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and that my friends is how the internet will die. Exactly like this. The idea that someone reputeable is always right and and expert in his domain could not be

and that my friends is how the internet will die. Exactly like this. The idea that someone reputeable is always right and and expert in his domain could not be further fetched from the truth. Just read the following sentence and tell me what you think about it: "oh yeah i get all my information about my religion directly from the pope in the vatican, because we decided EONS ago that he is the source for this kind of stuff".

wizofaus 4y ago
Why wouldn't a Catholic consider anything written about their religion by the Pope to be more important/reputable than by some random stranger who happens to have a cult following? The GP's point was purely that currently there's no automated search result ranking mechanism that can take account of the expertise level of the author. It seems like a reasonable enough idea to me (though not without difficulties).
- peepeepoopoo2 4y ago
  > Why wouldn't a Catholic consider anything written about their religion by the Pope to be more important/reputable than by some random stranger who happens to have a cult following? Weren't Galileo and Copernicus famously persecuted because of exactly that reason?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Weren't Galileo and Copernicus famously persecuted because of exactly that reason? Only on the internet, where history can be distilled into a single-sentence quip. In real life the truth is more complicated, but doesn't fit into a tweet.
    - peepeepoopoo2 4y ago
      Please point out the factually incorrect part instead of being broadly dismissive. The catholic church was only able to persecute Galileo and Copernicus in the first place because they were the only "trusted" source of information in their era, exactly as the GP comment is proposing to bring back to the present day.
      - slowmotiony 4y ago
        Not really, Copernicus' entire life and all his decades-long studies were paid for by the catholic church and his research was accepted by the Pope himself, even to the point of being taught at Catholic universities. Noone "persecuted" him in any way. It only changed over a hundred years later due to the opposition from the Protestants that his books became banned.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Galileo/Copernicus wrote about Catholicism? If a ranking system treats your expertise in one area as being relevant to another it's not doing its job. Accepted, religion is a bit of a special case given the way it tends to encourage views on subjects as broad as "how the universe came into being" or "how to be a good person" (and those views are almost never "religion isn't your best guide"), but a good page ranking algorithm should still be able to only apply "expertise" rating when it applies specifically to terms in the search phrase.
- pifm_guy 4y ago
  > ranking mechanism that can take account of the expertise level of the author I assure you that all major search engines use the author name of articles and blog posts and even posts of forums like HN for all kinds of purposes that end up influencing ranking. It's primarily for anti-spam (a user account with good content on one page probably has good content on another page), but is used to rank quality/expertise too.
  - koonsolo 4y ago
    They why do I get all kinds of SEO optimized results written by some low-wage content creator?
kreetx 4y ago
There can be a middle ground with mixing both random and trusted content. The problem with current search results is that SEO optimization and content marketing pretty much ruin search results with answers that score high on keywords but are actually low in value.
- jhoelzel 4y ago
  yeah... no. At least not in my opinion. The mixing of random and "trusted" content is already what is being done with pagerank. Truth is an agreement and trust is superficial. I know, I know there is truth in code, but that does not mean that the bigger concept aligns. I mean damn, we went as far as defining math as the "universal truth" because its replicateable. I dont think anybody wanted to convert reality to numbers but here we are represeting them this way. But hey, if you can develop a mathematical formular why blogspost A about "how to setup your linux computer" is much more true that blogpost B im really all ears.
virtual_void 4y ago
The parent seemed to suggest this was at an individual level, rather than everyone being forced to get information from some consensus trusted source. There’s no need, with this idea, for you to have to get your info directly from the Vatican. You can decide you trust someone different.
- jhoelzel 4y ago
  and how are you going to set up those experts for "your search ai"?` Because its really going to be different from the one your neighbour has. How do you select turstworthy people on a new topic? Does every search start with "hmmm i found 6521 people blogging about this, please click on the trustworthy avatars you like"? The concept you are trying to apply here, will just lead to your own bubble. Im not even going to go into detail of "orange men knows best" but this example alone should shock you.
  - virtual_void 4y ago
    No idea - it’s quite hard. I didn’t suggest the original idea and I’m not trying to apply the concept. I was merely pointing out that your argument was based on a false premise. Now you’re arguing about implementation, which is different.
  - afterburner 4y ago
    You find out about a person, evaluate them, and subscribe to their newsletter. This isn't about getting quick answers.
    - ranger47 4y ago
      It's interesting that people don't have the patients to vet or even start to question the veracity of their information sources. I think this part of the "how do you expert?" problem is the one that needs to be more carefully examined and solved. We can probably come up with 10 different ways for our algos and AIs to present "experts," but is everyone going to trust those methods? Not likely, so we fall back to the problem of "my expert is better than your expert" regardless of the talent pool or selection process. So, how do we solve that? Would people make better choices if the were given better options, or does human irrationality always win, in the end?
Keyframe 4y ago
You do realize this is more or less how PageRank worked? Seed of trustworthy domains and who they link to propagates the trustworthiness. This is a take on the idea where it'd be people (not really, still a source) and chain onwards. I had a similar idea (also, please take it) for online comment systems. Seed of people and who they invite is who they vouch for. The new invitees get to invite more etc. Now, and keep OPs suggestion in mind as well, that's the easy part - here's where it needs to go... If someone messes up, account gets banned and upchain (two levels let's say) gets a notice. Upchain gets one more notice and the whole chain's banned. One notice clears out in half a year or so. Two never. Yellow/red cards for the teams on the internet. One's always at fault, but whole team suffers and is responsible.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  What incentivises me to be active and commit time and energy to the site knowing that at any time I could be permabanned by the behaviour of someone two levels away whom I've never even heard of? That's worse than Twitter banning you for some rule break, that's Twitter banning you for someone else's rule break. You might say that would make you think thrice about inviting people, and yes it would - what incentivises anyone to invite anyone, ever? What makes your system different from a small group of friends making a private invite-only Discord/IRC channel/etc. and keeping it exclusive right now?
te_chris 4y ago
Especially wealthy VCs like PG who seem to have decided that because they can throw money around they truly are expert in everything.
- metadat 4y ago
  This is a classic trait of narcissists.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  That's why I explicitly said "about a certain topic". I have no clue if he knows something about raising kids. I trust PG for knowledge about startups. That's it.
berniedurfee 4y ago
I agree. I’ve come to realize that the people that “wrote the book” on a particular subject aren’t necessarily experts, they’re just the person who happened to be motivated to write a book on the subject. Learning about a subject or an event comes from hearing many voices, across a broad spectrum of perspectives and opinions. Then you can form your own conclusions out of all the possible truths.
- jhoelzel 4y ago
  Exactly this. In germany we had a couple of scandals where somebody became a bestseller author by buying his own books and gifting them to everybody he meets in bulk. So he basically paid for his sales himself and was of course also able to claim a tax benefit for it. Truth is not a democratic process and very hard to verify just by using data.
koonsolo 4y ago
> and that my friends is how the internet will die. Not asking to rewrite the whole internet here, just an alternative search engine. > The idea that someone reputeable is always right and and expert in his domain could not be further fetched from the truth. The expert probably knows more than the non-expert. If you like to get your info from low-waged SEO writers, fine by me. > Just read the following sentence and tell me what you think about it: "oh yeah i get all my information about my religion directly from the pope in the vatican, because we decided EONS ago that he is the source for this kind of stuff". The pope, and everyone that he trusts, seems like credible sources for Catholics, no? Maybe you can throw in some theologist you like (and therefore also this persons trusted connections), and you can have a pretty good catalogue of trusted searchable information.

wizofaus 4y ago

Why wouldn't a Catholic consider anything written about their religion by the Pope to be more important/reputable than by some random stranger who happens to have a cult following? The GP's point was purely that currently there's no automated search result ranking mechanism that can take account of the expertise level of the author. It seems like a reasonable enough idea to me (though not without difficulties).

peepeepoopoo2 4y ago
> Why wouldn't a Catholic consider anything written about their religion by the Pope to be more important/reputable than by some random stranger who happens to have a cult following? Weren't Galileo and Copernicus famously persecuted because of exactly that reason?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Weren't Galileo and Copernicus famously persecuted because of exactly that reason? Only on the internet, where history can be distilled into a single-sentence quip. In real life the truth is more complicated, but doesn't fit into a tweet.
  - peepeepoopoo2 4y ago
    Please point out the factually incorrect part instead of being broadly dismissive. The catholic church was only able to persecute Galileo and Copernicus in the first place because they were the only "trusted" source of information in their era, exactly as the GP comment is proposing to bring back to the present day.
    - slowmotiony 4y ago
      Not really, Copernicus' entire life and all his decades-long studies were paid for by the catholic church and his research was accepted by the Pope himself, even to the point of being taught at Catholic universities. Noone "persecuted" him in any way. It only changed over a hundred years later due to the opposition from the Protestants that his books became banned.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Galileo/Copernicus wrote about Catholicism? If a ranking system treats your expertise in one area as being relevant to another it's not doing its job. Accepted, religion is a bit of a special case given the way it tends to encourage views on subjects as broad as "how the universe came into being" or "how to be a good person" (and those views are almost never "religion isn't your best guide"), but a good page ranking algorithm should still be able to only apply "expertise" rating when it applies specifically to terms in the search phrase.
pifm_guy 4y ago
> ranking mechanism that can take account of the expertise level of the author I assure you that all major search engines use the author name of articles and blog posts and even posts of forums like HN for all kinds of purposes that end up influencing ranking. It's primarily for anti-spam (a user account with good content on one page probably has good content on another page), but is used to rank quality/expertise too.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  They why do I get all kinds of SEO optimized results written by some low-wage content creator?

kreetx 4y ago

There can be a middle ground with mixing both random and trusted content. The problem with current search results is that SEO optimization and content marketing pretty much ruin search results with answers that score high on keywords but are actually low in value.

jhoelzel 4y ago
yeah... no. At least not in my opinion. The mixing of random and "trusted" content is already what is being done with pagerank. Truth is an agreement and trust is superficial. I know, I know there is truth in code, but that does not mean that the bigger concept aligns. I mean damn, we went as far as defining math as the "universal truth" because its replicateable. I dont think anybody wanted to convert reality to numbers but here we are represeting them this way. But hey, if you can develop a mathematical formular why blogspost A about "how to setup your linux computer" is much more true that blogpost B im really all ears.

virtual_void 4y ago

The parent seemed to suggest this was at an individual level, rather than everyone being forced to get information from some consensus trusted source. There’s no need, with this idea, for you to have to get your info directly from the Vatican. You can decide you trust someone different.

jhoelzel 4y ago
and how are you going to set up those experts for "your search ai"?` Because its really going to be different from the one your neighbour has. How do you select turstworthy people on a new topic? Does every search start with "hmmm i found 6521 people blogging about this, please click on the trustworthy avatars you like"? The concept you are trying to apply here, will just lead to your own bubble. Im not even going to go into detail of "orange men knows best" but this example alone should shock you.
- virtual_void 4y ago
  No idea - it’s quite hard. I didn’t suggest the original idea and I’m not trying to apply the concept. I was merely pointing out that your argument was based on a false premise. Now you’re arguing about implementation, which is different.
- afterburner 4y ago
  You find out about a person, evaluate them, and subscribe to their newsletter. This isn't about getting quick answers.
  - ranger47 4y ago
    It's interesting that people don't have the patients to vet or even start to question the veracity of their information sources. I think this part of the "how do you expert?" problem is the one that needs to be more carefully examined and solved. We can probably come up with 10 different ways for our algos and AIs to present "experts," but is everyone going to trust those methods? Not likely, so we fall back to the problem of "my expert is better than your expert" regardless of the talent pool or selection process. So, how do we solve that? Would people make better choices if the were given better options, or does human irrationality always win, in the end?

Keyframe 4y ago

You do realize this is more or less how PageRank worked? Seed of trustworthy domains and who they link to propagates the trustworthiness. This is a take on the idea where it'd be people (not really, still a source) and chain onwards. I had a similar idea (also, please take it) for online comment systems. Seed of people and who they invite is who they vouch for. The new invitees get to invite more etc. Now, and keep OPs suggestion in mind as well, that's the easy part - here's where it needs to go... If someone messes up, account gets banned and upchain (two levels let's say) gets a notice. Upchain gets one more notice and the whole chain's banned. One notice clears out in half a year or so. Two never. Yellow/red cards for the teams on the internet. One's always at fault, but whole team suffers and is responsible.

jodrellblank 4y ago
What incentivises me to be active and commit time and energy to the site knowing that at any time I could be permabanned by the behaviour of someone two levels away whom I've never even heard of? That's worse than Twitter banning you for some rule break, that's Twitter banning you for someone else's rule break. You might say that would make you think thrice about inviting people, and yes it would - what incentivises anyone to invite anyone, ever? What makes your system different from a small group of friends making a private invite-only Discord/IRC channel/etc. and keeping it exclusive right now?

te_chris 4y ago

Especially wealthy VCs like PG who seem to have decided that because they can throw money around they truly are expert in everything.

metadat 4y ago
This is a classic trait of narcissists.
koonsolo 4y ago
That's why I explicitly said "about a certain topic". I have no clue if he knows something about raising kids. I trust PG for knowledge about startups. That's it.

berniedurfee 4y ago

I agree. I’ve come to realize that the people that “wrote the book” on a particular subject aren’t necessarily experts, they’re just the person who happened to be motivated to write a book on the subject. Learning about a subject or an event comes from hearing many voices, across a broad spectrum of perspectives and opinions. Then you can form your own conclusions out of all the possible truths.

jhoelzel 4y ago
Exactly this. In germany we had a couple of scandals where somebody became a bestseller author by buying his own books and gifting them to everybody he meets in bulk. So he basically paid for his sales himself and was of course also able to claim a tax benefit for it. Truth is not a democratic process and very hard to verify just by using data.

koonsolo 4y ago

> and that my friends is how the internet will die. Not asking to rewrite the whole internet here, just an alternative search engine. > The idea that someone reputeable is always right and and expert in his domain could not be further fetched from the truth. The expert probably knows more than the non-expert. If you like to get your info from low-waged SEO writers, fine by me. > Just read the following sentence and tell me what you think about it: "oh yeah i get all my information about my religion directly from the pope in the vatican, because we decided EONS ago that he is the source for this kind of stuff". The pope, and everyone that he trusts, seems like credible sources for Catholics, no? Maybe you can throw in some theologist you like (and therefore also this persons trusted connections), and you can have a pretty good catalogue of trusted searchable information.