Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Develop an Internet Truth Machine
Hugh Pickens writes "Will Oremus writes that when something momentous is unfolding—the Arab Spring, Hurricane Sandy, Friday's horrific elementary school shooting in Connecticut—Twitter is the world's fastest, most comprehensive, and least reliable source of breaking news and in ongoing events like natural disasters, the results of Twitter misinformation can be potentially deadly. During Sandy, for instance, some tweets helped emergency responders figure out where to direct resources. Others provoked needless panic, such as one claiming that the Coney Island hospital was on fire, and a few were downright dangerous, such as the one claiming that people should stop using 911 because the lines were jammed. Now a research team at Yahoo has analyzed tweets from Chile's 2010 earthquake and looked at the potential of machine-learning algorithms to automatically assess the credibility of information tweeted during a disaster. A machine-learning classifier developed by the researchers uses 16 features to assess the credibility of newsworthy tweets and identified the features that make information more credible: credible tweets tend to be longer and include URLs; credible tweeters have higher follower counts; credible tweets are negative rather than positive in tone; and credible tweets do not include question marks, exclamation marks, or first- or third-person pronouns. Researchers at India's Institute of Information Technology also found that credible tweets are less likely to contain swear words (PDF) and significantly more likely to contain frowny emoticons than smiley faces. The bottom line is that an algorithm has the potential to work much faster than a human, and as it improves, it could evolve into an invaluable 'first opinion' for flagging news items on Twitter that might not be true writes Oremus. 'Even that wouldn't fully prevent Twitter lies from spreading or misleading people. But it might at least make their purveyors a little less comfortable and a little less smug.'"
1. Reality is relative, as Einstein showed us. And 2. Nearly all stuff we think we "know" is based on somebody else telling us. Somebody we *trusted*. Or who of you has confirmed the Higgs himself. Or just something as simple as that text you're currently reading actually coming Slashdot.
Yes, of course there's math and all that stuff. But still: Have you verified it yourself? No. Most probably not even remotely. So no, you do not actually know if it is true. You only *trust* that it is true.
And that is why there is no absolute reality nor an absolute truth in practice. There is only your sensory input and your trust. And that's usually OK.
When it becomes a problem, is when you start thinking it's the "absolute truth" and that theories would be "facts". It's a theory. And that's okay. Because it turned out to be very useful for you, or you wouldn't use it.
So no, don't trust anything posing as "the truth" or "the facts". That's when the biggest bullshit that you ever saw hides right behind it.