Rootclaim
These past couple of days I’ve been thinking about what Rootclaim, this new startup I read about, is trying to do.
So first, a few words about that. In their “about” page, they write:
Rootclaim outperforms human reasoning by correcting for the biases and flaws of human intuition. The platform integrates all available evidence, assesses it for credibility and uses probabilistic models to reach conclusions about the likelihood of competing hypotheses. Its conclusions represent the best available understanding of the complexity and uncertainty in our world.
As a PPE graduate (Political Science, Philosophy & Economics), a degree that centers its focus on decision making in the public level, I find this idea intriguing.
There are several things I believe the founders of this startup did not think about or took for granted, such as:
The difference between natural science and human science
Idealism Vs. realism - using data means we are looking at a realistic model, but what about idealistic ones? Maybe we want to change things all together.
Coping with translation, terms in different languages
Are facts neutral? How can we determine what is a fact and what is not?
I do think that using some kind of software or algorithm that can help with decision making, could be good. But it is important to understand what claims are in the root of Rootclaim. We may not want to accept them all.
