tumbledry

Losing Faith in Humanity

Let’s speak metaphorically for a second and say I own a rock labeled “faith in humanity” — well, an event today is responsible for taking a sharp chisel and hammering off a large chunk from said rock. Here’s what happened.

The search box in Firefox pulls results from something called “Google Suggest”. Here’s a description of the feature from Google (emphasis mine):

Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers. An example of this type of popularity information can be found in the Google Zeitgeist. Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on your personal search history.

So, what’s happening here is this: as you type, Google attempts to guess what you are searching for by offering a list of popular search phrases that are related to the one you are typing. I was searching for “is gzip compression turned on” because I was looking for this useful tool, which can tell you if your website is utilizing compression. I finished typing “is ” (the space is important), and paused… then this list of suggestions came up:

I stared at the first 4 suggestions for probably about 15 seconds. Then I entered in “is ” again, to see if I had made a mistake. Same result. That can only mean one thing: a popular query on Google is there because hundreds of thousands of people are judging a presidential candidate based solely on the color of his skin and the arrangement of the characters in his name.

This sickens me.

4 comments left

Comments

Richard

Amen. The state of the world, specifically our own ignorant corner of it, is very troublesome. The real question is how do we, as a generation who is “probably” more tolerant than our parents generation, make up for the many mistakes and grievances that have been created?

*Side note, even as a human I have a hard time reading the robot destroyer question. Am I a robot?

Dan McKeown +1

To side-step the main point of the journal for just one second, I find the Google search algorithm fascinating. In most cases (the previous results a glaring exception) the search results provide some of the best options available on the internet. The more popular a page is, the higher it ranks. On top of this, the more popular pages hold a certain power as well. Anything that the “popular” pages links to or references provides the linked page with more prestige as it were.

That does not seem so amazing when you first hear how it works but think about it like this for just a second. When you read any comments on YouTube you realize just how worthless people are on the internet as individuals. The anonymity provided by being online seems to enhance the stupidity of humanity by amounts that I cannot even fathom. When you think about how dumb most people online are, isn’t it amazing that the collective results of their online searching is so…smart? Search results like the ones Alex highlighted for us above are a flash in the pan. Soon the collective intelligence of all the stupid people online will even this out and we very well may see “is heartburn dangerous” take its place.

I guess my point is do not lose faith in humanity due to momentary lapses in collective intelligence. The internet allows people to find information relatively anonymously so that any stupid question can be asked and then reflected in Google’s algorithm.

Sorry, long comment after such an extended period of inactivity.

Nils

Dan offers up an interesting point. The cloak of anonymity allows any one to say anything regardless of how stupid it sounds or how baseless it is. The internet definitely provides this anonymity. I guess I never really thought about it like that before.

Dan McKeown

Why, thank you Nils. Upon further reflection I had one more thought regarding this journal if I may.

Thank goodness for the internet. Just think, without it, how many people would be going around thinking that Obama is Muslim? Of these, how many would be basing their vote on this false information? In the past, how would these uninformed individuals know this basic information? Now the answers are there and the questions, as dumb as we may think they are, can be asked without fear of consequence because they can ask anonymously. Is that not amazing?

Now is this an altogether positive thing that people might be making their decisions on who to vote for based on the faith of an individual? I contend that it is not and I think most would agree with me. I think, however, that there is some hope to be found in humanity and the collective intelligence of humanity will out weigh the ignorance of the individual. At least I hope it will…

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