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Inductive reasoning is how the scientific method works, however. "I've run 10,000 experiments that show toy bricks are green, therefore I can say with great co

• kbenson 10y ago
  The point is not that you can't trust your results, it's that you can't extrapolate a theory about all toy bricks unless you know you are seeing a representative sample of all bricks. "I've run 10,000 experiments that show toy bricks I found on the ground are green, therefore I can say with great confidence that all toy bricks are green." What about bricks in the toy chest? What if someone was building something green before you tested? As this applies to Facebook's statement, all they can assert is that they've found a way to detect fake Facebook accounts that they've tested against the accounts they've been able to ascertain are fake. What about the fake accounts they could not confirm were fake, or that weren't identified in any way?
  • cgriswald 10y ago
    I have no idea what statement you're referring to in particular since it's not in the article and you haven't cited anything. Facebook is looking at tackling farming. In that context, the vast majority of accounts are likely to be operated in the same way. They need to avoid detection and they need to do it as efficiently as possible in order to make the most profit. Facebook has now cracked this particular code and an arms race is likely to ensue. But at the moment Facebook discovered this, it was unlikely there were a significant number of farming operations doing things any differently. No one is claiming this applies to all fake accounts (or if they are, it's definitely not in the article). Obviously a catfishing account will be run quite differently than a farming account.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      I referring to the title of the submission (notable because it's not the title of the article, which is against HN guidelines), which is currently "Fake Facebook accounts can be detected by when they post and the vocabulary used". I assume the top-level comment was referring to that as well. My comment up-thread was really mean to address that while it's true that knowing things with absolute certainty is hard, that shouldn't excuse us from making sure our claims aren't overly broad given the experiment and results.
  • bduerst 10y ago
    You should read some Karl Popper (Science as Falsification). You're essentially getting at why science is both inductive and deductive. Sure this article is inductive, but it's conclusion is falsifiable, so people can test the hypothesis over and over again. Pointing out that they haven't tested the everything in the universe, including the celestial teapot, doesn't mean that it's false. It's just that it has never been falsified yet.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      I wasn't making a statement that it was false, just supporting the original comment's assertion that the submission title (which has since changed to match the article title) was overly broad in its assertion (at least that's how I interpreted the top-level comment). Thanks for the recommendation though, I'll take a look. :) 1: The original title was "Fake Facebook accounts can be detected by when they post and the vocabulary used", which without additional qualification I think is quite a strong statement, and has some problems because of that.