Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Google’s efforts to filter out positions which they think are fake news, like climate skeptic posts, have hit an unexpected snag: Google have just noticed large groups of people across the world hold views which differ from the views championed by the Silicon Valley monoculture.
Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt: It can be ‘very difficult’ for Google’s search algorithm to understand truth
Catherine Clifford
2:38 PM ET Tue, 21 Nov 2017
In the United States’ current polarized political environment, the constant publishing of articles with vehemently opposing arguments has made it almost impossible for Google to rank information properly.
So says billionaire Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday.
“Let’s say that this group believes Fact A and this group believes Fact B and you passionately disagree with each other and you are all publishing and writing about it and so forth and so on. It is very difficult for us to understand truth,” says Schmidt, referring to the search engine’s algorithmic capabilities.
“So when it gets to a contest of Group A versus Group B — you can imagine what I am talking about — it is difficult for us to sort out which rank, A or B, is higher,” Schmidt says.
…
In cases of greater consensus, when the search turns up a piece of incorrect or unreliable information, it is a problem that Google should be able to address by tweaking the algorithm, he says.
…
The problem comes when diametrically opposed viewpoints abound — the Google algorithm can not identify which is misinformation and which is truth.
That’s the rub for the tech giant. “Now, there is a line we can’t really get across,” says Schmidt.
…
However, platforms like Facebook and Twitter have a different issue, sometimes referred to as the “Facebook bubble” or as an echo chamber. Because those companies’ algorithms rely, at least in part, on things like “friends” and followers to determine what’s displayed in their news feeds, the users are part of the problem.
“That is a core problem of humans that they tend to learn from each other and their friends are like them. And so until we decide collectively that occasionally somebody not like you should be inserted into your database, which is sort of a social values thing, I think we are going to have this problem,” the Alphabet boss says.
…
As a climate skeptic and IT expert I’m finding this Google difficulty highly entertaining.
What people like Google’s Schmidt desperately want to discover is a generalised way of detecting fake news. They believe in their hearts that climate skepticism for example is as nutty as thinking the moon landings were faked, but they have so far failed to find a common marker which allows their personal prejudices to be confirmed as objective reality.
Google could and likely does simply impose their prejudices, explicitly demoting climate skeptic articles and specific websites to the bottom of their list – but they feel guilty about doing this, because they know imposing their personal views on the search algorithm is cheating. Explicitly imposing personal prejudices on their search ranking algorithm forces Google to admit to themselves that those views are prejudices. It bothers them that they have not yet discovered a way to objectively justify those prejudices by applying a generalised filter to their underlying data.
To put it another way, in the case of climate skepticism I suspect Google’s problem is they have discovered there are lots of published mainstream peer reviewed papers which support climate skeptic positions. This is likely messing up their efforts to classify climate skepticism as not being part of mainstream science.
The mounting evidence US tech giants are refusing to accept is that their Silicon Valley monoculture might be wrong about a few issues. They will likely continue to burn millions of dollars worth of software developer time chasing unicorns, because as long as they can convince themselves they are working on a solution, they don’t have to admit to themselves that they might have made a mistake.
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google is proving its self as evil
Yeah, what about that, didn’t they used to say that they will do no evil? When did they turn to the dark side?
PMK
When they (and fellow travelers including Yahoo) discovered they have enough of a monopoly to stamp out the formerly free and open Internet. If they keep getting their way, pretty soon sites like this one will no longer be able to find hosting or domain-name services.
All we can do is to resist any further mergers among the communications multinationals, and support any alternatives to them that do still manage to appear.
The really big evil in the world is (most?) often done by people who believe they are doing good. So it is with Google.
There is a saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
When did they turn to the dark side?
Apparently It was some time before they declared they would not do evil.
<i<“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
There has never been a shortage of those eager to do Satan’s work in God’s name.
No, just uneducated.
They may spent a lot time in school, but apparently, school didn’t equip them with any understanding of the world they live in.
Critical thinking is,,, critical.
You aren’t educated, if you are lacking in this skill.
If they had this skill and ignore it, then they are evil
http://newbostonpost.com/2017/11/09/undoing-the-dis-education-of-millennials/
Well worth a read for a description of the problem from a law prof. speech to his new students. In part follows:
“Before I can teach you how to reason, I must first teach you how to rid yourself of unreason. For many of you have not yet been educated. You have been dis-educated. To put it bluntly, you have been indoctrinated. Before you learn how to think you must first learn how to stop unthinking.”
“Reasoning requires you to understand the difference between true and false. And reasoning requires coherence and logic. Most of you have been taught to embrace incoherence and illogic. You have learned to associate truth with your subjective feelings, which are neither true nor false but only yours, and which are constantly changeful.
We will have to pull out all of the weeds in your mind as we come across them. Unfortunately, your mind is full of weeds, and this will be a very painful experience. But it is strictly necessary if anything useful, good, and fruitful is to be planted in your head.”
“If you ever begin a statement with the words “I feel,” before continuing you must cluck like a chicken or make some other suitable animal sound.”
BFL,
Oh how it hurts my head whenever I hear someone say, “I feel like” instead of “I think”. It is a major problem, especially with the millennials.
“google is proving its self as evil”
Sure, “google evil” came up with 34 mill. hits 🙂
Then there is this gem of a suggestion
The guy is actually suggesting assigning “AGW Facebook Friends” to anyone that appears to hold skeptical ideals so their walls get cluttered with acceptable information. That sounds like the beginning of Dystopia
In the days of USSR, many military units had political officers assigned to them. Very similar to the way the Germany’s Gestapo embedded SS officers into all command staff levels of German Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe units. It is a way to ensure loyalty and silence any dissent.
Just think of your new FB friend as Big Brother and all will be okay.
“Sure, “google evil” came up with 34 mill. hits :-)”
“Unicorn Farts” returned 600,000
“20 feet of sea level rise returned” 17 mil
“Kardashian” returned 195 mil
when someone (and there is a someone) claims “do no evil” you need to ask why would someone say that. a moral person would not feel the need or inclination to state something as obvious in civil society. so this is what that someone who came up with that slogan had rattling around in his or her mind.
this someone thinks evil all day every day!
something is either true or not true.
There’s a third possibility……indeterminate. There are things that we don’t know whether they are true or false. For example, if there is intelligent life outside our galaxy.
Facts, by definition, are true, but a fact is not the entire truth.
…Facts, by definition, are true, but a fact is not the entire truth….
One person’s fact is another’s lie. Consider all the facts you used to believe in which turned out not to be true….
Something might be true, untrue, or anything else. Have you stopped beating your wife, true or false? This statement is classified as untrue.
But back to the topic. I think comrade Worrall is right here, Google has been working on fake news detection and found out they’d seriously hit groups they don’t want to hit. The only way around would be hand work, which they don’t like because they operate in many countries, and many of those coutries have very different official truths. They’d end up being the Big Brother in 1984 deciding on what is publishable in that culture.
People from the US have been complaining on how certain climate skeptic, not mentioning some denialistic blogs have been cleaned away from the search results. It has been interesting to see I obviously have a completely different set of results, when I do my search from Europe.
Most of the stuff Google does is highly automated and I really wonder how much individual employees, ‘auditors of facts’, or let’s call them small big brothers, can affect and do affect on individual sites that have a skeptic inclination. Sometimes I do have a feeling SkS has been boosted, but it might also be it just has so much links to it in sites marked ‘good’ like Wikipedias. Which already reveals a bias since wikipedia by its nature is an activist site – every article there is written by activists of the subject, quite systematically so.
“This sentence is false” is neither true nor false.
>>
Something might be true, untrue, or anything else. Have you stopped beating your wife, true or false? This statement is classified as untrue.
<<
Or they may be assuming facts not in evidence.
Jim
Hugs:”Most of the stuff Google does is highly automated and I really wonder how much individual employees, ‘auditors of facts’, or let’s call them small big brothers, can affect and do affect”
Google actively hid the fact that Hillary was seriously ill during the campaign. The media called it fake news. Now with Donna Brazile’s book, “Hacked” we learn it was well known internally.
So what do we do when the company that claims it is fighting fake news, is itself propagating fake news?
Try googling “american scientists” to see just how far we have fallen. Every single day your “little brothers” inside Google are corrupting our knowledge, rewriting history and debasing our democracy.
“Google actively hid the fact”
There is no such ‘the’ fact. But there are media biases and unwillingness to dig things that look like hearsay.
But you can tell me what Google hid from me, and please do it using credible sources.
“There is a reality. There is just one version of reality. Reality is what it is. Each truth is what it is. Each truth is a part of the whole truth. The sum of all truths is equal to the one reality,” He said skeptically.
Damn straight!
Truth is completely objective – it does not require anybody’s belief in it nor even knowledge of its existence in order to be true. It doesn’t care what you or I or anybody else thinks. The problem with many is that they conflate their beliefs with truth. The result is confusion and delusion and when there is something which they do not know if it be true or not, they think that a third state exists – the state of unknown. They confuse their knowledge of reality with reality itself. These are two distinctly separate things. To conflate one’s own totality of knowledge and belief with the totality of reality is to call oneself God.
Almost every time I click on WUWT I get a “can’t find this address” notification. It is a nuisance and would probably discourage others from accessing the site. This problem has been pervasive since 2009 when Climate Gate surfaced. Several other sites listed as friends on the right hand side of this website pinned, or click out of my ” favorites” exhibit the same problem. Also I get cursor freeze if I dwell on an article, or post trying to absorb others ideas or opinions.
The browser I use is DuckDuckGo since it supposedly doesn’t track your history, but I believe they use Yahoo/Verizon’s architecture ( no way of knowing ) and it seems to have the same format ( used it years ago ). But since GOOGLE is so imbedded in everything on the web one cannot find alternatives—unless you computer-savvy folks have some advice.
Sounds like a problem specific to your computer. I get the message if the site is busy, my internet connection is temporarily lost, etc. Security settings can also do it. I have a Mac and it likes to “protect me” from the world. Try using a different browser—say Chrome (yes, it’s Google), Opera or Foxfire. Also check your security settings and your internet connection. Clear your history. There’s are tons of things that can cause this—the nature of computers, I guess.
A few days I was using my wife’s new computer to read WUWT. The browser search got zero hits. Foxfire was using Yahoo.
I opened windows explorer that used google. Found WUWT with no issues.
I normally use a Crome book and it finds WUWT.
Yes, has to be a computer glitch on your side. I don’t think anybody is messing with you because you are at WUWT. Never has happened to me. I don’t even get any advertising here at this site, except for a nifty looking water bottle/wine skin…on the side bar.
GOOLAG
” – but they feel guilty about doing this”
bullcrap
Just watched a vid called, Ice age is coming ,1978 science facts ,on google. if you haven;t seen it it may be interesting .lower on the same search page is an article called Fake global cooling news persists &propagates.I recomend watching this too. Interesting how they try to say that this was politically motivated.(huh)
Kendoll is so cute.
“Ice age is coming”
We are in an ice age. Of course this is subject to circular reasoning about scientific fact.
If we agree that an ice age is characterized by polar caps and glaciers, then we have been in one for a few million years. If you look at timeline of earth history, ice ages are not common.
Furthermore, this current ice age is characterized by long periods (about 100,000 years) where it is colder and large portions of the landmass of the northern hemisphere is covered with large glaciers. Then there are shorter warmer periods of 10-12k years.
While science may disagree on details, we can say things that happened in the past are true facts. However, future events can never be a fact. I can tell you with 100% certainty the time of tomorrow’s sun rise.
Something could happen to change that. I am equally certain that no one will be around to tell me I was wrong.
I am also 100% certain that an ‘Ice age is coming’ if you define it as glaciers and sea level returning to what it was 20k years ago. I am equally certain that no one will be around to tell me I was wrong.
I maintain that ‘Ice age is coming’ it just has not arrived yet. So if someone maintains that AGW is coming’ it just has not arrived yet they are just wrong.
Al Gore has not changed his life style. QED
Google is proving itself to be an arrogant, airheaded outfit and this sort of stuff is the irrefutable evidence.
The notion that some bloody algorithm can filter and rank ideas for their ‘truthiness’ is utterly moronic and sounds more like the Chinese or North Korean thought police at work. In fact the very idea comes from the same cretinous ideological roots as fascism, communism and managerialism.
Suffice it to say that MBA also stands for ‘Mindless Bloody Autocrat’ or ‘Masturbating, Bullsh!##ing A$$hole’. Sorry to all those MBA’s, but its just some of you are the problem. It has more to do with some sort of priesthood that is obsessed with process rather than productivity let alone rational procedure or thought.
The entire universe is an iterative mechanism, not some blooody klockwork automaton and besides, if you have an automaton model that has eigenvectors of ire, earth, air and water aranged in some recipe proportions then you ae going to get very different results from one with neutrons, protons, atomes, molecules, relativity and quantum physics that iterates to an evolutionary oitcome.
To retired kit p thankyou for your comments .to clarify ,i do not disagree with yiur comments .I was drawnig attention to a tv progam from 1978 ,featuring leonard nimoy &opinions from scientists of columbia university that an ice age like catastophe could occur within 200 years. this was following a very severe cold winter in much of usa in 1978.The video can now be viewed on you tube . I was contrasting this with the views of an agw supporter who tried to debunk this under the title i referred to ,ie Fake global Cooling News still persists ‘.Tthis was from ‘physics today ,’ by steven t corneliussen.dated 21 dec. 2016 , a somewhat denigratory article,.&the sudden change in the speculations of (some)scientistsetc.from ‘cooling to warming .
Elon Musk may have spoken the truth when he said that AI will destroy the human race.
It already is well on its way to doing that.
Computer programs designed by the less than able tell traffic lights to go red, and stop all cars, while it figures out which cars it can allow to proceed without causing a crash.
A two year old child can make better traffic decisions:
“Look mummy, there’s no cars coming, can we go now ?? ”
A two year old child can tell what is a tree (ANY tree) and what is NOT a tree, such as the “AT&T Tree” which is a telephone pole.
No computer program can positively identify as a tree ANY image of any conceivable real tree. Can a computer identify a Boojum tree in the Baja desert. A two year old might stumble on that one also.
The wheels are slowly grinding to a halt, as ever more decisions are made by computers, programmed by persons who themselves may have no demonstrated problem solving skills at all.
Eventually such foolishness will lead to disasters. I believe that General Curtis Lemay former head of SAC wanted to “launch on warning”, and then recall, when the DEW line radar determined it was just a flock of Canada geese.
Trouble is by that time, the Soviets, would have obtained a positive launch from the US, and would also launch.
Well it is going to be an interesting time to be alive; well as long as it lasts.
G
On traffic light control – the ‘book’ on the VERY FIRST generally available microcomputer (Intel 4004 in 1976) had, as a demonstration of programming, a complete traffic light control program. Mind you, in South Africa, we have simple timers, so one can sit waiting for zilch!
I thought the rule was that whoever has the most money gets the most recognition. Google’s algorithm, thus, must have a number of $$$$$ in its code.
Whoever has the money gets the girls.
Eric Schmidt reportedly has a stringer of girlfriends in major cities all around the world. So when he visits his apartments in Manhattan, London, Beijing, he is set.
Wifey apparently is okay with that little arrangement. She’s got her big money for life as well.
About as unethical as that other Schmidt guy… Gavin.
If this is actually true, then I disagree. His wife is the only one who can decide whether she has been wronged. If she’s fine with it then why should we care?
~¿~
…If this is actually true, then I disagree. His wife is the only one who can decide whether she has been wronged. If she’s fine with it then why should we care?…
You could argue that, assuming they were married using traditional Christian wedding vows, that Mr Schmidt is breaking these (if the reported behaviour is true). Ethics failings SHOULD be a concern to all of us. Except politicians…
Dodgy, if you look at your wedding vows, it probably didn’t actually say anything about sleeping with anyone. Mine didn’t. Just supporting, loving, cherishing, and not abandoning. The only person who can decide these things is his wife.
If his wife is OK with having another woman perform that marital duty (either on its own or through compromise), that’s their decision. Not ours. Certainly it doesn’t matter to the debate at hand.
WordPress will not let me post the link to UK’s DailyMail article on this.
Trying again:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377785/Google-CEO-serial-womanizer-Eric-Schmidt-spends-15-million-dollars-private-doorman-Manhattan-penthouse-totally-soundproofed.html
Experiment to check WordPress censorship.
This is a link to NPR, an acceptable Prog news address.
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/23/566061720/this-thanksgiving-a-majority-would-prefer-to-hold-the-side-of-political-talk
Confirmed.
WordPress will not let me post the URL to the Daily Mail article that exposes Schmidt’s girlfriends.
Google is not alone in that as plenty of the popular Science Media publishes stuff that is easily falsifiable because they are “loved by people willing to buy the magazine”. There are a number of scientists/crackpots that get articles because they have a following rather than anything of value to science such as Stephen Hawking, Erik Verlinde, Lee Smolin, Sean Carroll.
Popular Science hopped on the AGW train early on. Popular Mechanics maintained skepticism, and also published things like articles debunking 9/11 myths. But the last time I had a subscription to PM they’d flipped and were no different from PS, also a much thinner magazine.
Stephen Hawking… what’s he ever done in the way of science, eh?
Nothing Griff he had the beginnings of a good idea which Bekenstein ultimately completed, he ultimately accepted Bekensteins view and predicted Hawking Radiation. From that point on all his publications are varying degrees of crazy many-worlds interpretation of QM mixed in with GR. He is far more of a celebrity than he is a physicist or as we usually call him the funny little man in the wheelchair, which is because his views aren’t taken seriously.
As you wouldn’t have a clue about these matters, and I really could care less what you think, the matter is sort of moot. However he is Brit and a bit of celebrity so you no doubt buy the various magazines about him and are one of those who keeps him in the limelight.
There is a lesson in Hawkings vs Higgs and “that bet” you could take a lesson from if you ever bothered to read. Higgs and his theory was largely ridiculed by a great many including Hawkings only he was right and got something Hawkings doesn’t a Nobel prize.
In this case it’s truth is in the eye of the beholder. The Silicone Valley is a well known nest of Progressive politics. I’m not sure why because they are the epitome of Capitalism.
That’s because successful liberals won’t apply the fundamentals of their success to examining liberal dogma, markl. If they applied the scientific methods of climate science to computer design, construction and software development, we would not have smart phones.
Prove me wrong, Nick.
markl, the Silicone Valley is the San Fernando, where they make porn.
I have a relative who works for one of the big companies in Silicon Valley and he’s realized that their whole culture is corrupted by Progressive groupthink and counterproductive work habits. The biggest problem is with middle management–they can’t seem to make a decision because profit isn’t their main goal. Most of the time they’re behind schedule because nobody is given the authority to make important decisions.
Rocky, One should use Silicone Valley with an E. This is to identify it as fake and showy. 🙂
SteveT
no, they are not the epitome of capitalism.
they have monopolies galore- goons with guns protect their monopolies.
copyright and patent are not free enterprise. they are license to exterminate competition by force and threat.
Don’t forget that many of them are just high-tech advertising companies, which are funded by borrowed money held at artificially low interest rates.
Without the government, most of Silicon Valley would go bankrupt.
And Goolag’s biggest fear must be that, if half their users believe the politically correct thing and half believe the Deplorable thing, then cutting off the latter half will soon result in a drop in advertising income.
Seems to be a common phenomenon that when people become fabulously wealthy they then have the luxury of being ‘progressives’. Difficult being a ‘progressive’ when you are struggling to put bread on the table. People like to forget where that wealth came from and how it was acquired and imagine that it is because of some inherent nobleness of thought and deed on their part and that they and their peers are somehow preordained and entitled to sit above the common herd and direct it with lofty wisdom.
It makes sense, though. ‘Progressivism’ helps to keep the majority of people poor, thereby preventing them from competing with the 1%.
Agreed, Mark. The feeling is “I have mine, who cares about you?” As long as the billionaires stay rich and without competetion, what happens to everyone else is irrelevant as far as they are concerned.
“users are part of the problem”
Solution:
There we have the core of the problem. Machines are only programmed and if something deviates from their program routine, they quickly reach their limits. On the other hand, that is reassuring that no machine can enter the brilliance of the human mind. And, presumably, machines will remain tumble specialists for a very long time in the future, lacking the linkage of information, the instinctive filtering out of right or wrong. If we put our destiny in the hands of machines, a blind, stupid and short-sighted rule would come out.
Yes, their bias is to think like engineers rather than like philosophers.
“..no machine can enter the brilliance of the human mind”
Unfortunately the human mind is just as unreliable as other machines. Under stressful conditions it is very common for the mind to play tricks on us, to make us believe that what we see is what we are expecting to see, when in fact it is not. The fate of Iran Air 655 underlines that point, where a missile operator, fearing an attack dive by a military jet, shot down a passenger jet whose altitude was increasing at the time.
It is also not unknown for malicious persons to exploit this irrational behavior of the mind under specific circumstances for their own gain. For example the social worker who started the ‘Orkney Satanic panic.’
“no machine can enter the brilliance of the human mind. And, presumably, machines will remain tumble specialists for a very long time in the future, “
Enter AlphaGo Zero:
https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/
This machine learned self only by playing go to not only beat any human, but also beat any other machine trained by humans…
Google is trying to come up with an algorithm that will make their increasingly complex system hold the same anti-industrial and anti-civilization beliefs as your average Green/Progressive.
It’s only a matter of time before it inevitably goes ‘Skynet’.
~¿~
Shortly Eric Schmidt will declare, “I AM TRUTH”! “BOW BEFORE ME”!
First comes the censorship then comes the force. The lesson of various Spanish Inquisitions throughout time always gets forgotten.
And it shouldn’t be unexpected. I have more examples than I can count on both hands of personally being FORCED out of areas of the internet by being banned/censored/shadow banned/downvoted. In many cases it is obviously ORGANISED by groups of gatekeepers.
I wasn’t expecting that…. 😉
They would do better just focusing on whether the content matches the title. This alone exposes most news items as fake or garbage. Of course they will discover that most mainstream news is crap.
Eric Schmidt’s Alphabet (aka Google) is scared shitless about the FCC about to undo Obama’s Title II Common Carrier declaration and regulation of the US internet.
He should be.
Oligarchs like Schmidt love cozy state-run protection from competition. Googy-boy Eric had a cozy little relationship with Obammy’s White House. Not so any more with Trump’s.
what in the world do they have to fear? they are creatures of the state and the nsa will protect their prizm inmates.
besides, they already made their pile.
joelobryan, I hope you are right but I don’t share your optimism about Donald Trump’s approach to internet legislation/regulation. To my mind, not having a requirement for a completely level internet playing-field facilitates far worse manipulation than Google has managed so far.
Google’s attempt to automate truth detection is as futile as a bottom-up climate model – it can never work. Much better to work on providing a search engine that is as unbiased as possible, while blocking the bad things that really matter like illegal activity, incitement to violence or hatred, etc. Freedom of speech is a strange beast which strengthens society at exactly the point that certain sensitive souls become convinced that it is weakening it.
Mike, a very good comment. Thanks.
+1
An honest and fair “search engine” should have a “default” option that permits the user to “select” the search criteria that best suits his/her purpose(s).
State run(supported) protection from competition – the most telling indication of fa-sh – ism.
It is a common component.
SteveT
I have to disagree. Google will be able to exploit this by quite a bit due to the oligarchy of IPSs. A few key deals here and there, and Youtube TV will be at maximum speed everywhere, but Netflix is sadly down to extremely low streaming speeds. Sorry.
When there is no meaningful competition, the big names can push each other around quite a bit, and heaven help any little guys.
The educated left has lots of facts which they can drag out to support their positions.
The deplorables don’t have nearly as many facts but they know in their hearts and their guts that they have been the losers, no matter what facts and rhetoric are dragged out to explain why they deserve their fate.
At some point, facts and objective testable truth don’t matter.
The liberal left doesn’t understand that President Trump’s election is a kindly warning. It’s entirely likely that someone much much worse is waiting in the wings and will emerge if things keep deteriorating for the majority of the population.
Good point.
The Dumpocrap perves should thank their lucky Gaia goddess stars that Trump is with them on so many of their most cherished issues.
When the taxpaying, moral, family-oriented middle and working class truly rise up, having had enough, their agent is liable to be a lot less friendly toward hairy old men defecating next to young girls.
Gabro
“When the taxpaying, moral, family-oriented middle and working class truly rise up”
I’m not sure I can imagine anything worse.
In my experience, there are indeed three classes of people.
1. The extraordinarily poor who have never had anything and don’t expect to ever have anything. They are, almost universally, decent people with family and community values but they don’t believe they have a right to impose those values on others.
2. The extraordinarily wealthy, and I mean old money wealth, handed down over generations. They know nothing but wealth and are strangely unaffected by it. They are invariably educated, thoughtful, generous people with impeccable manners and the concept of ‘Manners maketh the man’ is of great value to them.
3. Then there’s rest of us in between, the ‘middle class’ if you like. Ambitious, aggressive, opinionated people, desperately scrabbling to climb the financial, social, and intellectual ladder in order to impose our superiority over our peers. Concencus scientists, religious leaders and career politicians are comfortable in this environment as a University education, no matter how good or bad, is all that’s needed to impose their moralistic opinions on their peers/subordinates. And of course, it seems any degree endows the recipient with the authority to comment on any subject, no matter how far removed from their qualifications.
There are, of course, exceptions to any example. e.g. many climate sceptics are middle class but seem to value scientific truth more than their personal prejudices, wealth, or status. People like Tim Ball and Willie Soon could just roll over, keep their mouths shut, and take the money. But at great personal expense, financially and otherwise, they continue to stick to their principles of science and truth which, in true altruistic fashion, benefits their family and the community at large.
HotScot,
I think you should add the American, nouveau riche technocrat, formerly middle-class, to your list.
Commie,
you wrote:
You could not be more wrong. The Facts are not on the climateers side.
Go read “Climate of Fear” by Michael Crichton. And then read his Appendix 1 at the end of the book.
The Climateers are the real frauds who do not have the facts on their side. Climateers only have the models on their side. And the models are pure pseudoscience crap. Crichton realized that while he was doing research in the early 2000’s for his novel. That is why Dr. Crichton became a very dangerous climate heretic for the Left’s new religion.
The deplorables are undereducated Working Joes, former members of the middle class. When compared with the educated experts on the liberal left, they really can’t summon up that many facts, be they true facts or false facts. What they do know is that they’re getting the short end of the stick. That stays true no matter how many ‘facts’ the educated liberal left throws at them. They also know that the educated liberal left treats them with great contempt.
The deplorables don’t care if President Trump tells the occasional whopper. He, at least, acknowledges their pain.
There’s a 94 year old blogger who remembers being the son of a poor coal miner. He and his sister had to rummage through restaurant garbage cans to get something to eat. He sees things sliding back toward that kind of world. He’s worth a thousand lying liberal experts with their myriad ‘facts’.
‘Facts’ can hide really big lies. The deplorables know that. They don’t care about the facts of CAGW, they just know that it’s being used as a club to beat them.
+100
Most people can reason out things very well, especially when having the direction pointed out.
The recent British budget has singled out private diesel for extra taxes excluding other vehicles. Anybody standing in a high street knows (can see for themselves) that the main source of pollution from tailpipes comes from the bigger buses, lorries and vans that stop and start far more frequently. Also some of the older taxis.
There will always be an older car or two smoking as well, but the reality is visible and the real agenda of control and taxation is very clear, whatever the excuse/reason given.
SteveT
No way could they claim truth or falsity on inherently political issues, and a great deal of “science” is political. Climate, epidemiology, economics, medicine, and nutrition all have ongoing controversies.
There are definite hoaxes on the net, notably on Facebook, but judging them by an computer program is just mechanizing the prejudices of the programmer.
The problem is the Silicon Valley tech leaders think all of their personal prejudices are logical, well considered positions.
If their positions are entirely logical, it follows that it should be possible to reconstruct their prejudices with a software which analyses existing data using a simple set of rules, rules like “scientific claims must be backed with peer reviewed literature to be considered legitimate”.
What I suspect is upsetting them is their software engine is reaching radically different conclusions to their personal prejudices.
Naturally they are interpreting this as a defect with their software engine. “Google should be able to address by tweaking the algorithm”
They are trying to do something impossible. To take a subject, nutrition has an ongoing controversy, with the followers of the late Ancel Keys clinging to the benefits of a low fat, especially low saturated fat, diet. There is substantial institutional support for the Keys model, despite substantial evidence the model does not yield the results promised. There is even an analogy to Climategate, with Keys suppressing a major study he did that did not confirm his model.
Economics or psych are even worse. And anyone who knows the details of any other field of inquiry can very likely pull up examples of the “consensus” in that field being nonexistent.
“What I suspect is upsetting them is their software engine is reaching radically different conclusions to their personal prejudices.
Naturally they are interpreting this as a defect with their software engine. “Google should be able to address by tweaking the algorithm”
The Google algorithm is probably flagging the New York Times and Washington Post as Fake News, and Google management thinks there much be something wrong with their software.
Kellyanne Conway introduced the concept of “alternative facts” to the public:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts_(law)
This concept is not the same as “fake news.”
My algorithm is this:
If Al Gore said it – it is not the truth.
Who the hell cares! There is no such thing as “TRUTH” in science. The search in science is for skill in prediction. Using this metric should make it easy on Google to weed out positions that have been shown to have no skill. Google can’t deal with ideology…. so what! In ideology protecting the ideology is more important than advancing the discussion and improving skill. So Google is on a fools errand that only an elitist could attempt to make sense of.. I hope their brains fry trying to figure it out.
Please! “If Al Gore said it – it is not the truth.” Should be modified to ” if Al Gore said it – it has demonstrated no skill.”
Eric
Google:
The 21st Century example of a horse designed by a committee.
Sorry, screwed up the link. Try again.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/b/bactrian-camel/
Yet another invaluable article Eric.
It probably comes as no surprise to most of us realists.
After all, is not Google the illegitimate offspring of the CIA and other alphabetical big “guvment” outfits?
Personally, I use Duckduckgo.com and have been for ages.
No googling in this house.
Whenever politics intersects with a subjective truth, one side will generally be more correct than the other, but there will at least be a kernel of truth in both positions making it difficult to discern absolute truth, but which side of politics supports which version of the truth is relatively easy to determine and this would be useful information to be returned with search results for politically controversial topics. Results from both sides should appear in search results and which politics supports which position should be indicated. Let the user decide for themselves making sure that they know if it’s a politically controversial topic.
In the case of climate science, the IPCC and its self serving consensus is so wrong, it defies logic and algorithms make decisions based on logic, making this particularly difficult as a science test, but as a political test, it should be easier because by its nature, politics transcends logic. By this measure, everything on the IPCC site, GISS site, this site and other climate related sites would be flagged as politically controversial and politically aligned. Most people aren’t even aware of how controversial the science is and the extent to which politics has framed the debate and distorted the science.
Isn’t the great worry in of all of this that Google has an obvious solution to the problem Schmidt describes – and one which should make us afraid, very afraid. It merely trains its ‘truth’ algorithm on a number of ‘authority’ sites – vetted by ??guess who – which are awarded high rank and are trusted to resolve which of the two competing ‘truths’ is valid. It might even do this without telling anyone. It might even be doing it already. The ultimate appeal to authority. E. Schmidt, Secretary for the Department of Truth.
But it also frightens google, because gradually people realise what is happening and stop using it.
I do not and will not use google for anything. The invisible use, embedded in other routines is more difficult to avoid but I keep working on it. This is what worries the Slicone(deliberate -fake and showy) valley mob-sters because they can see the day of their demise coming as more and more people switch to alternative means of discovering the alternative view.
SteveT
SteveT – November 23, 2017 at 3:17 am
“HA”, are you implying that Google is “learning” because of what has happened to Wikipedia?
“Google Truth Algorithm: Users are Part of the Problem”
WUWT really needs to be more careful with headlines. It was Facebook who said that users are part of the problem, and that is because their reliance on “friends” and networking stuff.
“To put it another way, in the case of climate skepticism I suspect Google’s problem is they have discovered there are lots of published mainstream peer reviewed papers which support climate skeptic positions.”
I think it is extremely unlikely that Google will ever try to classify scientific papers, and there is no chance that it is part of their current concerns.
Filtering on the basis of merit is always goingto be difficult. However, there is an awful lot of junk out there, as I think everyone would agree, even if they don’t agree on what it is. And something has to be done about the potential for automated production. It’s like controlling spam – most people think that is a good idea. And ironically, Facebook hs been getting a lot of flak for not doing something about the Russian bots.
Nick, something like Facebook listing on posts how long the poster had been on FB, and keying to the use of similar names to other, more established entities, would deal with much of the fake sites.
Google deliberately suppressed searches on Climategate.
Insiders in the company said this was common practice. Google is as corrupt and dirty as any left-leaning MSM outlet.
Eric Schmidt and his wife run a “Climate Change” propaganda site.
@NickS
Even if they did for any side it’s meaningless, Science is not a democracy you don’t get a vote. Keep that rubbish in Climate Science and Politics.
For science case again pointless, you don’t get to decide on merit.
It really isn’t as hard as what people make out they are a search engine all it really needs to do is better understand the user and what they are asking. Truth, consensus and merit are selective criteria based on who is asking the question. A classic case would be “how old is the universe”, most probably you want 13 Billion years as and answer, but there is a group who want some number in a few thousand years. There is nothing wrong with that, I am certainly not going to force my 13 billion year answer onto a group who that is unacceptable. So the truth of the answer comes down to who is asking the question and that is not Googles choice or concern.
I quick search for “how old is the universe” found a biblical answer at number 12. It’s pretty hilarious, and I’m not sure of it is a spoof or not.
I like this in particular: “many scientists believe the world is old because they believe most other scientists think the world is old”
Just this week we had the flat earth rocket man off to prove the earth is really flat
?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=3da201f7dcbc893d388bf3ac3c4e6c05
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/22/self-taught-rocket-scientist-plans-launch-to-test-flat-earth-theory
He doesn’t believe in science and that goes against everything I stand for but it is his right.
But, but, the Earth really is flat! Go outside! Look down the street! Flat as a strap!
No doubts about that anyway…
Actually what he is doing is curiously scientific. He has a conjecture, and he is going to test the idea.
‘In your heart, you know its flat’
A minimum of research on this story reveals that the strength of his belief in a flat earth is closely tied to the amount of publicity and sponsorship it can attract. A consummate fundraiser.
If the Earth is flat, then how come anytime I walk somewhere it’s always uphill?
<¿<
Hey at least he didn’t build a model he actually tests 🙂
My tyre is both flat and round, so why not the Earth could be?
The curvature of the earth can be seen at ground level over Lake Erie if the lightning flashes are in the “right places” in the background at night.
The earth looks flat to city dwellers?
Sometimes there are “mirror- image tree” sightings during daylight hours from across the lake as well.
The earth is flat. Define flat – right after you define “is”.
“I think it is extremely unlikely that Google will ever try to classify scientific papers”
Uhh, Nick? Two words, “Google Scholar”.
Yes, Google does, rather overtly, classify scientific papers. Over, done, gone. They’ve been doing it for years.
Head meet sand.
You can not fight a thing that does not exist and was only invented to distract you from your own failure. Says Don Quixote.
Nick, would Google put Tony Heller’s reposte of each of your false claims front and center? I doubt it. A simple test of your truthfullness in that case would be ‘did NS go to TH’s site and prove TH wrong, when he was invited to?’. Nope. Thus TH is correct, Nick guilty of slanderous talk, making all of what NS says suspect.
The truth can be harsh, especially to the side that runs away from it.
The problem with the ‘truth’ algorithm is that is that things that the far left echo chamber believes to be true are often flagged as false, and visa versa. Until they come up with a computer algorithm that implements pathological projection, which is the mechanism the left uses to support its position by attributing its own flaws to the other side, algorithmic logic will still prevail.
From the article: “The problem comes when diametrically opposed viewpoints abound — the Google algorithm can not identify which is misinformation and which is truth.”
Sounds like some people I know.
Yes people who have ever seen Climate Change debates should be aware of the danger of this.
“The problem comes when diametrically opposed viewpoints abound — the Google algorithm can not identify which is misinformation and which is truth.”
This dramatically shows the mis-education of the folks in Silicone Valley. When viewpoints(OPINIONS) differ science and logic leave the room. An algorithm is a procedure to solve a problem. When you have lots of opinions, each slightly different than the others in different ways there is NO misinformation or TRUTH, just a multitude of different opinions. No procedure or algorithm can “solve” why there are different opinions.
What Google is looking for is the tried and truth method of investigative reporting- sending curious people to ask questions, weigh answers, look for contradictions, missing information, follow links and associations, find sources, and more and then report on it. “The science is settled on AGW” should take a good reporter at most one day to follow the topic and come up with an answer- “science is never settled. A lot of people have spent and made a lot of money pushing AGW, but the scientific evidence is at best equivocal. Mostly it’s a political fight for power, control, and funds.”
In the case of the climate, it should be easy since when reconciled with actual science, the alarmists are so incredibly wrong. However, the fact that they are so incredibly wrong is what confuses the algorithm, as the algorithm, like most alarmists, fails to accommodate the fact that people who are supposed to be smart can be incredibly wrong. It fails to account for how political bias turns even ‘smart’ brains into mush.
Google is the greatest threat to free society. I fully assume within 60 years google robot war dogs will prowl the streets using algorithms to find suspected climate deniers for elimination or re-education camps. The idea yahoo and m$ couldn’t create competitive search back 15 20 years ago is beyond ridiculous. They were put there on purpose.
I know for sure that if I were intending to spread evil across the planet through manipulation of corrupt information filters I too would hide those acts behind a motto of “Don’t be evil.”
Google isn’t “evil”, their arrogant and stupid. This combination often appears to be evil.
Of course they’re evil. Why do you think they removed “do no evil” from their motto, if it wasn’t to avoid possible legal complications? Misleading advertising etc.?
Their use of biased information has probably led to untold losses around the world. Lives, freedom, money etc.
SteveT
They removed the catch-phrase because it was no longer effectively fooling anyone anymore.
I began using the add-on startpage.com when I got sick and tired of seeing Google’s annoying little “social justice” memes every. single. day. when I logged on. What a bunch of phonies!
I don’t think Google will change. They have always been in bed with the “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” group. CAGW…
This is highly amusing. Google is not so much searching for the truth, but rather searching for some straws that support their pre-determined position on various subjects. They are trying to convince themselves that they are working on finding a solution to the search for the Truth, but they might eventually have to admit that they were barking up the wrong tree.
The Emperor Searches for His New Clothes
good one!
Google is a religious organization. They have a dogma that they believe infallible. It is easy for them to judge truth, the guy that thinks otherwise is a heretic.
I try not to use any Google programs. Getting more and more difficult. Guess I will have to switch my computer off soon.
Not sure if it is better, but you could try using http://yandex.com/ instead. This is a search engine from Russia. I have used it a few times in relation to CAGW and found that it may be slightly more objective.
It seems as if Michael Crichton had a better grasp on this than Eric Schmidt:
«I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.»
– Michael Crichton
«Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.»
Michael Crichton
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
– Michael Crichton
Another thing is that the things that brings development and greater understanding than consensus can never be found in the in the consensus – quite obvious really. The most interesting observations are never found in the consensus.
Eric Schmidt is very clearly a suit.
It’s a beast that can feed on itself.
What’s Google going to do in the future when the preponderance of evidence and majority of people (consensus) are that CAGW is really the fake news and Google’s bias was on the wrong side? Will their search engine find articles pointing this out, or will their search algorithm have to be tweaked to avoid these articles?
Who the hell cares! There is no such thing as “TRUTH” in science. The search in science is for skill in prediction. Using this metric should make it easy on Google to weed out positions that have been shown to have no skill. Google can’t deal with ideology…. so what! In ideology protecting the ideology is more important than advancing the discussion and improving skill. So Google is on a fools errand that only an elitist could attempt to make sense of.. I hope their brains fry trying to figure it out.
+100
Of can’t deal with ideology when its not one it favours, is this a call for ‘truth ‘ or a call for the ‘right type ‘ of truth ?
Long ago I read Asimov’s Foundation, google seems like the people that needed to make an encyclopedia of all knowledge, when the real foundation was quite something else.
To be fair the false flag helped the first foundation obtain a government grant…
As it seems, Eric Schmidt is nothing but a great totalitarian:
“The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts, what a shock, and the facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” Schmidt said. “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.” –
Eric Schmidt as Google Executive Chairman
They probably need to go back and read Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, suppression of opposing views and redefinition of truth is always the first step.
That is extremely disturbing.
As far as I can tell, your second Eric Schmidt quote is accurate, and depressing, but not for the obvious reasons.
Mr Schmidt is executive chairman of a gigantic multinational corporation, but he can’t even construct a sentence to say what he means.
He said, “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring,” which is , ironically , true. The sceptics just think is all natural, as it has been for aeons.
Then he says “and the people who oppose it….” .
People who oppose climate change?
I can oppose the proposition that fossil fuel usage is responsible for climate change, but I can’t oppose climate change itself. That would be like opposing the yearly change of the seasons.
Perhaps Mr Schmidt should attend some English classes.
sonofametman
It’s little more than a statement of frustration, without actually screaming “deniers” and stamping his wittle feetsies.
Then there’s this beaut: “They’re just literally lying.” Any high schooler who wrote the words “just literally” on any kind of paper would likely receive much-deserved rebuke, and two grades deducted automatically. The claim itself is of course mere hand-waving. He’s a pathetic lying fool.
Gosh darn Eric. Who would have known? It’s also remarkably difficult for everyone else to understand truth.
Get in line.
But I know the truth… 😉