Visual Companion — Signal #7

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Interactive diagrams for the newsletter on knowledge quality. Toggle, expand, and explore.

Read the full essay

a. Toggle — 1957 visible failure vs 2026 invisible failure

Garbage Out: Then vs Now

Fig 1
1957 — Visible Failure

A mispunched card enters the system. The computer processes it faithfully — and returns something obviously broken.

Output: Wrong refund amount. Literal bins of discarded magnetic tape. Physical, visible, traceable.

Fix: Find the bad card. Re-punch it. Feed it back in. Problem solved.

Click toggle to switch between states

b. Expandable Table — 3 Problems in Messy Knowledge Sources

3 Problems in Messy Knowledge SourcesFig 2
Item
What It Looks Like
Why It's Dangerous
Contradictions
Two documents say different things about the same fact
Model blends them into a single confident answer
Staleness
One version is outdated but still in the knowledge base
Context windows don't filter for authority or recency
Incompleteness
Critical knowledge exists only in Slack, email, WhatsApp
Formal document pile is always incomplete in ways you can't see

"The garbage doesn't look like garbage. You're not dealing with typos or missing fields."

c. System Diagram — The More-Is-Less Pipeline

The More-Is-Less PipelineFig 3
What Teams Do
Add more documents
Expand context window
Increase source coverage
Feed it the missing policy
What Actually Happens
More versions of the same fact
What's Needed
Curate before you ingest
✓ System Connected

Context windows don't filter for authority. They retrieve. Everything goes in. Everything gets weighted.

d. Toggle — Knowledge Failure vs Generation Failure

Two Kinds of Failure

Fig 4
Knowledge Failure (Fix Upstream)

The source was wrong, conflicted, or outdated. The model did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Fix: A neuro-symbolic approach gives you the feedback loop — traceable to the source document, resolvable at the root. Fix the knowledge. Output quality improves.

System: Knowledge management with audit trails, version control, conflict resolution.

Click toggle to switch between states

e. Comparison Table — Knowledge Matrix

Knowledge Matrix — What You Know vs Don't

FeatureYou Know It's ThereYou Don't KnowAction Required
Knowledge is correct
Knowledge is outdated
Knowledge is contradictory
Knowledge is missing

Think your knowledge base is clean? Most organizations get stuck by question two.

Take the Knowledge Audit