[ryanklee]

- If factuality were just a matter of simplicity, it wouldn't be so incredibly difficult to determine.

- The corpus of written language is full of ambiguity and contradictory statements.

- A lie makes it's way half way around the world before the truth can even get its pants on.

- What's thought true today will not be thought true tomorrow. This happens sometimes in the direction of veracity. Sometimes, the other way around.

- Factuality and consensus are not the same.

[FeepingCreature]

> it wouldn't be so incredibly difficult to determine.

Never said it was easy. :P

> - The corpus of written language is full of ambiguity and contradictory statements.

Right, but the truth is the one set of information that logically cannot be contradictory. That gives it an advantage in terms of compression.

The rest is correct, but just means that the learning algorithm has a harder time discovering truth, not that it's impossible.

[ryanklee]

> > it wouldn't be so incredibly difficult to determine.

> Never said it was easy.

My point is that this process of determination happens over time and in a non-linear fashion, so the corpus contains tons of noise around any given truth statement.

> > The corpus of written language is full of ambiguity and contradictory statements.

> Right, but the truth is the one set of information that logically cannot be contradictory.

Please refer to Godel's incompleteness theorem.