AAaA Ardaic 3
Ardaic’s description of astrology is probably kinder than mine would have been, though I do smile good-naturedly and play along whenever somebody brings up my horoscope. At least my close friends and close family don’t take it too seriously. Outside of those situations, I vacillate between thinking astrology is a goofy, harmless hobby and considering it just one more flavor of the lies I despise. Lies trampling on scientific and verifiable truth, brainwashing a country I love and people I love within it.
If I were in charge of Google, you’d get some very different results if you searched for “my horoscope” on there, results that urged you (nicely) to give up mythological thinking before you started buying into the next QAnon. I know I know, not everyone who seeks out constellations’ advice is going to go that way. I should really just relax and let people enjoy things, but… (sigh)
And tarot, don’t get me started… no, no, let’s end this more pleasantly.
Ardaic actually drops a huge revelation into his account here. Apparently Gastonians have not been part of their current land since time immemorial: at some point in the historical record, they ventured here from some other place. Sorta like Americans, but unlike Americans, they didn’t seem to maintain any ties with the land they left behind. Several explanations are possible for that. But I like the theory that something… happened to the pre-Gastonians who didn’t go on the voyage so that by the time Gastonians navigated back to the land of their forefathers, there was nothing to return to. Kinda like the Lost Colony in reverse. A mystery for adventurers to unravel after the series finale, maybe.
Perhaps Akerra is similar to Westeros
I’m interested in the implication that the stars don’t move, which implies a very different cosmology. It could just be Ardaic simplifying things, though, and not some indication of a non-rotating world
Being a “game world”, it’s very likely it is flat, for starters.
If you’re at the same or similar latitude between different locations, the sky would actually be basically the same. Also, if someone isn’t well-traveled, they might not know what different skies look like.
My interpretation was that he’s describing an Earth-like system, where the stars are fixed relative to each other and only change their position relative to their world’s horizon gradually from night to night. As Amaster says, that’s enough to enable navigation, as early Earth explorers did.
“Gastonia-That-Was”
Google forbid people be able to get appropriate information and make their own decisions about it’s viability… wait, they already do that.
Much as I scorn Astrology and the like myself, I think the control Google already has over what is “acceptable” search results, what gets promoted itself… is a far bigger problem. The same kind of problem that the old Church used to cause when insisting that the Sun revolved around the Earth rather than the other way around. Sure, it’s tempting to try and influence others “for their own good” but this should be done, not by supressing or overly promoting certain information, but by honest debate and discussion of the issue. Without that well…
It’s a cute notion. But the state of affairs in the world at large and the ease with which misinformation, no matter how patently ridiculous, spreads and is earnestly accepted stands as evidence that your proposed method is flawed at the least.
Perhaps it’s a difference in the difficulty of hearing lies and finding facts, or a greater profit margin to be had in the spread of misinformation. Perhaps you simply overestimate the extent to which reasoned analysis forms the basis of human belief. Whatever the reasons, services like Google have become a weapon through which falsehoods are spread and harm is done. And while I respect your desire to foster open and thoughtful debate, I’d ask just how many people you intend to sit down with this week to have a discussion about Donald Trump’s secret war against the world-wide conspiracy of cannibalistic vampire pedophiles. Because there’s a few ten or hundred million people that really need to be sorted out on the subject.
That’s amazingly condescending.
For my part, I agree with Tsenzei that there really wouldn’t be an upside to Google searches on astrology being met with a finger-wagging “you shouldn’t be filling your mind with this rot!” however “nicely” phrased.
The question at hand is: How did Google get that powerful?
The natural answer to that question is: Massive ressources.
Which of course cost money, hence the Monopoly game.
That they came out on top can’t be a big surprise, when you just compare their old website to the likes of Yahoo and other such trainwrecks.
Now, in my ideal utopia world there would be a stock of crawler collected raw data, open sourced by law, and each user would be free on how to sort and filter these data to their own desire.
Which would require that they have access to hardware beefy enough for that kind of endeavor. And of course that this massive data stock and collection gets somehow paid for.
Meanwhile, in the real world any government only has a say when it finds some law violated and the owner of the crawler results and the associated search engine raises the required money with advertising.
Hence Google’s responsibility to see that the law gets obeyed. Can they be arsed to do anything above the bare minimum?
Here the “art” of marketing rears its ugly head.
Well, in my utopia world people are responsible adults and behave as such. That’s to that.
Corpratism and government are often much more intertwined than one might realize initially. Google did not exactly reach its position purely based on free market forces (lots of government funding and such went into it), nor do they maintain their position due to an inability of government to act if they wanted to. Indeed, many political figures in the US and even Europe are happy to be able to use Google and other sites as censorship platforms (though Europe would like the governments/EU to have more say in when and where rather than merely leave it to the company…)
Government (and the EU already did some) can easily move to strip away extra protections (Section 230 for example) and move on antitrust laws… but they’ve chosen not to… though Europe is threatening to do more.
Drats. I intended to reply directly to Tsenzei’s post.
That much about daydreaming.
Google (sic)(tm) – a tool which allows you to find supporting community and documentation for any set of half-baked beliefs
At one point, I not only agreed with this thesis, I tried to write comics in support of it (I’ve mentioned Widgetitis now and again). Big Tech, in general, tends to respond to that issue with a sort of Prime Directive. In Google’s case, that works out as “We’re just here to show you the most popular and trusted results that also match your keyword, as determined by math. What you do with them is your business!” Facebook, similarly, is like “We’re just here to help people connect,” and so on. Twitter: “We just give a voice to the voiceless!”
But the more time passes, the clearer it gets: this alleged neutrality has become blatant irresponsibility. With a few glaring exceptions, Google refuses to be held accountable for the purchase of ads in its search results that promote lies and are listed above reliable sources. The algorithm would rather give you some results than no results in almost every situation, which rewards confirmation bias. Anyone who searches for astrology will not have to deal with any results that might upset them by calling it into question. And if you search for “Trump is a gift from God,” same deal. I know it’s not easy to convince people who believe in lies that their beliefs are lies, but it’s painfully obvious that no one in Big Tech is even trying to.
And so instead, the lies get reinforced the longer the average person spends online, which I think most of us can agree is longer than is healthy.
In my ideal world, there would be several viable search engines (let’s not insult each other by pretending Bing matters), and they’d be holding each other to high standards on these and other issues. That’s not the world we ended up with. But if we have to have a monopoly, at least for a while, then I’d rather have one that acknowledges the reality of its own power and effect on the world. That may be getting closer to being a reality, but it sure hasn’t happened yet.
I agree that it would be bad for a company running a search engine to determine what it thinks the truth it and then hand-picking search results to show to people. Because once they notice they can change beliefs by picking results, they might change beliefs in their favour … (which, let’s be honest, they already do).
…but I think that what _would_ make sense is to sort results not just by whether they use the right SEO strategy but also based on a credibility/integrity/something score, and not to present not the “loudest” results first, but the most factual ones. It’s probably impossible to find a solid objective criterion for objectivity, but there are certain tones and word choices which are reasonably easy to detect these days, and down-rating those should be completely doable.
… but increasing the “extremeness” of results is an optimum which e.g. the youtube algorithm has found, and explicitly adding an objective to prevent that would not be in Google’s commercial interest, so I doubt they’d do it voluntarily. If they were compelled, they’d to it in the least meaningful way possible. Kinda like the horrible passive-agressive way they implemented Cookie banners. They don’t want to remind users of tracking, so they give you the choice to either ignore it or suffer.
”It’s probably impossible to find a solid objective criterion for objectivity”
This exists in academic research. Not my area, but they believe it works.
Yes, of course, but that criterion only works for dealing with objective facts. It’s called “have them explain their experiment well enough that I can repeat it and check that I get the same results”.
The issue at hand is more about “is this text about some political topic even trying to be reasonable, or is it just an edifice of fallacies built to promote an idea we know to be bad — but also not just sarcastic image of aforementioned pile of fallacies, or a reasonable discussion with some logical shortcomings which don’t change the main conclusion”.
And it would have to be solved by a computer, without using human input in the form of “political leaning XY is complete rubbish, and everyone knows that YZ is the only rational course”. Not because there were no objectively good or bad decisions in politics, but because those objective matters are a small minority of political topics (or, well, they would be if people were less obsessed with loyalty to “their” tribe rather than doing the best by most humans).
I’m with T and Sumgai on this
For what it’s worth, I believe that the enormous power Google wields right now could be countered by a thorough overhaul of all education systems worldwide. A well educated population is not going to consume pseudo-scientific junk and baseless nonsensical dribble. Whimsy, folklore and cultural tradition would be precisely that in a world in which people can recognize them for what they are. Ancient beliefs are part of our history, they’re part of our colective psyche, and they can tell us a lot about who we were and who we are, so I think those ancient beliefs should remain as part our culture… as long as we take teach them responsibly.
The nastier sort of rubbish we can find online can only exist where critical thinking is not being taught in schools (not to mention in one’s own home).
I used to believe that, too, but I don’t think it’s that easy. Especially “well-educated” people are more prone to overestimating how rational they are, and resisting attempts to correct their errors.
I know a guy who finished studies with excellent grades, worked a well-paid job while doing an engineering PhD and running his dad’s company (process engineering), and finishing that PhD in 4 years or so, also with really good results. He has encyclopedic knowledge of loads of other things and can explain some pretty complicated technical and physical concepts outside of the stuff he regularly works in.
He believes climate change was a hoax and it’s just sun spots or something. I tried reasoning with him once. Lost cause, although we have both taken the same thermodynamic lectures, which contain everything you need to prove that he’s wrong, and he got better grades then me. To him, “critical thinking” is finding the flaws in other people’s words, not in his own thoughts.
Education makes you less likely to be wrong, but very often *much* less likely to accept your own errors.
…I think we need a more “scientific” approach to almost everything. And that includes publishing a lot more, having it scrutinized by more people, inviting critique and using it to improve, not treat it as an attack to defend against. That’s much more a cultural/human thing than a question of education — although it is also something that could be taught in school, at pretty much any level.
Your engineer friend is a perfect example of why I think the answer isn’t just more schooling, but better schooling. A different kind of schooling. An education system that actually imparts education, rather than merely training kids to do better on exams. I think that we should -among other things- separate education from politics. That way, you could actually state historical and scientific facts in a classroom without that being taken as part of someone’s political agenda (Creationists and Holocaust deniers are still a thing because reality is a political subject to some)
We also need to avoid academic overspecialization. An education system that encourages overspecialization could result in a growing number of postgraduates, but that way of teaching also results in individuals that are functionally iliterate in every subject beyond their area of expertise, like your friend.
I said that an educational overhaul is the answer in my earlier comment, and yes, I agree that it cannot happen without a cultural overhaul as well. But, which one can happen first?
I’m guessing you’re US-American? Because some of the points you write sound like teaching to the test, “No child left behind” and so on. It is a tragedy what politics (from Bush onward, including Obama) did to your school system.
But even less terribly managed education systems tend to produce people like the one described by Zak. And as someone working (and researching) in a European school system: “better schooling” is a nice goal, but it is really difficult to find out what constitutes better schooling… Personally, I would bet that “an educational overhaul” wouldn’t give you good results and I would count “No child left behind” as one example for that. I think that only incremental change can work.