Re: Solomon''s curse and search Bias - a possible solution

Oh My

i  can see the problem-  your example is qualitative different!!

If the query is McDonald
 (Lets assume that someone has never hear of McDonald before, they dont
know what it is
and want to find out they ask google), then á  correct search result would
return some perspective
for example:
McDonald is ....  a  scottish clan!!  (where does the name come from?)
with a lot of business connections....... (a bit of history?)
whatever else is interesting about McDonald.....the most famous McDonald in
the capitalist world is the hamburger chain....
and the nearest one to you is.......
other hamburger chains near you btw :,....... (context)

(ideally with some meaningful perspective)

if the query is Mcdonald near me' then the result you get is of course OK,
but that is a
commercial location search
not a search for knowledge and meaning about McDonald, hamburgers and the
universe
(some knowledge that discerning users  may  seeking before  purchasing a
meal)

You can certainly ask for whatever new technology you want, but
> characterizing existing search capabilities as “very wrong”, “unbelievably
> misleading”, “not acceptable”, and “very poor performance” seems a tad over
> the top.
>

This is a bit of a tragedy for me Frank. (sobbing)
 I am not asking for any technology other
than the one that already exist and function :-)
but the technology is currently used to produce distorted results
(apologies if this is stating the obvious)

But you are right I should characterize my statément

in some cases
non commercial/in relation to fundamental knowledge domains
very important to humanity  search capabilities are
 “very wrong”, “unbelievably misleading”, “not acceptable”, and “very poor
performance”

I guess this should be researched more thoroughly
Maybe  commercial and political propaganda knowledge results are OK,

P

as far as the nearest hamburger I am sure Google serves well.




> When I ask Google for “mcdonalds near me”, I’m content not to have Google
> tell me that Old McDonald’s farm is across the street.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 3, 2019, at 5:35 AM, Paola Di Maio <paoladimaio10@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you Frank (and Penaloza)-
>
> well the future generations are one concern - learning critical thinking
> and disambiguation is
> fundamental, but does not answer nor solve the problem of something is
> very wrong with the technology
> *I assume I just stumbled upon an instance of a known problem, sorry if
> this is no news
>
>
> It seems to me one solution to your problem is to teach future generations
> how to do disambiguation (which applies to a lot more than just searches).
>
> yes  definitely!!   at the same time.....
>
> Quite advanced Knowledge Representation and Information Retrieval
> mechanisms exist that can support more meaningfully sorted  web search
> results-  to point to one derative result (or a set of results) completely
> excluding the source of the original concept is unbelievably misleading and
> not acceptable in technology terms
>
> pardon me if this is obvious to everyone, but I had not realised that
> information retrieval is getting worse
> in this sense. how can this be?
>
> And in the old days if you’d gone to a librarian with your search, the
>> librarian would certainly have asked for more search terms (“Do you mean
>> the book or the king in the Bible?”).
>>
>
> Sure for every term/concept there may be the need for some disambiguation
> (book, edition, version, issue ,etc)
>
> But 'if I enter the search term 'planet earth'  there is no reason not to
> expect adequate pointers to the main entity
> not only to corresponding brand names and everything else that has the
> same name
>
> Paloza
>
> If we are worried about future generations, the solution is not to change
> the technology to fix all problems (impossible), but rather to teach
> critical thinking and reading and searching skills.
>
> We may not be able to fix all problems but as web engineers and
> scientists, it is our duty to develop  systems
> as accurate as possible . The problem here is not the technology, which is
> perfectly capable of sorting information - but how and why it is deployed
> so poorly to create disinformation
>
> Critical thinking skills are necessary but this is no justification for
> very poor performance
>
> Let's keep on increasing awareness about the bias in our lives
>
> p
>
>
>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Mar 3, 2019, at 2:53 AM, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Carl
>> thanks for reply-
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 2:47 PM Carl Wimmer <carl@correlationconcepts.com>
>> wrote:.
>>
>>>
>>> Someone has already made a decision as to what is important and what can
>>> be ignored. The practical result for you is that any elements already
>>> deemed unimportant are instantly invisible to you, with no way of bringing
>>> them to the surface.
>>>
>>
>> well, in this case, who would be 'someone' ?  Isnt it an algortirmic
>> bias?
>>
>>>
>>> You used Google. Now, of course, Google can never be accused of
>>> filtering any results to their own benefit. That would be unthinkable.
>>> Usurping results for some self serving economic or political gain is
>>> dastardly and I am sure they would never do it.
>>>
>>> what search engine do you use
>>
>>
>>> What is required is a complete shift from Search (index and heuristics)
>>> as a means of addressing information.
>>>
>>
>> sounds interesting but I d be tempted to build that on top of index based
>> search, rather than attempting to replace it
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The first requirement is a system that can assemble a complete set of
>>> possibilities in response to any query, simple or complex.
>>>
>>
>> ok- I accept that - at the same time we have spent several decades
>> attempting to find some
>> agreement of what we can consider ''complete''  taking the universe as
>> the top set
>>
>> what about  ... a systemt that can assemble an economically computable .
>> configurable and  transparently accountable set of possibilitis.....
>> Now by that I mean: do show the book entitled solomon curse in the
>> results, but POINT to
>> where the book got it name from.... this kind of proventance/traceablity
>> can be easily automated in todays web
>> no?  for example : search result 1.>>>>>relation to>>>>result2 etc, where
>> relation can be anything from
>> 'sounds like'' to ''its a parody of' to inspired by   etc
>>
>>>
>>> The second requirement is that the user can select from a list
>>> (hopefully a very long list) of filtering tools to derive truth from
>>> connections/possibilities.
>>>
>> sure
>>
>>>
>>> He or she might wish to see the query results from a variety of
>>> viewpoints to gain perspective.
>>>
>>> Let me give an example to illustrate:
>>>
>>> Two facts are in evidence ...
>>>
>>> The Alpha Motor Car Company made 100 million in profit last year ....
>>> and ...
>>>
>>> they fired 5,000 workers.
>>>
>>> Now comes the viewpoints to interpret the two fact.
>>>
>>> From the worker's union point of view (schema) ... those bastards, they
>>> made a hundred million and they fired 5,000 of the guys that made that
>>> profit possible for them.
>>>
>>> From the shareholder's  point of view (schema) ... we only made 100
>>> million on all that investment, .. fire 5,000 more workers.
>>>
>>> From management's point of view (schema) ... Well, how we managed to
>>> make any cars at all at the outrageous wages demanded by the union is a
>>> miracle. The only reason we were able to sell any of those cars was because
>>> we surrendered to the low offers made by the customers, squeezing us from
>>> the top. We managed to get some designs for products for next year and we
>>> ground out 100 million in profit.
>>>
>>> I like viewpoints but....  needs some work to implement them in the open
>> web.... assuming there shall be one.....
>>
>>
>>> Not as good as Toyota down the street but better than GM up the block.
>>> All in all, not a bad year.
>>>
>>> Now you see the framework for the solution to your problem. The schemas
>>> are not used to derive the possibilities (that has to be done by a new
>>> system of addressing information) but they are used to sort and qualify the
>>> results from as many different points of view as possible to gain real
>>> perspective.
>>>
>>> viewpoints are a technical standard which could be one way to solve this
>> bias
>>
>>
>> thanks Carl
>>
>>> Good question
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/2/2019 9:07 PM, Paola Di Maio wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I wanted to share a concern, as I know posts gets read and issued picked
>>> up and addressed in time
>>>
>>> I searched Google today for Solomon Curse, trying to find some
>>> references to some historical cause and conditions in the first house of
>>> David - not in relation to a specific race, but more in relation to the
>>> history of the modern world
>>> to see if anyone is following up the courses and recourses of history
>>> https://www.iep.utm.edu/vico/
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I was shocked to see that the first page of results were all about
>>> a book and its author, and nothing
>>> about history came up at all.  I had to add additional words to create
>>> some context to dig up some
>>> historical references.
>>>
>>> Just wanted to point out that I am very concerned about future
>>> generations receiving a distorted
>>> version of history by heavily commercially biased search results when
>>> typing some search terms and
>>> getting only/mostly the results from one entity, rather than a
>>> representation of the plurality of meanings and contexts
>>>
>>> Bias is a known problem in searches, however I was hoping that by now we
>>> would have
>>> some mechanisms to reduce this bias? Doesn't look like it.
>>>
>>> I hope that schema.org could help that by creating metaschemas for
>>> disambiguation
>>> or other mechanism, such a representation of context which should
>>> include at least
>>> two perspectives: the domain a search term is present, and the
>>> time/chronology (to show which came first)
>>>
>>>  Just a sunday morning note before digging in more confusing knowledge
>>> from search results
>>>
>>> PDM
>>>
>>>
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