Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)

#91

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

fluorocarbon wrote: post #41

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this piece, mostly because I disagree so strongly with it :-). Clay takes the topic of Ontology, contextualizes it into an impractical domain, and then calls it overrated. Cars are overrated too because they can't cross oceans right? When done correctly, ontology combined with knowledge graphs can make an impractical problem much more practical. Consider for the moment the problem of 'fake news'. What chara…

> Consider for the moment the problem of 'fake news' ... without getting into the debate of what is and isn't true This comment reminds me of another Shirky essay [1]. He says: > [This is] the pattern for descriptions of the Semantic Web. First, take some well-known problem. Next, misconstrue it so that the hard part is made to seem trivial and the trivial part hard. Finally, congratulate yourself for solving the tri…

I don't find this dismissal persuasive. If I understand you're point, you are arguing that without perfect truth, no partial solution has any value.

If that is indeed your argument, it is remarkably similar to the argument "Perfect security is impossible, this system is worthless." I think it is demonstrably obvious that there is a related parameter in both cases, which is the cost of overcoming the system is greater than the gain from overcoming said system.

As an example of how that argument fails in practice, consider textbooks. When I was working on this problem full time the organization had a relationship with a major publisher of textbooks. Consider the system which can construct an ontology and knowledge graph based on the contents of a text book. It may not be 'true' in the Aristotle sense, but it is an effective tool for evaluating whether or not a paper or essay correlates that ontology and knowledge graph or doesn't. In such a system there is value in evaluating the extent with which the knowledge in the textbook has been communicated to the person writing the essay.

Being able to automate the analysis has other benefits as well which extend beyond flagging documents which disagree a previous established canon.

Re: Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)

#92

Post by heavenlyblue » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

JetSpiegel wrote: post #86

heavenlyblue wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, truth is boring, isn't it? Would you otherwise prefer to read Russian propaganda speaking of German authorities policing Germans of Russian heritage? Because that's exactly what they are currently doing. 0 facts, amazing opinionated narrative in multi-paragraph form. Pictures on top of that. But that definitely sounds more fun. Moreover - that sort of narrative is way closer to the general sentiment of the work…

I can't be so boring it leads to complete apathy. Unless you are a computer, there's a limit to the boredom you can take.

Would you rather be bored or manipulated by the foreign propaganda machine?

Re: Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)

#93

Post by johnchristopher » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

The site is now displaying spam :(

Re: Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)

#94

Post by feanaro » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #42

ChuckMcM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly so. The operator of the machine gets to control what it is told is 'true' and 'false'. That said, assuming a nominally good actor and an inability to have people process every article, this process provides a means to quantitatively analyze for coherence with your controlled corpus.

"Quantitatively analysing the coherence of a controlled corpus," is not exactly a solution to fake news, although it's probably useful for a few other things.

It certainly helps a lot due to the fact that today you can't be expected to practically sift over all the available information yourself because there's simply too much of it.

If we had a system like this that worked, we could at least leverage it to be able to quantify the coherence of a much larger set of inputs and with many controlled corpora at once.