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> Do the Hebrew Wikipedia and the Arabic Wikipedia agree on the status of Israel? If they don’t agree, perhaps they can agree to disagree and we can encode tha

> Do the Hebrew Wikipedia and the Arabic Wikipedia agree on the status of Israel? If they don’t agree, perhaps they can agree to disagree and we can encode that fact instead.

kijin 6y ago
A lot of serious social problems would be non-issues if only people could agree to disagree.
- atoav 6y ago
  Unless they agree to disagree about the facts in a case where one side is factually right while the other has the consistency of a lie your 3-year-old would make up to stop you from discovering they ate all the cookies. Agree to disagree is like saying there is no right side in this matter which is okay for topics where there isn't. Many topics however are not a matter of perspective, they are a matter of who is factually right. IMO in such a case agreeing to disagree can often be destructive, because it legitimises a position which is factually wrong and constructs an illusion of balance where there is none. If one side says it rains and the other says it doesn't, agreeing to disagree is wrong. If there is disagreement about what the facts mean, then sometimes both perspective can be true at the same time. This is however not as often the case as I wish it would be..
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "If one side says it rains and the other says it doesn't, agreeing to disagree is wrong" No. Agreeing to disagree is accepting, that a subject is disputed with different, even contradicting opinions. An AI could in theory extract both versions and present them as disputed. Meaning, there are different definitions of a word and the correctness of facts. And "raining or not" is also not as simple as you think. A person from spain will consider a certain state as raining, which a british person might see as some humidity in the air ..
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      Let’s take the theory of evolution for a spin. Being a theory and not a hypothesis, it is a proven scientific fact. Yet a large chunk of the population chooses to not believe it to be true. So how do we encode this knowledge? Option 1: we call it a controversy and make it sound like because some people don’t believe in it means it might not be correct. Option 2: we state upfront that the theory of evolution is correct but link to a “incorrect but competing viewpoint” of creationism. Option 3: we create three articles: one about the theory of evolution, one about creationism, and one about the disagreements between the creationists and the rest of the modern world. I like option 3 best as it is the most complete picture of the three, and all it requires is the abstract concept of controversy or disagreement. I don’t know how you encode “dumbass” in this new format but it might be a useful concept to explain to aliens if they decide to visit Earth.
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        >Being a theory and not a hypothesis, it is a proven scientific fact A theory is distinct from a hypothesis, but surely it isn't itself a fact either. Wouldn't it be better to say that the theory of evolution explains a lot of facts, which we may also call (observed) evolution? Really, aren't we just calling two related concepts "evolution"?
        IgorPartola 6y ago
        We use evolution every day in pharmaceuticals. We use it in our crops and in domesticated animals. If it was under question we wouldn’t call it a theory. Evolution is as real as gravity except it has even more evidence and scientific understanding, while gravity still doesn’t play nice with quantum mechanics and of course general relativity defines it as something most people cannot intuit. Evolution is a fact. I don’t see two related concepts here. Besides, consider that the second closest hypothesis that explains life on earth is that a bearded man in the sky got bored one day and created the universe, then made a man and a woman and gave them a bunch of dinosaurs to play with but instead they played with a snake, an apple, and each other’s bodies until he kicked them out of his play garden because they didn’t play by his rules, so the two of them through tremendous amounts of incest populated the earth (a fact easily disproven by a number of methods including simple genetic testing). No I don’t think it would be better to call the theory of evolution anything but a proven fact. If people want to believe in fairy tales that’s fine. But that’s not a reason to cloud scientific discovery.

> Do the Hebrew Wikipedia and the Arabic Wikipedia agree on the status of Israel? If they don’t agree, perhaps they can agree to disagree and we can encode that fact instead.

kijin 6y ago

A lot of serious social problems would be non-issues if only people could agree to disagree.

atoav 6y ago
Unless they agree to disagree about the facts in a case where one side is factually right while the other has the consistency of a lie your 3-year-old would make up to stop you from discovering they ate all the cookies. Agree to disagree is like saying there is no right side in this matter which is okay for topics where there isn't. Many topics however are not a matter of perspective, they are a matter of who is factually right. IMO in such a case agreeing to disagree can often be destructive, because it legitimises a position which is factually wrong and constructs an illusion of balance where there is none. If one side says it rains and the other says it doesn't, agreeing to disagree is wrong. If there is disagreement about what the facts mean, then sometimes both perspective can be true at the same time. This is however not as often the case as I wish it would be..
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "If one side says it rains and the other says it doesn't, agreeing to disagree is wrong" No. Agreeing to disagree is accepting, that a subject is disputed with different, even contradicting opinions. An AI could in theory extract both versions and present them as disputed. Meaning, there are different definitions of a word and the correctness of facts. And "raining or not" is also not as simple as you think. A person from spain will consider a certain state as raining, which a british person might see as some humidity in the air ..
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Let’s take the theory of evolution for a spin. Being a theory and not a hypothesis, it is a proven scientific fact. Yet a large chunk of the population chooses to not believe it to be true. So how do we encode this knowledge? Option 1: we call it a controversy and make it sound like because some people don’t believe in it means it might not be correct. Option 2: we state upfront that the theory of evolution is correct but link to a “incorrect but competing viewpoint” of creationism. Option 3: we create three articles: one about the theory of evolution, one about creationism, and one about the disagreements between the creationists and the rest of the modern world. I like option 3 best as it is the most complete picture of the three, and all it requires is the abstract concept of controversy or disagreement. I don’t know how you encode “dumbass” in this new format but it might be a useful concept to explain to aliens if they decide to visit Earth.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      >Being a theory and not a hypothesis, it is a proven scientific fact A theory is distinct from a hypothesis, but surely it isn't itself a fact either. Wouldn't it be better to say that the theory of evolution explains a lot of facts, which we may also call (observed) evolution? Really, aren't we just calling two related concepts "evolution"?
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        We use evolution every day in pharmaceuticals. We use it in our crops and in domesticated animals. If it was under question we wouldn’t call it a theory. Evolution is as real as gravity except it has even more evidence and scientific understanding, while gravity still doesn’t play nice with quantum mechanics and of course general relativity defines it as something most people cannot intuit. Evolution is a fact. I don’t see two related concepts here. Besides, consider that the second closest hypothesis that explains life on earth is that a bearded man in the sky got bored one day and created the universe, then made a man and a woman and gave them a bunch of dinosaurs to play with but instead they played with a snake, an apple, and each other’s bodies until he kicked them out of his play garden because they didn’t play by his rules, so the two of them through tremendous amounts of incest populated the earth (a fact easily disproven by a number of methods including simple genetic testing). No I don’t think it would be better to call the theory of evolution anything but a proven fact. If people want to believe in fairy tales that’s fine. But that’s not a reason to cloud scientific discovery.