Developers of the largest Internet search engines have joined the quest for ‘relevance of search results’, which is the main parameter for modern researchers to evaluate the quality of their work.
Relevance (from Latin relevo — to pick up, to ease) in terms of information search is a semantic compatibility of a search query with a document received. In the broadest sense, ‘adequacy’ is one of the most appropriate synonym for ‘relevance’, that is, an evaluation not only of the compatibility, but also of the result practicality.
Let`s look at this situation from another “point of view”, analyzing the work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky “A contingent truth” , which was written in 1932, where he wrote:
“There is no real (absolute) truth, because real truth must base on a full understanding of space. But there is no full understanding now and such will never be reached. The science is on the upswing, scientists are constantly rejecting or asserting something old and discovering some new information. The science changes every decade. Decades don`t deny information but change it or its content by deleting something old or adding something new. Such processes are endless, because the development of centuries and the brain building are also endless as well.
So, the truth can be only of three types: contingent, temporary and changeable.
Religious people count their dogmata the truth. But can any religion be the truth? There are thousands of religions. They contradict each other, and science very often denies them, that`s why religions cannot be considered even as a contingent truth. Political beliefs also more or less disagree. Therefore, we will say the same about them. Philosophical meditations have created worldviews. Due to many disputes over these philosophical meditations, they are perceived as personal opinions. Some philosophers used only accurate scientific knowledge for their conclusions, but their conclusions are beneath a contingent truth, since they aren`t mutually agreed. Finally, every individual understands the truth in his/her own way. Many people, many truths. What kind of truth is it!
However, we must decide what is a contingent truth for us. Philosophers, sages and scientists, of course, contribute to the distribution of knowledge about the universe and therefore, improve people`s idea about a contingent truth.
A contingent truth can be earth, folk, city, volost, rural, village, family and personal.
The human being acquires personal truth in different ways and considers it to be the best one, the most faithful and the fairest. On the average, this is the lowest kind of a contingent truth. It changes with an age and a human cognition.”
Information search of the search engine is based on the array of information it has systematized, and represents the thoughts of the human beings` PERSONALITIES that are fixed on various information carriers on the Internet.
It turns out that search engines dig for information only in the array of PERSONAL information of the human beings, which is initially subjective, i.e. it has nothing to do with such notion as TRUE!
What relevance (correspondence) of the ‘request-response’ system we are talking about?
What is the criterion for search engine`s determination 100% relevance of the response?