- From: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:53:30 +0100
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- CC: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, David Booth <david@dbooth.org>, "www-archive@w3.org" <www-archive@w3.org>, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
On 24/06/2013 22:01, Larry Masinter wrote: > The semantic web equivalent, I'm thinking, is removing the assumption of trust. But I think there is problem with the word 'trust' > >> In many cases, I think that trust is implied by the context of use, and that >> this corresponds to the "99% of the time" that I can ignore trust > > How much of what you read on the internet do you believe without reservation? If the answer is 99%, you're extremely gullible and in danger. If it's 50%, I think you're still in trouble. I don't see this as a counter to my "99%" - the key here is in the "context of use". I don't expect to blindly use 99% of what's out there, it's just that by the time it gets to an application I write, the decision to use (i.e. trust) that data has already been made. > > So maybe we're using 'trust' in different ways. > > Consider defining trust in terms of transfer of belief. Party A trusts party B to the extent that if B utters statement S and A receives S, that A's belief state changes to include S. If A trust B perfectly, then A believes everything B says. If A doesn't trust B at all, then A ignores what B says, or doesn't believe it, in any case. > > That is, "trust" is the factor that determines how utterances changes belief. Trust is individual, dependent on the origin (if A trusts B and C trusts B, the trust of A for B and of C for B are properties of A and C and not B), never total (no one really trusts someone else completely, people don't even trust their memory), rarely zero (usually someone's statements affect your belief). Trust might be negative (the fact that B says S leads A to believe not-S). It's true, we are using the word "trust" in different ways. In my 3-year involvement with the EU iTrust working group [1][2], I saw many different notions of trust described, but never that one. There was no total consensus about what trust actually meant, but many participants used the term in the sense of using trust as an indicator of how they expect some other party to behave, or how reliable they regard their pronouncements, in the absence of complete knowledge. The practical work on trust tended to tie in quite closely with risk analysis. [1] http://www.ninebynine.org/iTrust/iTrust-survey.html [2] http://www.ninebynine.org/iTrust/iTrustSurvey.pdf [[ Common themes: Subjective Defining trust 23 different definitions found Two economics papers used the same definition! Expectation or belief about anothers behaviour Related to specific context Risk of trusting behaviour Basis for decision with incomplete information Based on past evidence ]] -- (from [2]) > > Perhaps you have a word you'd rather use than 'trust'. No, I don't have a better word to offer. But as far as I can see, it trust comes down to decisions one makes in light of expectations of other parties' behaviour. So in that respect, it involves belief (though not necessarily how utterances change belief). > For a semantic system to be world wide, it needs to function resiliently so that in the face of incorrect, false, malicious, sloppy, negligent, lazy sources. Yes indeed. But I see a separation of concerns here: eventually, maybe our "semantic web" (the machine-articulated bits) will do all of this for us, but IMO that's a long way off, if indeed it's ever completely achievable. In the meanwhile, people are still in the loop, making trusting decisions and resolving ambiguities. > > If you think you can close off ambiguity and trust and just assume them, then I think it's certain you're not building a web-scale system. Sure there are contexts where you can assume trust by the context, but those models don't scale. I don't think that's (i.e. "close off ambiguity and trust and just assume them") what I've suggested. Indeed, my original response explicitly suggested this wasn't good enough ("But I fear if we don't build on sound foundations then sooner or later things will start to crumble."). What I'm looking for here is a framework which provides incremental advance from the current situation (which corresponds to my "99% of the time") to one in which we have some basic tools to represent and process information that may be subject to differing interpretation or acceptance (due to trust, ambiguity or whatever). In my view, some way to contextualize (otherwise processable) information is key to this (e.g. being able to explicitly label some claims as being based on a trusting decision). #g --
Received on Tuesday, 25 June 2013 09:57:17 UTC