I agree, a set of simple conceptual examples
would be helpful for us novices in the audience.
It seems to me there are 2 basic dangers
that WP is rightly warning us of:
1) technological facilitation of fraud (or error)
due to the elimination of human-expert
filters on the inputs of consumer processes.
2) loss of information due to the constraints
of a mandated SDV applied to an inappropriately
broad cross-product of producers & consumers.
I agree with commentors that it seems extreme
to say that these are inherent insoluble problems
in the nature of SDVs. But maybe we don't yet get the whole point -- i await WP's next installment
where he seems to be promising an alternative.
Meanwhile, creative responses to these dangers:
1) assuming not case(2) loss of information,
then assure that a consumer include
in its automated processing the functions
of validity-checking previously done by
the human expert.
2) don't do it. well, the interesting challenge
is to come up with guidelines/ meta-processes
for designing a SDV, that can estimate the
"range of applicability", attempt to fully
specify for a given set of candidate
producers & consumers, or detect if this
would be impractical and insist on narrowing
the candidate set, to avoid information loss.
Finally,
Based on my meager experience of human nature
and technology, i would say that WP is
performing an extremely valuable service here:
The defects of human nature are rather constant,
but technological advances tend to remarkably
accelerate & amplify their consequences!
PS:
I wonder if it is helpful to think in terms
of categorization-along-multiple-dimensions
as the major sort of processing going on.
Knowledge-domain-A and Knowledge-domain-B
(the data producers) are sharing the terms
of a vocabulary, but of course, the meaning
of those terms depends specifically upon
their context within the domain.
Using a simple Hue-Saturation-Brightness
scheme, we can conjecture that in Domain-A,
"aquamarine" and "teal" might reasonably
be collapsed into the SDV category "green",
which the official consumer process equates
with "GOOD" (its output); while Domain-B
is mandated also to collapse both colors
into GREEN, it happens that actually "teal"
should be considered "blue"="BAD" in this domain.
An individual of type B would not be legally
fraudulent when he converts his teal to SDV green, he is just following the rules, right?
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