5 ms·

Show HN: Marqt.org lets you vote on the truth

6 points by arthurhur 3y ago

I'm Arthur, and I wanted to share an MVP for Marqt.org, which lets you crowd-source the truth. John Stuart Mill said that "Truth emerges from the clash of ideas." In that spirit, Marqt brings two adversarial sides together to quantify truth and showcase the best arguments for each side. It is inspired by markets, where buyers and sellers discover a product's true price and update it dynamically. The ultimate aim is to build an open-source semantic knowledge base that represents the collective wisdom of humanity in real-time. If we can do this, I believe it can solve the problem of misinformation in the media and slow the virality of disinformation. More importantly, I believe can be a key part of the AGI stack and allow humans to be paid for building and maintaining it. So what is a marqt? A marqt is a short statement (120 chars or less) that can be true or false. You swipe right to "marq it" true or swipe left to "marq it" false (or use hotkeys j/k or t/f). Your "marq" counts toward a collective tally that determines how true or false any given marqt is (so something can be "68% true" or "93% false"). Unlike polls, marqts don't expire, so you can change your marq if new data or evidence comes to light or if you change your mind. After you "make your marq," you are encouraged to add a "remarq," or an explanation for your vote. Existing remarqs can be upvoted or downvoted based on how "remarqable" or "unremarqable" they are, a la Stack Overflow. You can also "make a marqt" by entering a statement into the marqt maker. You submit by marqing it true or false. It currently only accepts statements in the present tense ("current truths"), but "future truths" (predictions) will come down the line. Inside the marqt maker is a fine-tuned BERT model that roughly ensures the statement is sensical, grammatical, and not a question. "Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome." -Charlie Munger The incentives in betting markets are to win money, but for every winner there is a loser on the other side, making it arguably a zero-sum game. The incentives in the marqt are to create engaging marqts that encourage the most participation through a point system called "marqs earned." The goal is eventually for people to be able to trade in their marqs earned for money (via a "marqtplace," of course). You earn one point for every marq you make, every remarq you add, every remarqable or unremarqable vote, and for every marqt you make. However, if you are the marqt maker, you collect all the points from the activity in your marqt – every marq, remarq, and remarqable/unremarqable vote. You also collect all the remarqable upvotes for your remarqs. Likewise, you lose points for unremarqable downvotes. You can view everything and interact with the UI and inference model in demo mode (without signing up), but I hope you sign up for an account. I intentionally am not using analytics or cookies because I'm not interested in secretly tracking what users do on the site, I'm interested in showcasing what they create. It's just an MVP for now. You may need to refresh the page every now and then, but please point out any bugs and feature requests. I specifically learned how to program a year and a half ago so that I could build Marqt.org because I believe it is important for society to accurately define truth in an age when information travels (and changes) faster than ever, and when LLMs so confidently lie and have been heavily prompted to avoid controversial topics. I have deep respect for the HN community, and I won't hide the fact that it's nerve-wracking to finally announce this because you're all so brilliant. I welcome your criticism and advice, and sincerely thank you for your time. Arthur arthur@marqt.org Front-end: JavaScript Back-end and API: Django/DRF ML: deberta-v3-xsmall via Hugging Face Deployed on: Google Cloud Run

sharemywin 3y ago
a lot of the times misinformation is about vague statements or gross generalizations. so for me a lot of these statements the answer is "it depends"
- arthurhur 3y ago
  Agreed. I just kicked it off with some initial ideas, but the idea is that open-sourcing a knowledge base will eventually run the entire range, from axiomatic statements (like F = ma) to incredibly subjective ones, like some of the ones in there right now. You could also use it to suss out where the "it depends" range lands. For example, you could add an entire set of slightly different marqts, like "Joe Biden is a [great, good, decent, okay, effective, bad, horrible] president" to see where volume/engagement spikes the highest and where things are more even. The marqt maker will accept any statement you create, so I hope you will add some marqts of your own! Also, the remarq system is meant to flesh out the nuances. So, for example, "given these circumstances, this is why I marqed this statement true." I haven't added any remarqs of my own yet because I was hoping to see how users would respond to the UI flow first.
codingdave 3y ago
I'm unclear how crowdsourcing will land at the truth. Even ignoring the potential for abuse and gaming the results, It seems like you would land not at truth, but at the least common denominator of how people understand things, which is quite different than facts.
- arthurhur 3y ago
  I hear you. I mean, there has been an entire field of study devoted to defining what truth is for basically as long as the written word has existed. My basic premise is that: 1. Truth is subjective. 2. Truth is dynamic. I believe that truth is defined by what the majority of people says is true. And that that truth can change if the majority of people change their mind. Basically that empirical truth > ideal truth. So, for example, "The sun revolves around the earth." If you lived in 250 BC, that was a true statement. Obviously, today it is not true, but if you were around when Galileo was persecuted, you might be on the fence given the evidence and data that came out after Copernicus' discoveries and possible concern over what the ruling class may have done to you if you openly expressed your thoughts. Basically, that period signaled a shift in what was deemed true. This means that something we believe to be true today can potentially be false tomorrow, and I built this app to be able to track how "truth" changes over time, because now truth doesn't change over centuries, but month/weeks/days/minutes. A lot of the thinking behind marqt came from the stock market (obviously, based on what I named it). There are buyers and sellers that buy something if they think it is cheap and sell something if they think it is expensive. Where they meet is the "true" price – at that moment, you can't sell it higher than what people are willing to pay for it or buy it cheaper than what people are willing to buy it. The other aspect of the stock market is that "markets move." Just because a stock trades for a certain price right now, it changes literally by microseconds due to a myriad of factors, whether they are earnings, changes in balance sheets, correlations, interest rates, macro events, or speculation. I think now, especially with the decentralization of media channels and how effectively the internet has increased the speed of discourse, people have a hard time trusting what they hear and read. But people trust numbers. If I told you about a movie you haven't heard of and you wanted to know if it was worth watching, you would probably look up the rating on Rotten Tomatoes. People also generally trust polls (or at the very least don't dismiss them), on the condition that the sample size properly reflects the population it is polling. And the more people you sample evenly, the more accurate the number will reflect the population. So the idea was to build something like a voting system for truth. But instead of being stuck with your choice, you can change your mind if the circumstances change. I am a child of the 80s and 90s, and for the entirety of my childhood, we were told that saturated fats and cholesterol were the worst things you could eat. That was true. We were shown a food pyramid that was a model of what we should eat, from most to least, with carbohydrates at the base and fat at the top. Decades later, we are now in the middle of an epidemic of diabetes and obesity after companies peddled low fat, high sugar products to the masses, making them believe they were eating healthy because "these cookies have 0g fat" and "I can't believe it's not butter." Now, certain cholesterols and fats are actually good for you, and avocado toast and butter blended into your coffee have made their way into the culture of "wellness," while health experts now tell us to avoid carbohydrates. It was true that Iraq was acquiring massive quantities of yellowcake to build weapons of mass destruction before we went in there and found no nuclear weapons. Bernie Madoff was a brilliant hedge fund manager before he was a fraud. I would have loved to see how truth and facts changed from January 2020 through 2022. "Masks are effective in stopping the spread of COVID-19." "The Biontech Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective in stopping transmission of COVID." You saw it in prediction markets the evening of the 2020 election, as Florida and some other states were being reported, as the markets fluctuated with high volatility. I built Marqt.org to be able to capture those moments in history.

6 points by arthurhur 3y ago

sharemywin 3y ago

a lot of the times misinformation is about vague statements or gross generalizations. so for me a lot of these statements the answer is "it depends"

arthurhur 3y ago
Agreed. I just kicked it off with some initial ideas, but the idea is that open-sourcing a knowledge base will eventually run the entire range, from axiomatic statements (like F = ma) to incredibly subjective ones, like some of the ones in there right now. You could also use it to suss out where the "it depends" range lands. For example, you could add an entire set of slightly different marqts, like "Joe Biden is a [great, good, decent, okay, effective, bad, horrible] president" to see where volume/engagement spikes the highest and where things are more even. The marqt maker will accept any statement you create, so I hope you will add some marqts of your own! Also, the remarq system is meant to flesh out the nuances. So, for example, "given these circumstances, this is why I marqed this statement true." I haven't added any remarqs of my own yet because I was hoping to see how users would respond to the UI flow first.

codingdave 3y ago

I'm unclear how crowdsourcing will land at the truth. Even ignoring the potential for abuse and gaming the results, It seems like you would land not at truth, but at the least common denominator of how people understand things, which is quite different than facts.

arthurhur 3y ago
I hear you. I mean, there has been an entire field of study devoted to defining what truth is for basically as long as the written word has existed. My basic premise is that: 1. Truth is subjective. 2. Truth is dynamic. I believe that truth is defined by what the majority of people says is true. And that that truth can change if the majority of people change their mind. Basically that empirical truth > ideal truth. So, for example, "The sun revolves around the earth." If you lived in 250 BC, that was a true statement. Obviously, today it is not true, but if you were around when Galileo was persecuted, you might be on the fence given the evidence and data that came out after Copernicus' discoveries and possible concern over what the ruling class may have done to you if you openly expressed your thoughts. Basically, that period signaled a shift in what was deemed true. This means that something we believe to be true today can potentially be false tomorrow, and I built this app to be able to track how "truth" changes over time, because now truth doesn't change over centuries, but month/weeks/days/minutes. A lot of the thinking behind marqt came from the stock market (obviously, based on what I named it). There are buyers and sellers that buy something if they think it is cheap and sell something if they think it is expensive. Where they meet is the "true" price – at that moment, you can't sell it higher than what people are willing to pay for it or buy it cheaper than what people are willing to buy it. The other aspect of the stock market is that "markets move." Just because a stock trades for a certain price right now, it changes literally by microseconds due to a myriad of factors, whether they are earnings, changes in balance sheets, correlations, interest rates, macro events, or speculation. I think now, especially with the decentralization of media channels and how effectively the internet has increased the speed of discourse, people have a hard time trusting what they hear and read. But people trust numbers. If I told you about a movie you haven't heard of and you wanted to know if it was worth watching, you would probably look up the rating on Rotten Tomatoes. People also generally trust polls (or at the very least don't dismiss them), on the condition that the sample size properly reflects the population it is polling. And the more people you sample evenly, the more accurate the number will reflect the population. So the idea was to build something like a voting system for truth. But instead of being stuck with your choice, you can change your mind if the circumstances change. I am a child of the 80s and 90s, and for the entirety of my childhood, we were told that saturated fats and cholesterol were the worst things you could eat. That was true. We were shown a food pyramid that was a model of what we should eat, from most to least, with carbohydrates at the base and fat at the top. Decades later, we are now in the middle of an epidemic of diabetes and obesity after companies peddled low fat, high sugar products to the masses, making them believe they were eating healthy because "these cookies have 0g fat" and "I can't believe it's not butter." Now, certain cholesterols and fats are actually good for you, and avocado toast and butter blended into your coffee have made their way into the culture of "wellness," while health experts now tell us to avoid carbohydrates. It was true that Iraq was acquiring massive quantities of yellowcake to build weapons of mass destruction before we went in there and found no nuclear weapons. Bernie Madoff was a brilliant hedge fund manager before he was a fraud. I would have loved to see how truth and facts changed from January 2020 through 2022. "Masks are effective in stopping the spread of COVID-19." "The Biontech Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective in stopping transmission of COVID." You saw it in prediction markets the evening of the 2020 election, as Florida and some other states were being reported, as the markets fluctuated with high volatility. I built Marqt.org to be able to capture those moments in history.