

Ask HN:  Would a "truth" search engine be viable commercially? - amichail

A "truth" search engine would be one that only returns web pages containing accurate information.<p>For example, when searching for the age of the earth, only web pages indicating an accurate age would be returned.<p>Would such a search engine be viable commercially?<p>Sometimes the truth can be unpleasant.
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eli
So humans have to review each page (and periodically re-review them)? No, that
doesn't sound commercially viable at all.

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amichail
Suppose it were possible to construct such a search engine. Would many people
avoid it because it doesn't support certain belief(s)?

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eli
Honestly? I think I can figure out which pages to trust on my own. But if you
somehow came up with a way to show results that look like Google minus the
crap, I'd use it. That's a big "if" though.

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amichail
Perhaps you would, but a huge number of people are being misled by nonsense
all the time.

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eli
I don't think limiting them to a pre-approved subset of the web is a good idea
(though that hasn't stopped Hasidic Jews, Mormons, or the Chinese government
from trying similar plans)

If anything, I think the opposite approach would work better. Expose people to
_all_ viewpoints including ones that disagree with their world view. To
paraphrase Justice Brandeis, the best answer to bad speech is more speech.

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alex_c
Whose truth would it return?

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amichail
As a start, it would include all well-established scientific truths such as
evolution. It would also include recent history where there is little doubt
about what happened.

It would not include any web pages that present the other side of the debate.

It would exclude all conspiracy theories.

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alex_c
How do you define "well-established"?

What about well-established scientific THEORIES (i'm not sure what is the
definition of a scientific truth) that turn out to be false or inaccurate
after decades of being well-established?

What if such a well-established theory is in the process of being disproven or
replaced with a better theory - which happens to be "the other side of the
debate" today?

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amichail
If a theory turns out to be false/inaccurate, it would no longer be included.

If a theory is not the truth but is good enough in practical cases, such as
Newton's Laws, then that's fine.

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alex_c
But how do you decide that a theory has turned out to be false? Once a certain
percentage of qualified scientists agree? What percentage? And how do you
define a qualified scientist?

Think of all the FUD around climate change research. Do YOU know exactly which
studies are valid and which ones aren't? Do you just hire climatologists to
tell you? WHICH ones do you hire?

How do you define "good enough in practical cases"?

I could keep going like this.

I'm not even worrying about commercial viability, I'll make the assertion that
what you're proposing to build is impossible to build. My reasoning is that
you're trying to fit things without a universally accepted definition -
"truth" or "scientifically accepted" - into an absolute, binary system -
"include" or "exclude". That is impossible to do correctly or completely.

At best, you either end up with something fairly arbitrary, or you end up with
a system which only includes the "facts" accepted by everyone, and excludes
anything controversial. This ranges somewhere between useless and downright
harmful, in my opinion (if this system is accepted as "truth", then new ideas
have that much more of an uphill battle to be accepted).

~~~
amichail
It would include controversial topics where there is nonetheless scientific
consensus that one side is correct.

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gojomo
Maybe a knowledge base that helps clearly lay out all the competing factional
'truths' would be better? See for example the 'UberFact' proposal:

[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfac...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html)

