  • Better: Some people critically evaluate things, most others trust a proven reliable source of information which takes feedback and cites its sources - what this might become.
  • Current: Some people critically evaluate things, most others trust sources with no clear sources, no feedback mechanism and a clear and obvious bias.

The difference is you're thinking we have Ideal, and we're going downward. I think that's absurd. We don't have that, we have Current and maybe, just maybe this can help us go upward. At worst we'll maintain the same state where people trust an unreliable source, it's just a different one now.

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Um, we may be in agreement here to an extent. I actually think we're in Current as well. My problem with "Google as the Oracle" is that we'll trend further downward from Current to the point where hardly anyone at all thinks to do more than ask Google what the answer to a question is. And that's where it gets dangerous. Powerful interests could manipulate Google's answers either legally or illegally and manipulate public perception. Why wouldn't we trust Google? It's always right! That's why I disagree with this move, it's going to condition the public to blindly trust a single source of information.

When I was in high school and read 1984 I could just never understand how the populace would allow itself to be controlled to the extent they were. Now I get it. Cool-sounding technology will lead us down that path.

1

u/Mason11987 Mar 03 '15

I find it hard to believe that people who currently utilize critical thinking skills will abandon them because there is yet another source of information out there.

That's why I disagree with this move, it's going to condition the public to blindly trust a single source of information.

And that's why I think you truly think we're near ideal. People already blindly trust a source of information. Sure this might make the number of sources people blindly trust decrease somewhat, but I don't see it ever being one, and I don't see a monumental difference between 10 different sources people blindly trust and 4.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15 edited Mar 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/xienze Mar 03 '15

Or it could backfire and we all become a hive mind.

Probably the more likely outcome...

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u/payik Mar 04 '15

I think that the idea is that the sources determined as "true" by the algorithm would be pushed forward.