CauseNet: Towards a causality graph extracted from the web

This makes little sense to me. Ontologies and all that have been tried and have always been found to be too brittle. Take the examples from the front page (which I expect to be among the best in their set): human_activity => climate_change. Those are such a broad concepts that it's practically useless. Or disease => death. There's no nuance at all. There isn't even a definition of what "disease" is, let alone a way to express that myxomatosis is lethal for only European rabbits, not humans, nor gold fish.

Democritus (b 460BCE) said, “I would rather discover one cause than gain the kingdom of Persia,” which suggests that finding true causes is rather difficult.

"According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxes's first attempt to bridge the Hellespont ended in failure when a storm destroyed the flax and papyrus cables of the bridges. In retaliation, Xerxes ordered the Hellespont (the strait itself) whipped three hundred times, and had fetters thrown into the water."

Not so sure one should take stories about who said something in ancient times at face value ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_I