ata comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: BenAlbahari 15 March 2010 02:33:17AM 2 points [-]

Experts on both sides of the 9/11 conspiracy debate:
http://www.takeonit.com/question/46.aspx

I didn't spend much time on this question, because there didn't seem to be compelling enough evidence to warrant further research.

Comment author: ata 15 March 2010 03:10:45AM *  6 points [-]

This makes me think your website would be improved by some means of ordering quotes based on the relevance of the speakers' expertise. In this case, it's easy enough to tell that bin Laden claiming responsibility is more relevant than Jesse Ventura having watched a video on YouTube, but on other issues, it might not be as clear-cut, and could serve to promote a false equivalence between the "experts" quoted on each side.

Comment author: BenAlbahari 15 March 2010 03:34:39AM 6 points [-]

The ordering algorithm currently works in two steps:

  1. Expertise Relevance: If the topic of expertise the expert has matches the topic of the question, the expert quote ranks higher (sub ordering: a rarer topic match gets a higher rank than a common topic match, e.g. a match for "climatology" would outrank a match for "science".)
  2. Expertise Depth: An expert quote with more sub-arguments out-ranks an expert quote with fewer sub-arguments.

Like many algorithms (such as collaborative filtering), the algorithm starts working better as the content is filled out, e.g.:
http://www.takeonit.com/question/5.aspx

P.S. I just tagged that question with the topic "War" so now Bin Laden bubbles to the top. Keep the feedback coming. It's incredibly helpful.

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