True Knowledge - Blog

True Knowledge and Leibniz' Dream

I thought some of our readers might appreciate a bit of history.  Today we ask, what does [true knowledge] have to do with the philosopher Leibniz?

Leibniz was one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment: he invented calculus (simultaneously with Isaac Newton), created a calculating machine that could do arithmetic, while leaving a huge mark on Western philosophy. 

But even Leibniz couldn't realize one of his greatest dreams: the creation of a universal mathematical language.  He hated the way arguments collapse into shouting matches with each side refusing to budge or admit he's wrong.  This happens, Leibniz thought, because we don't understand one another: we use words with subtly different meanings, speaking past one another without even realizing it.  And if this is a problem for speakers of the same language, how much more difficult across a language barrier!

Leibniz' dream was not just for a neutral language like Esperanto.  Leibniz wanted to give language a mathematical foundation, so that reasoning about things in the world could be as tidy and straightforward as performing a mathematical calculation.

Leibniz never completed his language, but he did give some clues as to how it would work.  Each concept would have a 'characteristic number,' or actually, two numbers: a positive number representing all the concepts it necessarily implies, and a negative number representing all the concepts it necessarily denies.  A number represents concepts through its prime factors; the more ideas a complex idea implies, the more prime factors it has, each factor corresponding to a different implied concept.  Prime numbers represent basic concepts irreducible to anything else.  Image via Wikipedia

To take one of Leibniz' examples, suppose:

[animal] = (+13, -5), and
[rational being] = (+8, -7). 

The number for [human being], since a human being is a rational animal, would be:

[animal] x [rational being] = ((13 x 8), - (-5 x -7)) that is, (+104, -35).

In our terminology, we would say [human being] [is a subclass of] both [animal] and [rational being].  

But suppose one misunderstood the nature of a [rational being] and assigned the wrong number to it, e.g. (+10, -7).  With this poorly assigned number, it would follow that no [animal] is a [rational being]: for the +10 of [rational being] includes +5 as one of its factors, while [animal] includes -5, its opposite.  Since [animal] denies part of what [rational being] would necessarily affirm, one would have to conclude that 'no animal is rational,' i.e. that [animal] [is a distinct class from] [rational being], which is, of course, false. 

Obviously, a lot depends on getting these characteristic numbers correct, which was the encylopedic task Leibniz dreamed of but never completed.

One way of seeing what we're doing at [true knowledge] is continuing Leibniz' ambitious project.  We give each real-world concept or object a unique id, which ultimately corresponds to a binary number inside our database.  Our classes, attributes, relations, and generators establish rules according to which our knowledge engine reasons about these concepts.  What we have that Leibniz didn't is the ability, made possible by computers, to store an enormous database of facts and objects.  Our database already has 4,473,045 objects, and we've no intention of slowing down! 

Our experience at [true knowledge] shows both the exciting possibilites and the lingering difficulties of Leibniz' dream.  Leibniz would have been delighted at what we have accomplished already, but I also think he would have been disappointed that the internal 'language' of our knowledge engine is inaccessible to human beings.  Or we can put a positive spin on it.  Leibniz never imagined what [true knowledge] and other artificial intelligence applications make possible: that we would be able to delegate the 'menial' side of thinking to machines!

QuizBot now does SMS and Twitter

Starting today you can ask QuizBot questions via SMS (text message) if you live in the UK and via Twitter (if you're a Twitter user).

To ask questions via Twitter just follow tkquizbot, we'll automatically follow you back and then you can ask questions via Twitter direct message. e.g. d tkquizbot what is the capital of France.  You will recieve your answer as a direct message from tkquizbot.

 To ask a question via SMS just text quizbot followed by your question to 82820, e.g. quizbot what is the capital of France. (UK ONLY)

Be aware that texts cost 15p per text (plus your standard network charge for sending a text message) regardless of whether or not we answer your question.  We may improve this in the future (e.g. you only get charged if we give you an answer) but for now please be aware of this issue.

Hope you have fun playing with these features.  Feedback welcome.

What is the meaning of life? True Knowledge releases its top questions of 2008

As all the large search engines have been releasing their end-of-year top searches lists (Google's list, Ask's list, Yahoo's list) we thought it would be a good idea to follow suit and release our own list.

Image via WikipediaThe top 10 questions for 2008:

1. what is the meaning of life?
2. what time is it?
3. why is the sky blue?
4. how old is the earth?
5. how old is george bush?
6. does god exist?
7. who is bill gates?
8. what is the speed of light?
9. what is love?
10. what is the tallest building in the world?

We have included all questions even the ones we don't answer.  If you don't have a True Knowledge account you can ask the questions using quizbot.

As our userbase is tiny in comparison to the big boys (and a lot less mainstream) our searches (or questions) don't have a lot in common with their lists.  For example Sarah Palin and Britney Spears don't appear at all, instead "What is the meaning of life?" tops our list which still returns The Meaning of Life, the 1983 musical comedy film by Monty Python despite the best efforts of many users to make it return 42.

Zendesk now powering True Knowledge’s Forum and Help Desk

Around one in every twenty (logged in) visits to True Knowledge results in a user submitting feedback through the site's feedback box.  So we've been getting a lot feedback each day and up till now haven't been as good as we could at responding to messages, due mostly to a lack of a decent feedback management system.

That ends today as True Knowledge is now using Zendesk (a software-as-a-service helpdesk application) to manage, respond and track feedback we receive from users.

From now on, when you submit feedback your message will become a private ticket in our new helpdesk and we will track your ticket and respond to you from there.

Zendesk is also now powering our new forum which gives us many advantages over our previous solution.  We now have RSS feeds available for the whole forum, the individual forums and each discussion thread.  The look and feel of the forum is also far nicer than before and the bug that was preventing many users from accessing our old forum has now gone.

The one downside to this change is that we must start over with a fresh new forum.  We felt that the sacrifice would be worth it in the long run and we have kept the old forum alive (here) so you can browse historic posts but if you want to make a post you must use the new forum powered by Zendesk.