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Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by saalweachter on Friday August 07, 2015 @04:20PM (#10024762)
Yeah, but where do you draw the line? Efficacy of acupuncture? Causes leading up the US Civil War? Government spending with a fiscal multiplier > 1? 1-based indexing of arrays? Impact of H1-Bs on US salaries and immigrant-welfare?

You may find dinosaurs an unambiguous case, but some people (Creationists, paleontologists) don't. Why should Google decide the truth on dinosaurs but not on <insert sacred cow>?

Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by dredmorbius on Saturday August 08, 2015 @04:28AM (#10026700)
Two approaches on that.

For well-established, well-sourced, and particularly, scientific questions, authorities with a strong record of truthful and accurate accounts should both get priority and help establish truth models. Less-well-known sources which genrally agree with these also score well.

Sites showing systematic bias or poor truth valance would be discounted.

Facts, ultimately, are verified by experiment or experience. In practice, we look at reported experiential results and note which tend to agree and/or show errors which are both small and unbiased.

Those are your preferred sources.

An interesting element about lairs is that they frequently (though not always ), tend to exhibit systemic bias across multiple disciplines. Either they bullshit and make stuff up (high error, unbiased), or they show systemic biases.

Again, not always and uniformly, but frequently.

Truth and* source reputation combined give you considerable leverage.

The goal isn't perfection, but reducing the problem to tractable areas of truth valance helps greatly.

Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by jessriedel on Friday August 07, 2015 @05:11PM (#10025043)
Yes, the bright line of neutrality is precious, and is way more important than correcting the tiny number of widely-accepted inaccuracies that are going to show up. The danger from a few people getting creationism results is minuscule compared to the danger that Google (further?) biases result.
Re:A conversation with Google’s in-house philosopher by dominotw on Friday August 07, 2015 @10:28PM (#10026106)
The thought that google can essentially control/shape people's minds is scary.