Facts are stubborn things. Truth is a slippery slope.
Just because Google tells you something, though, doesn’t mean it’s true. A team of Google researchers has devised a “Knowledge-based Trust” algorithm that attempts to rank websites based on their factual accuracy, rather than their popularity. In order to do that, however, it needs to be able to figure out what’s factual and what isn’t.
Google’s Knowledge Vault tries to find information that falls into a pattern of what Google calls “triples,” which are made up of three factors: a subject that’s a real-world entity, a predicate that describe some attribute of that entity, and an object that is the value of the attribute. For example, that President Obama (subject) is the president (predicate) of the United States (object).
The Knowledge Vault contains billions of those triples from across the web. And the Knowledge-based Trust algorithm uses a complicated multi-layer approach to weigh whether or not particular facts are true.
If the system works as well as hoped, Google might be able to rank sites based on just how factual they are, which is good for everything from fact-checking politicians to writing that research paper.
Was Obama born in Kenya? How do I know, I’m not a geographer!
The Google researchers give, as an example, websites that say President Obama was born in Kenya; such sites would be penalized in Google rankings, whereas sites that correctly say he was born in the U.S. would get a boost in rankings.
That fact is not controversial, but critics worry that this is a first step towards Google playing God and effectively censoring content it does not like. They fear that skeptics of things like climate change or more immigration (both subjects that Google founders have expressed strong feelings about) might find their websites buried if this ranking system were adopted.
“I worry about this issue greatly… My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google,” Anthony Watts, who runs Watts Up With That, a popular blog that is skeptical of global warming claims, told FoxNews.com.
“It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there’s no arguing with a machine,” he added.
There’s no arguing with a machine, Anthony? Funny thing. There’s no arguing with you, either. Given the limitations of your logical faculty, you might conclude that you are a machine yourself. But you’d be wrong, again.
Imagine the day established knowledge will be up-ended, One day Robin Warren and Barry Marshall are disappeared from searches, next day they get top billing.
Or family man Cosby gets replaced all of a sudden by Stills and Nash’s r-enriched musical companion.
Multiply that by a million topics where knowledge moves forward and Google becomes meaningless.
yeah, no doubt Google will be concerning itself with the cutting edge of stomach ulcer research. There’s a fruitful “imagining”.
Here is another: don’t like google? – use another search engine. Besides, Google sucks – it has no fracking idea of what you are talking about re “Stills and Nash’s r-enriched musical companion”.
Google corrects. Cosby can become Crosby. Your abyssal ignorance could be used to measure oceanic warming.
Oh, You are saying google rating for truthfulness is not good because of misspellings. And I’m the one who is stupid. Got it.
You still don’t understand. Google suggests corrections. In a world where “cosby family man” is considered non – true, Google would show the “corrected” version, eg Crosby instead of Cosby -with radically altered results. Basically every search would and could be completely different from the same search done at the same computer at a different time. This will make Google the opposite of reliability.
And FAUX is concerned about WUWT… LOL
You couldn’t make that up, could you?
Well. Maybe Torygraph’s Rose is now concerned about “Steven Goddard”…
Not sure if it works – but comments / fears in Deniersville are priceless (indicators?)
Fox News worried about a little truth-checking – who’d a thunk it? Next Fox meme: “Google wages war on intellectual freedom”.
Fox and intellectually freedom – something of an oxy.something.or.other there is it not.
Imagine Anthony Watts having to be honest for a change? Big ask.
Great idea to put a “Truth-o-meter” on every website. I am okay with this as long as it does not result in website censorship (other than giving truth-challenged websites incentive to not embarrass themselves). If folks do not like Google’s website truth ratings, they can simply ignore them.
Nothing will replaced a well functioning, critical thinking brain. The motivated reasoners will just create their own search engines to filter results to their tailoring
a la Conservapedia (if they haven’t already).
After repeatedly debunking nonsense claims from a ultra-conservative woman that I know by using Snopes to fact check her, she finally resorted to claiming that she no longer trusted Snopes, and that they were a bunch of biased liberals funded by George Soros. Cognitive dissonance eliminated. World view intact. Goes back to Glenn Beck and the Blaze for up to date happenings in the world. (sigh!)
Although I don’t necessarily trust Google to get it right, anything that makes Faux News, Watts, and MORONo nervous is worth exploring in more detail.
I know you are too stupid to understand this. I am not nervous about this latest Great Idea by Google. I have explained how silly it will all look, with new developments changing the outcome of searches almost continuously, so that it will all be too unreliable to be of any use – you either screenshot your results, or tomorrow who knows what they will be.
You should be concerned – I know you can’t get this simple idea in your mind, but if Google in 2025 is bought by some other company with different ideas about what truth is, then again all results will change. You may not like it. Then what?
Once again, the matter is reliability. Who would want the truth of the IPCC to be what makes it appear up on high in searches containing the word “IPCC”? If I search “IPCC” I want to see their home site first. If I am not able to understand what is true and what is not, it’s not Google’s problem.
WHAT???????????? More Omnobabble.
Whatever you understand, ain’t worth knowing
(More Omnobabble-babble-babble)
At least now I know what a former school bully writes
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz………!
“If I search “IPCC” I want to see their home site first.”
Define ‘IPCC’.