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I think Wikipedia is human data. But to say it's human knowledge (that is, that data is synonymous with knowledge in any context) is actually a pretty hardline
by uoaei 3y ago
I think Wikipedia is human data. But to say it's human knowledge (that is, that data is synonymous with knowledge in any context) is actually a pretty hardline epistemological stance to take, one that needs to be carefully examined and justified.
- kaba0 3y agoIt is not the sum-total of human knowledge surely. But that it is part of that knowledge is not a controversial statement in my opinion.
- uoaei 3y agoI didn't say it's the sum total anywhere nor did I imply that in any way. I also didn't say it doesn't represent some aspect of human knowledge. In set notation, what I am saying in above comments is ({data} ∪ {knowledge}) \ ({data} ∩ {knowledge}) ≠ ∅ while you are simply assuming (without a good reason) that I am saying {data} ∩ {knowledge} = ∅ If you look up the chain with the example of singing a Queen song, maybe that will help you better understand the angle that that commenter and I share about the differences between data and knowledge.
- soVeryTired 3y agoCompletely agree, and I think this is where a lot of the confusion in the thread is coming from. The prize claims to compress “human knowledge” but it’s actually a fairly rigid natural language text compression challenge. I’d conjecture that the algorithms that do well (as measured by compression ratio) on this particular corpus will also do well on corpuses that contain minimal ‘knowledge’. Compression algorithms that do well might encode a lot of data about syntax, word triple frequencies, and Wikipedia editorial style, but I really doubt they’ll encode much “knowledge”.