Google To Predict Accuracy of Political Statements

pestario writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about a service which can give the probability of the accuracy of statements made by politicians, among other things. From the Reuters article, Schmidt says: "We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability." Can Google's 'truth predictor' bring an end to sound bites and one-liners? I'm not holding my breath...""

Comments

Layman's method

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you tell a politician is lying?

Easy, his lips are moving.

Re:I know what the politicians will do.

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll use this to tweak the statement until it passes the test.

Simple solution is just to classify everything they say as a lie. Then maybe they'll shut up.

Lying is not the major problem

[hey!]

it's not good, but it's not the worst thing politicians do.

Framing is the worst thing they do. By that I mean framing an issue in a narrow way cleverly engineered to suit a hidden agenda.

Re:Lying is not the major problem

[nate nice]

Otherwise known as lying.

You're either being truthful or you're not. You either have good intentions or you don't. Yes, the world *is* this black and white. The world *is* this simple. And you're either lying or you're not. Sometimes it's hard to determine, but it's one way or the other. Any amount of lying makes your whole statement untrue and therefore you're a liar.

If you're telling me something, even if it's "true", but the goal is decieve or take advantage of, then you're lying.

Re:Lying is not the major problem

[Grym]

Not necessarily...

Sure, GoogleTruth(TM) could, yes, figure out if Ted Stevens classic "The Internet is a series of tubes" is true or not, but what if I said something like "Abortion kills fetuses and embryos." While this statement is true, it sets the tone of the discussion in a way that ignores the other issues involved, such as the nature of the conception (e.g. rape, incest), the health/developmental state of the fetus, the right of the mother to choose what's best for herself and her body, etc. That is called framing a debate--and it's extremely effective.

Framing a debate can often boil down to the terms used themselves. A good example of this is the Patriot Act. What does that mean? Does voting against the Patriot Act make one... unpatriotic? And even if you agree with the provisions of the Patriot Act, what does increased homeland security/surveillence have to do with being a patriot?

This is what the GP was referring to as framing, and it IS NOT lying. It is, however, academically dishonest in that it is a form of a logical fallacy. I'll be very surprised if google can manage to catch this too, seeing as how most people are terrible at it.

-Grym

Re:Lying is not the major problem

[UpnAtom]

I suspect framing is easy to detect since it's all subjective.

Method:
a) filter statement for assertions and presuppositions. The remaining proportion is 'dressing up'.
b) filter out which assertions and presups are testable. The remaining proportion is framing/hyperbole.

Newspapers should employ de-spinners. All major politicians' statements should be followed by testable assertions and presups, otherwise known as things they actually mean and thus are willing to put their reputation on the line for.

I wrote a page on this sort of thing tho it's a couple of years old:
http://www.deep-trance.com/political-spin.html

Re:Lying is not the major problem

[tbone1]

So which are they? Freedom fighters, terrorists, or civilians?

Manipulatees.

News Lie Detector

[N8F8]

I thought by now we'd see a little icon at he corner of the screen whenever someone is talking on the news to display probability of deceipt. There are auditory and visual cues to detecting a lie, I'd think by now we'd have computers doing this real-time.

Re:News Lie Detector

[mazarin5]

Even if there were such a system, it would probably be made by Diebold.

I'd be surprised if this can be made really useful

[starseeker]

These comments are very broad, and thus rather difficult to evaluate, but I'm dubious. The evaluation of political statements is heavily involved with the context in which they are spoken. More important, many "truths" that must be delt with in politics are not "truth" in any absolute, scientific sense. Abortion, for example - people will argue until the end of time whether it should or shouldn't be allowed, and there is no real objective truth to be had there because it is a strictly moral question. You might be able to check concrete facts but that too runs smack into the problem of locating trusted sources, particularly about topics that are politically charged. Average internet opinion does not a fact make.

Also, take the case where a politician is taloring their statements to local concerns. They may make generalizations that do apply on a local scale but make a lot less sense (and are a lot less accurate) in a broader context.

More to the point perhaps, how would the US react to the knowledge that politicians can't be depended on for accuracy in statements? I think it would be a collective "well, duh" type of response.

He says the amount of information we are creating is staggering. That's probably true, but it is dwarfed by the amount of crap and uninformed opinions we are creating (see: slashdot). And on the internet, how does one tell? Deciding what to trust and who to trust is a problem that Google can't solve in general.

One thing that might be more useful is a way to use google to quickly locate references that assert facts, and allow an author to add a citation to that source if they think it is legit (or maybe re-think things if no legit source supports an assertion). But that gets back to what is a legit source? The public is unlikely to know for the range of topics involved ("well, the name sounds legit so I"ll believe them") and if they trust bogus sources being cited then the utility falls apart again, and may even be a step backwards (people sounding "legit" without really being legit, and backing each other up). I'd be happier to see politicians cite a source for their facts more often, but how many people will still agree with the person saying what they want to hear whether or not they have sources to back it up? Or dismiss cited sources that don't support their point of view?

No, in general it can't work without people doing the real work: critical thinking. There is no easy path to accuracy. Objectivity must be evaluted both for speaker and sources, and that always falls on the person asked to listen.

Re:Accuratize this: Cigarettes cause global warmin

[molarmass192]

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

I hope to hell you're trolling because if not you need to dig up a transcript of that speech and see what he really said before posting from Drudge and Newsmax, news organizations about as substantiative as The Onion. This snippet is taken so far out of context it's laughable. He was referring to the tobacco industry in the even broader context of agriculture. The statement you presented is about as accurate claiming he said: Gas powered skateboards are a "significant contributor to global warming!" when the original statement would more like "Transportation emissions are a significant contributor to global warming!".

I can't stand left wing nuts about as much as the next guy but right wing nuts are just as bad if not worse.

Re:I know what the politicians will do.

[Teun]

I don't think you understand (Communist) Chinese political culture.

Their leaders are not at all attempting to be truthful to their people, all they want is to be effective.
You know, the stuff diplomats make their money with, hmm maybe with the exception of a certain John R. Bolton.

Re:Good invention, but too late for poor Hungary

[Ash Vince]

Welcome to democracy. Get used to it.

Every Democratically elected government uses this trick. They bullshit the electorate before the electorate (usually trying to bribe them with less taxes) then do whatever they want when the get into power, safe in the knowledge that it is usually 4 years before anyone can do anything about it. Closer to the election the government will start being nice, but right after they election they never give a shit.

You want previous examples, go look at every British conservative election victory in the 1980's. In most cases the British people would do the same thing, vote for the opposition in the local elections as a protest then go back to the tories when the prime ministers election came round becuase they were promised the moon on a stick (lower taxes, better public services through less waste).

Sooner or later all of eastern europe will have to realise that Democracy is no better than Communism was. All it provides is the illusion of having a say in who runs your country so nobody starts a revolution. The people who run every country are the people with the the money. They support politicians with huge donations of cash in return for getting their way when those politicians get elected. Without that cash the politician is unable to pay for all the advertising required in order to get elected.

This will only change when the people of every nation actually take interest in running their own country, but at the moment most people want someone else to take charge so they don't have to make any tough decisions.

Iraq is the best example of this in the western world at present. We need their oil so we can use motor vehicles. Yet nobody wants the guilt of invading another country just to steal their natural resources. So the politicians make up some excuse and we all go along with it, not because we believe it, but because we dont want to face the truth. The alternative was that we kept paying Saudi Arabia for oil and they kept spending some of it on flying planes into our buildings (WTC - 9/11). Osama Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian. He is rich because we had to buy oil from his country. The Saudi Government (Not Democratic, it is ruled by a KING) tacitly support this and will quite happily turn a blind eye to their people funding and supporting terrorism abroad because it keeps the problem abroad, not at home).

The truth is that if everyone in the world had the same standard of living we do in the west, the world would be fucked. Imagine 6 Billion people all driving their own car whenever they pleased, using Gas that costed the same amount it does in the US. The remainder of the worlds oil would be gone inside a decade. So we trust our governments in the west to make sure this doesn't happen. That is why China and India are such a problem. They have too many people who all want the same standard of living we currently have so even they may break the bank, yet alone if Africa got on its feet as well.

So instead we all whine and carp on about how you can't trust politicians. But who wants to. We don't want to know the truth, we want someone to hold our hands and tell us that everything will be ok. That way, if the shit hits the fan we can honestly say it isnt our fault. In the mean time however we can get on with enjoying our lives free from worry.

Remember - It doesnt matter who you vote for, the Government always get in!

Wouldn't matter

[sheldon]

Considering you have a good portion of the population who suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, a condition accompanied by defending the indefensible, accusing people telling you the truth of lying, and believing people who are lying are telling you the truth. It doesn't matter.

This statement purposefully left vague to make a point.

not possible, I fear

[misanthrope101]

You can't eliminate the capacity of human language to convey lies. Were the Kurds "massacred" or "pacified?" Were they "innocent women and children" or "rebels bent on destroying Iraq?" Which one is a lie depends on who signs your check. People don't actually believe in one standard of conduct for everyone, so loaded language isn't going to go away. We're virtuous, they're dastardly cowards, and who has killed more people has nothing to do with anything. We were liberating, while they were oppressing. Surely you aren't too stupid to see the difference there? I could deceive you all day without technically telling a lie. 65% of Republicans, and almost 40% of Americans as a whole, still believe that Saddam was linked to 9/11, even though Bush has explicitly (though infrequently) admitted that no evidence links him to 9/11 or Al Queida. Is a computer program going to catch constant innuendo? Commercials don't actually tell you that drinking a particular beer or smoking a particular cigar will get you laid, so are they really lying? Yes, but not in a crass way where you can say "Aha! Caught you!"

Re:Good invention, but too late for poor Hungary

[Teun]

Sooner or later all of eastern europe will have to realise that Democracy is no better than Communism was. All it provides is the illusion of having a say in who runs your country so nobody starts a revolution. The people who run every country are the people with the the money.

This statement shows you were most definitely not around before the fall of the Soviet Union!
"Communism as it was" was probably together with Nazism one of the most evil forms of social engineering.

(That's not to say that the present Western way of running a democracy is without fault).

Why politicans lie.

[3seas]

It's a professional expectation.

the job of politicans is to get people to do things, to work together. Where often the only way to do that is to lie to them.

Unfortunately the problems is knowing whether or not what the true objective is, is something you actually support.

On the other hand, with this in mind, either google should always find the probability of the truth being told is low or
it should be noted that that google can be used to help promote the lies as being true in probability.

And of course there must be a disclaimer.

Re:Good invention, but too late for poor Hungary

[demigod]

Iraq is the best example of this in the western world at present. We need their oil so we can use motor vehicles. Yet nobody wants the guilt of invading another country just to steal their natural resources. So the politicians make up some excuse and we all go along with it, not because we believe it, but because we dont want to face the truth. The alternative was that we kept paying Saudi Arabia for oil

Now that not quite right. You see the problem was Iraq was dumping oil on the world market for $17 a barrel under the UN oil for food program. This was a big problem for the other big oil producers as it was driving oil prices down. So good'ol GW tried to get the UN to cancel the oil for food program, but that didn't work. Remember GW is a big friend of big oil and the Saudi royal family.

So the Iraq war was not about getting the oil from Iraq, but about keeping them from selling it so prices would go up. The fact that a war in the Middle East always makes the price of oil go up was just an added bonus. Worked out well for GW's oil buddies didn't it.