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How does it sound to you? Too crazy, too basic?

10 points by quimax ↗ HN
I said earlier in a comment that I am stuck, I can not code for a week now.

May be the problem is that having been so long into the forest, I just see the leaves. May be. So let's do something: I tell what I am doing, and you tell me if it is as crazy as it sounds, ok?

My software reads a page in normal English, in a couple of seconds, and extract quite some information, facts. It relates the phrases between them, and produces a consolidated group of facts that are saved in a database. Then you can query: What, when, how much, how many, who, whom, whose, where and which. The why is answered only if the explanation is explicit in the text. The first thing I plan to read is obviously the Wikipedia, but there is no scarcity of sources on the Internet.

Trust me, at a symbolic level, it works, and it has more than 16.000 synonyms to extend the umbrella. At conceptual level it does not, of course, is soft, no hard AI.

Well, that's it.

How does it sound to you? Too crazy, too basic?

Max

17 comments

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aristus
Not crazy at all. If it does what you say, then it is very useful.

But "trust me" is not enough -- you have to prove it works in a wider context. IR has many pitfalls, and success in one domain is not an indicator of general applicability. Your algo may work well on the subset of Wikipedia pages. It may spit out garbage with other sources or on search terms that would not occur to you.

Just as in crypto, IR algorithms have to be kicked around a lot before they get serious attention. I suggest you put something up that people can play with. You don't have to reveal the algo.

Sujan
yep, release something. and you'll see if it works or not.
davidw
+1

If you release something, and people like it, that'll be very motivational.

quimax
You can not imagine how important are your comments to me. My former colleagues think this is useless, even if it works, and they don't believe it does in the first place. I am very isolated, more now after 8 months of hard work.
eusman
release something when you are ready and only listen  your users
rms
 ?
eusman
i submitted the comment from my mobile phone. i don't know why it sent those characters
sohail
Ah, former colleagues. It may be more appropriate to say "jealous bastards" because thats the truth.
chaostheory
Even if it did sound nuts - go for it; hell look at twitter or even tetris (a game of making rows of blocks - sounds boring and retarded as a concept)
icky
> I said earlier in a comment that I am stuck, I can not code for a week now.

You have a good idea, but take a break and code something fun in an area that has nothing whatsoever to do with what you're working on.

I find that "coder's block" while doing web app work can be resolved quite nicely after whipping up a quick OpenGL demo or little game in C.

Failing that, drink some tea, take a walk, take a hot shower, take a nap: do things that are unhurried and give you plenty of time to relax and think.

dazzawazza
A long time ago I worked on a very large AAA game. We had over 100Mb of word docs, PDF's, 3DSMax and PSD files. At the time we didn't even have Spotlight. I would have killed for something which would work at a higher level then grep. We just couldn't find ANYTHING without getting 10 managers together and then they would all sit around redesigning whatever they'd just 'rediscovered' :(

Good luck and keep going. Please make sure people like me can add data to your system with plugins.

Good luck.

BTW it's fine to put an idea down for a while, if you can't motivate yourself go and do something else. Make sure you don't fall in to a pit of despair and negativity though.

SwellJoe
I can't imagine how one would define this as "too basic". Natural language processing on a conceptual level is an extremely hard problem. Sounds pretty useful, though, if you can then use that data to inter-relate and analyze seemingly disconnected facts. We have more data than at any point in human history (I guess that's tautology), and more is being added every day, and many scientists and medical researchers have argued that one of the biggest problems today is making good use of all of the research and anecdotal data that already exists.
curi
It's not a tautology. The Dark Ages was a period when we seemed to be worse off than we had been when Greece and Rome were powerful. The reliable, continual improvement of human knowledge, without stuff getting lost, is a recent phenomenon.
quimax
I agree completely with you both. I have some amazing figures about it.

But the hard issue is not to understand at a symbolic level, but being aware of all the consequences and possible relations. I solved partially some things, but others are completely impossible for me. I have the impression that I could find a niche market: people interested in getting precise facts, and its sources, not so much on letting the machine do the thinking for you. This will not change the world, for sure, but it is very interesting though.

Max

robg
Well, I know I'm interested in what you're up to and your background. Passion is the best gift you can ask for. Sometimes you just need a new place to nurture it.
quimax
I am about to open a blog to connect with more people. It is difficult to reach people interested in natural language or semantic. At least, here in Europe.

Max

buss
I would just like to recommend that you keep track of where each bit of information comes from. A system that regurgitates knowledge is only as good as its sources, so keep track! This is something that would have to be in place before your project gets too big, so do it as soon as possible.

When presenting the information, how about something like this:

> What is the population of China?

The population of China is [some number]

This knowledge is from:

1. xxx

2. xxx

3. xxx

[click to see the rest]

The ordering could be determined like pagerank, where sources that have more information are ranked higher.