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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Facts are observable, measureable, and incontestable truths. They are, therefore, outside the realm of “consensus,” dispute, and opinion. Google’s algorithms and search engines should, therefore, be able to separate facts from all else. If not, then Google should not rank results.
Yes, but noise is a component of all observations and measurements, which impacts factual quality. Noise destroys their CAGW narrative so much that they have to alter the facts.
Google is a search engine. It is not a teacher or a preacher.
Why should it make any determination as to what is Fake and what is real/ It should simply return the results of the search question, and it is up to the reader/researcher to form an opinion on how truthful or meritorious any linked to article is.
If that were all there was to it, the problem would not be as grave. Google is in the advertising business, just as all of the big entertainment media are. Just as the internet, television, radio, and specialty print advertising cut into newspaper revenues; Google faces fierce competition and it always will, no matter how big it gets. Turn off too many users, the advertisers stop paying you. Remember, ads are designed to get people looking for goods and services to find what they want to meet their needs. Can this be abused? Yes. When it does, people find alternatives. Thus, there are no monopolies unless governments create them and governments can’t create them unless people give governments too much power. Vote with your feet/money.
Truth is not determined by vote.
PageRank was named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According to Google: PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
Googles truth: is it fake truth or alternative truth? They have fallen into the consensus trap; truth has nothing to do with consensus. There is no algorithm in the world that can determine truth; truth manifests itself through observation.
Maybe someone has already asked this question but when is comparing group A consensus versus group B consensus “truth-seeking”?
What is needed is a government agency to decide what is true and what isn’t. No more wrangling over who’s right or wrong, and no need to worry our little heads about deciding for ourselves. Easy peasy.
Google made the internet great, then their monoculture of left wingedness took over, and google is a monopoly now, buying up ISPs too.
They force out people from the company who voice different opinions, see james Damore.
You can pay them to be up the rankings, so their Truth algorithm, is nonsense.
Google employees caught on camera admitting they manually mess with what will and will not show up, and now Google decide what they will exclude from search altogether, based on political leaning
Google was great, but now Google is a cancer on the internet.
Who made Google the arbiters of truth? Google’s cancerous left wingers did. Google truth depends on which side of the political divide that Truth comes from
If you want to fight back against these FAANG companies you can. Do not believe anyone who tells you that resistance is futile. It is fun! Here are some ideas to try.
Some developers from Mozilla got tired of it and started their own browser called “Brave” available at brave.com. Built in ad blocking, always in incognito mode with an interesting reward system for sites. A bit rough around the edges as it is at version 0.19 but it is getting there by leaps and bounds.
Do you like Calvin & Hobbes? If so you will love AdNauseam (available from adnauseam.io ). It is an ad blocker but in the background it clicks ads and discards the responses. Basically it fills the corporate databases with junk. This is the “GI” in “GIGO”. It is such a threat to Google’s business model that it has been banned from the Chrome App Store and you have to get it from the site listed above.
As for email if you like your email encrypted you can keep your email encrypted at ProtonMail (available at protonmail.com). If you and I are both on it then nothing is seen. When you send to outside addresses it is plain text but your email folder is encrypted so only you see it.
How about some search engines like DuckDuckGo and StartPage?
The main thing is to remember to have fun while messing with them. It may be futile but I like it 🙂
I’m not convinced of the ethics of using adnauseam, but a very interesting idea.
As for encrypted email, if the private key isn’t kept on a computer you control the privacy is in doubt. Encryption performed on a 3rd party managed computer has the potential of being compromised. I use thunderbird with the enigmail plugin for the purpose.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/23/hillary-clinton-so-far-ahead-in-polls-that-doesnt-even-think-abo/
How’s that for fake news, Google?
That’s not fake! Hillary won! /sarc
To nerds everywhere:
Art leads then inspires large segments of reality to think as one. Till GDI realities bite Art’s ass, and the collective is mortally wounded by GDI thinking because it was the one thing they overlooked by assuming it was harmless. Google is the Borg and it will not win this brain war.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Borg_history
turn off sam-sung.
“Google has been tracking Android users even with location services turned off
Google has confirmed it has been able to track the location of Android users via the addresses of local mobile phone masts, even when location services were turned off and the sim cards removed to protect privacy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/22/google-track-android-users-location-services-turned-off-sim
Tracking by the location of local cell sites even when the sim card is removed … Ah, no. No sim card, no cellular network connection.
‘Sim card’ free as well as the ‘dual sim card’ phones (e.g. business + private number) are available, don’t know if there is a ‘sim free + single sim’ version .
No sim card, no cellular network connection.
tracking can still be done if wi-fi connection is enabled through the location of the wi-fi networks where the device connects
The internet helped break down oligarchy style media. Truth used to be determined by arguments from authorities but the internet expanded the number of authorities.
Google, regardless of their claimed intent, is effectively trying to kill that and basically replicate legacy media with new technology.
I wonder if Google’s Schmidt has considered using simple logic, and particularly logical errors, as a filter for what is factual and what is not?
By that I mean assessing the argument for a particular fact by determining whether the arguer is relying primarily on logic errors, such as ad hominem (You’re an idiot), appeal to authority (97% of all real climate scientists agree), etc., as opposed to valid logic (If A is true, then B is false. We have determined that A is true, therefore B must be false, etc.)
Now, I’m not by any stretch a student of logic, but I suspect that climate alarmists would fare poorly if such an algorithm were implemented to determine “truth.” As would advocates of gun control, safe spaces, and tearing down statues of Lincoln, but that’s just my prejudices showing, not logically-supported “truth.”
Though, there are for example vastly more webpages describing fake ‘magnet motors’ than there are pages exposing them as fakes. If Google relies on pure numbers for a consensus, then it would put forward the view that magnet motors are real and that the law of conservation of energy is junk science.
So, that doesn’t seem to be a very good way to decide.
Conversely, there are vastly more pages describing the Pons and Fleischmann experiment as junk science than there are correctly describing it as a real effect. That has arisen because early attempts to replicate the experiment were carried out incorrectly. Here, the predominance of naysayer pages would give an inaccurate picture of the truth if taken purely by numbers.
Classic problem is wikipedia, where this site is described as promoting something called climate change denial, by publishing material which disputes the consensus on climate change….
And if you go and change it to a neutral description using material which this site does use to describe itself, you will find that its instantly reset by some watcher to the old description, which seems to be several years out of date now, and still refighting old battles.
I urge everyone to attack this. If you do, don’t whatever you do repeat the idiocies of the previous material. instead keep it low key and factual. For instance, the piece claimed that among the contributors were Monckton and Singer. I have never seen Singer here. And there are many others besides Monckton, and they are all in the list of contributors, so a factual piece would include the ones the site itself gives credit to. It does not promote climate change denial. It has an approach of publishing material which is skeptical about various views, and some have characterised this a promoting climate change denial.
And so on. We need to stop tendentious fanatics from dominating wikipedia.
“We need to stop tendentious fanatics from dominating wikipedia.”
Too late. Founder Wales is in their camp and has appointed many hard-core “Skeptics” (debunkers, as they see themselves) to importt roles in his organization.
So Google wants to be that dreadful creature, the Parent/Father Who Knows Best, does it?
Yeah, the benevolent tyrant who thinks it/she/he knows best is the one to avoid the most heartily and widely. The more specific you are in a search, the more junk turns up. I’m sure they’re all like that, following their own noses instead of yours.
This is a good reason for print books to NOT go out of use or “style”.
You are missing and important point here: WHY IS GOOGLE DECIDING “FACT” FOR US? Why do we need someone to sort out fake news? The clear message from Google is “you are too stupid to think so we are going to do the thinking for you”. A nasty message, that one. Probably does fall under “doing evil”.
“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.”
The delicious irony is that they have not yet discovered Ayn Rand’s comprehensive epistemology that explains how one can systematically and precisely validate facts of reality, because she and that knowledge are the victims of one of their most ardently exercised prejudices.
“Brother, you asked for it,” as she was wont to say.
“It is very difficult for us to understand truth,” says Schmidt”
Who does? Truth is elusory, frequently misleading and intangible, and I believe ALWAYS questionable. Google should take pains to avoid deciding what is TRUTH!! but strive to outcast false news where it can. Minority views on any subject should always get an airing where such views do not pose a direct threat to morals or to society as a whole.
Scientific Fascism; How to Manufacture a Consensus
Post Publishing Edit: Google won’t Disavow Political Violence, but will Fire you for challenging their Diversity Program.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/11/20/scientific-fascism-how-to-manufacture-a-concensus/
I just Googled the size of an oxygen molecule. Apparently Amazon have them on sale.
Would Einstein’s Theory of Relativity have been treated as Fake News, given that it went against the general consensus at the time it was published? It took just one experiment to support it.
Why does Google want to be the Ministry of Truth?
This is not a search engine but a conformity tool.
A search engine should be a tool to find information efficiently not to hide inconvenient results. What do they do with satire? How do they rank it?
No room for diverging opinions, no room for making fun, just conformity.
When one looks at the history of science, revolutionary, non-conform thoughts were the ones that brought progress not consensus science.
Plate tectonics was a fringe theory in the ’50s before it was accepted. Would have Google existed at the time it would rank plate tectonics somewhere with the flat earth ‘theory’.
By ranking information based on what is now mainstream, accepted thought is censuring information, Google positioning itself as a reactionary force to maintain the status quo, and against progress.
Glad there are other tools that work as search engines.
The way things are going today the Unibomber Manifesto sounds like unbridled optimism