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CauseNet: Towards a causality graph extracted from the web

(causenet.org)
229 points geetee | 3 comments | 02 Sep 25 05:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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tgv ◴[02 Sep 25 07:42 UTC] No.45100192[source]▶
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.
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SilverElfin ◴[02 Sep 25 15:05 UTC] No.45104046[source]▶
What is an ontology exactly? I see Palantir talking about it all the time and it just sounds like vague marketing.
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1. tgv ◴[02 Sep 25 17:05 UTC] No.45105883[source]▶
It comes from "the knowledge of being," and has been used to describe real-world knowledge representation, in particular hierarchical(-ish) semantic networks in AI since its early days.
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2. SilverElfin ◴[02 Sep 25 18:47 UTC] No.45107358[source]▶
When I see Palantir talk about it in a press release is that something real or just fluffy marketing?
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3. tgv ◴[03 Sep 25 06:03 UTC] No.45112669[source]▶
Could be real. Such knowledge representation has been used in many systems. In limited domains, it can be useful.