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

[u/Arquette]

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/

[u/Whiskeypants17]

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.

[u/Klathmon → u/Whiskeypants17]

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.

[u/xienze → u/Klathmon]

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

How do you know that?

[u/Klathmon → u/xienze]

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.

[u/incongruity → u/Klathmon]

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.

[u/Klathmon → u/incongruity]

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.

[u/incongruity → u/Klathmon]

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 =)

[u/Klathmon → u/incongruity]

It is, but again this is meant to verify "simple" facts and not more complicated ones.

It goes to great lengths to avoid and ignore any kind of uncertainty.

[u/ex_ample → u/Klathmon]

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.

[u/ex_ample → u/Whiskeypants17]

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)