Here’s what you don’t want to do late on a Sunday night. You do not want to type seven letters into Google. That’s all I did. I typed: “a-r-e”. And then “j-e-w-s”. Since 2008, Google has attempted to predict what question you might be asking and offers you a choice. And this is what it did. It offered me a choice of potential questions it thought I might want to ask: “are jews a race?”, “are jews white?”, “are jews christians?”, and finally, “are jews evil?”
Are Jews evil? It’s not a question I’ve ever thought of asking. I hadn’t gone looking for it. But there it was. I press enter. A page of results appears. This was Google’s question. And this was Google’s answer: Jews are evil. Because there, on my screen, was the proof: an entire page of results, nine out of 10 of which “confirm” this. The top result, from a site called Listovative, has the headline: “Top 10 Major Reasons Why People Hate Jews.” I click on it: “Jews today have taken over marketing, militia, medicinal, technological, media, industrial, cinema challenges etc and continue to face the worlds [sic] envy through unexplained success stories given their inglorious past and vermin like repression all over Europe.”
Hatred, lies, and stupidity spread easily on the internet – it’s a perfect storm of the ease of technology and – very bluntly put – the stupidity of people. Most people have absolutely no understanding of the scientific method, and lack the basic mental tools to objectively assess information and its source. The end result is swaths of people believing that the moon landings were faked, man-made climate change isn’t real, that witches have magical powers and need to be burnt at the stake, or – indeed – that Jews, women (try it!), and so on are “evil”, because uncle Jimmy’s neighbour’s aunt’s niece thrice removed posted it on Facebook.
This is a problem that’s going to be very tough to solve. Stupid people have always existed – but the internet is new.
An atheist philosopher with two scientists discuss the actual scientific method and evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCU6bzRypZ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrWznOFq38s
The problem is that you would brand these as fake, not because anything said is in error, but because you disagree with it. You are the dogmatic one.
There can only be two approaches. Find someone who censors – like Mao or Stalin or Goebbels – and only allows official “truth”, or you allow everything and let the internet be a huge forum for debate where things are discussed and everyone can learn for themselves.
Everyone thinks they haven’t been manipulated, and don’t believe lies, but they do (Scott Adams, Dilbert’s author points this out). When you complain about people believing myths, you list the myths you believe.
Lord Monckton is a very respectable fellow, few people can say about themselves that they developed the cure for HIV, Malaria, Multiple Sclerosis and Grave’s disease at the same time, though I much more admire him for his body armor designs.
Uh, he would brand these as untrue, because they ARE in error. Their talking points have all been debunked. He would disagree with them BECAUSE they are in error.
Huh? Are you saying climate change is not real because of these two YouTube videos? LOL How do you know nothing is said in error in the videos? Are you a climate scientist? What climate research have you done personally? I am not saying the videos are “fake” but I can question the conclusions.
Christopher Monckton is not a scientist.
That’s a gigantic, glib oversimplification – and it sounds like an example of what Isaac Asimov described as “‘the false notion that democracy means that ^aEURoemy ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
Of course witches exist. Now, there’s no proof of them actually having any magical powers, and your presumed opinion that they don’t have such powers is certainly a very valid one, but much like how Christians exist even if there’s no proof Jesus was the son of God (or proof of any God for that matter), as long as people follow religions like Wicca, then witches exist. (Also yes, I am aware it’s funny I post this comment while using this avatar.)
…well played.
I’ll fix it.
…and so was the telegraph, the radio, news papers, tv etc at some point in time.
You know… the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda was triggered by hatred being spewed over local radio broadcast.
What is the point you are trying to make?
The Guardian sometimes does decent journalism(Snowden) but it panders to its audience by regularly churning out articles like this that reflect their readers’ ideological leanings.
Here is a recent “Comment is Free” article about how someone was almost poisoned by the “alt-right”, have a read and appreciate the style, guess why the Guardian decided their audience wanted to read it –
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/alt-right-onli…
Small problem, it looks like they were conned by a known prankster –
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/803687334482939904
Now as for the influence of the right-wing on the Internet and “fake news” …
Over the past decades the right have largely won the argument on economics, the left have won the right to set the limits of what is socially acceptable – in mainstream media, in politics, in large business. Some call this, for argument’s sake, “political correctness” – there may be less loaded terms, but we are surrounded by it in mainstream society
Silicon valley is generally much more friendly to the left than the right.
“It’s a liberal echo chamber,” Garrett Johnson, a co-founder of Lincoln Labs, which was started in 2013 to connect the right-of-center outsiders in Silicon Valley, told National Journal. “People have been convinced that Silicon Valley is reflexively liberal or progressive. And so their response is to conform.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-secret-repu…
And Crowdpac reported in early June that just 52 tech industry workers had made political contributions to Trump, while more than 2,000 gave money to Clinton. (Bernie Sanders beat both with more than 33,000 donors in the industry.)
The major Internet tech companies typically pander to the left.
The biggest social networks have a greater tolerance for the left than they do for the right – hence people having to go to gab.ai if they want free speech which Jack Dorsey won’t allow – well actually he will allow it as long as it fits his SJW view of the world.
It’s why sites like reddit, where the major r/politics forum used to have a mix of left and right submissions and is now pretty much 100% left submissions and comments(now intellectually dead), want to ban the Donald Trump sub-reddit. I’m a heavy politics sub-reddit user and there is nothing particularly nasty about the Trump sub-reddit compared to other sub-reddits.
Steve Huffman wants rid of it – but he doesn’t want rid of pedo sub-reddits or many other effing disgusting corners of the site. Of course if they were right-wing pedos Steve would be all over them I’m sure.
The right make some noise on the web but the left dominate. Not just in noise but importantly in activism, which the right just don’t do particularly well – perhaps partly because the left can escalate campaigns to the many establishment entities which sympathise with them(and tend to ignore the right if possible).
There is simply much more of a left leaning media presence both on the web and among establishment media which is how a big lie like “fake news” gets publicity and is used to browbeat the public.
And now having lost an election with one of the worst ever candidates the left leaning media has decided that it was down to “fake news”. They weren’t hugely bothered about it – until, um, Clinton lost, and then it was the end of the world. And now they have the chance to eradicate not just stories that are provably untrue but all those news sources that they aren’t too keen on – obviously if somebody is exposed to a right-leaning idea it could be contagious …
The reality of news is that more people will be influenced by highly biased journalism from the left and right than “fake news” – which is capable of being debunked. Do you think Trump being blessed by the Pope will influence more people than the Wash Post running 16 negative stories in 16 hours against Bernie Sanders –
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/washington-post-ran-16-negati…
We accept people can cope with being swamped by often tricky biased journalism – why do we think they can’t manage stories that can typically be debunked? Disingenuous concern …
Fake news is a distraction, biased journalism carries the real potency to influence. “Fake news” is only going to be used to censor and filter out non-mainstream ideas in the longer term.
So to summarise my ramble … the left dominate what is socially acceptable in society and definitely among tech companies – they are extremely intolerant to opposing views and try to shut them down where possible(college campuses, mainstream media, politics etc). They are now moving to shut down the right as far as possible and the Guardian is attempting to help them – though maybe the Guardian will go bust before that comes true …
You may think I’ve written this as a right-winger – in fact I’m left leaning and identify with Sanders – but I’ve spent enough time on left-wing forums and other politics forums to know that the modern left is a serious threat to the “battle of ideas” that politics requires and they need to be stopped until they change their highly intolerant, authoritarian, and poisonous ways.
I would hope that you are joking, but clearly, you are serious.
The free-market (vs. intervention) has been more favoured than in decades past … I don’t mean “won” as in “right and wrong”, I mean won as in influence on policy.
Edited 2016-12-06 11:04 UTC
But free market is a liberal idea, isn’t it? just like free trade, the other trending thing in the last few decades. And while the right are often pro-free market, they are also contra free trade. So this question is definitely not black and white.
feamatar,
The world is highly multi-dimensional with issues like the right to bare arms, racial profiling, freedom from government snooping, education, immigration policy, taxation, minimum wage, foreign policy, bailouts, etc. Yet our political establishments collapse all issues down into a single dimension, the “left vs right”. By treating the world as a single dimension it forces us to take contrived sides, but my own views are far more nuanced than that – and that’s why I hate classifying myself as either a conservative or a liberal.
I see no reason to have a big government when a smaller one will do. Many of our expensive social safety nets would be less necessary if the economy actually worked better for everyone to begin with. This sentiment is shared by many on the right, yet almost all of the right leaning republican politicians are so full of BS with regards to their intentions that I would never actually want to vote for them. They’ll pretend to represent the general population so they can be elected, but once in office they don’t actually seek policies that maximize benefit for the general population, they only seek to enrich the upper class. Historically, the republican party that claims to want to shrink government has been responsible for our largest government deficits. This is so common that I’m surprised people continue to fall for it, but we do.
As for democrats, Hillary was no knight either. At least she had experience and a middle class plan, but she certainly doesn’t follow my values and there are several things that rub me the wrong way with her too. There was too much secrecy, like the way she was for the NSA’s unconstitutional actions being kept secret from the public, which I find despicable. Yet Trump had the same leanings that companies like apple should not make technology that prevents government snooping. Trump pledged to “drain the swamp”, well that would be great if it weren’t just a lie to get elected, which it was. Unfortunately Trump is not the one who will fix things for the middle class, his policies are geared towards solidifying upper class wealth, but it turns out he’s very good at conning his base.
So either way in this election I was going to loose. We desperately need to fix the electoral system that keeps 3rd parties non-viable and reduces politics into one dimensional, black vs white, viewpoints. I actually think we might have had a better chance at election reform Trump had lost and then kept insisting it was rigged from the sidelines, he could have produced a lot of momentum for electoral college reform, but now I doubt it will happen.
Edited 2016-12-06 16:09 UTC
Well said. Everyone interested in this subject should check out the No Agenda Podcast the deconstructs media bias and such.
I grew tired of idiots in my twenties. But sometimes they still get to me
This time, again, I’d like to say to all the people who blame a search engine for retrieving results based on your query to go get a life.
Some people remain very confused about what the internet is, and what roll things like search engines play. They genuinely believe that Google are somehow “responsible” for the results that are returned; yet it’s the same as blaming a Dewey Decimal index at a library because it lists Mein Kampf
The “solution” to the “problem” of Bad Things Being On The Internet is for people to learn some basic research and logic, and how to apply critical thinking to information. That all sounds far too complicated, and would require people taking personal responsibility, so I guess we’ll just continue to blame companies like Google & Facebook for every shitheel that posts an opinion.
(By the way, I had to Google Mein Kampf because I couldn’t remember the spelling; good job it returned some relevant results)
Edited 2016-12-06 11:16 UTC
Everyone above the age of 40 knows that only “Bert is evil”.
http://bertisevil.tv/
Edited 2016-12-06 07:43 UTC
News update: after this became widely reported, Google removed this search suggestion.
Now what’s worse: that al algorithm has put a popular but not-PC question/item in the search suggestion or that a company keeps a list of which talk subject are PC and which are not and adds things to them at their will?
None of those are “worse”. It’s not a company’s duty or job to “protect” free speech or unpopular opinions or anything.
The right to free speech shall not be infringed by the government. Anyone else may infringe your right to free speech whenever they damn well please.
Now I see NO suggestions for “are jews”.
But there are still suggestions for others.
I type “are russian” and first is “evil” LOL
)
To me, it’s a sad commentary on the state of human society. This isn’t a problem we can fix with technology.
A fundamental problem of [ethic] AI can’t be solved with simple filters at the output of an algorithm.
Good. We need to stop pitting people against people. Make love, not hatred.
Thom, could you please hide above comment temporarily so that the author could feel himself how really good it is? Thanks in advance for keeping the Internet the better place on behalf of the author.
Why did you try only jews, women, etc., the usual victims in well-behaved people’s mind ? You could also try “are men evil”. Why didn’t you try that ? Too obvious ?
I give you some results among the first :
“All Men Are Rapists! | The Femminist Fatale”
“Why are men so evil and cold hearted compare to women?” “Men Are Evil Because They Start All Of The Wars And Committed The Greatest Atrocities In History And The World Would Be Better Without Them”. In fact you’re just showing your own prejudices in face of other ones. The great lesson of the day, you can’t judge other people’s prejudices because you’re always full of it too … And concerning complaints about jews or women, or anything else, you can’t just sweep arguments just because they hurt your consideration. What would be your proofs that these people are wrong in their consideration ? Think of it, you don’t have. Because they’re not stupid like you suppose, they have strong pieces of evidence, not to say they’re right but you can’t proove so easily they’re wrong. This is the drama.
Because it goes against their narrative, that’s why. I went to Google and typed in ‘white males are’ and the top suggestion was ‘the worst’. But you’ll never see that called out by SJWs, because the only hate speech they’ll ever speak out against is the hate speech they don’t agree with.
I like how “SJW” has become such a great little red flag.
Not really. You didn’t address his point, and it’s a perfectly valid one. I see a red flag, all right…
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a categorizing something as “SJW” approaches 1.
Yes, it is Godwin’s Law but now applied to “SJW”. Just like Godwin’s Law, you lose the discussion automatically.
If you can’t make the effort to make a point without trying to score easy points by saying “SJWs are bad”, you don’t deserve to have your points taken seriously. Just like with Hitler comparisons, the use of SJW is now a broad weapon to say “if you disagree with me, you’re an SJW”. It’s exactly the same social engineering mechanism as trying to discredit someone by associating Hitler with them. Poisoning the well, in other words.
The probability of someone categorizing something as a new version of Godwin’s Law approaches 1 too.
Nice try, but no.
You have a shitty understanding of probability.
Well, that comeback certainly feels more emotional than I’d have expected.
“Shitty” is emotional now?
Do you need your safe space from all this negative energy?
And then this further mocking just reinforces my first impression.
Work from facts, not impressions, mmkay?
You might want to take your own advice and go review your reply to my first comment.
I’m not responsible for your misinterpretation.
If it’s a misinterpretation then you can surely lay out the facts you are working with, which would make your claim not an “impression”.
Which I have since the beginning. I question your evidence and your understanding of that evidence. Thus I question your understanding of how you reached your probabilistic statement, given your lack of understanding of evidence.
Do you need any more hand holding?
That’s funny as you offered yourself an example in this thread.
Apparently, in your so far unsubstantiated opinion, resorting to “SJW” is likely to happen up to near certainty given a lengthy enough discussion, and yet someone pointing out an instance of poisoning the well and relating it to Godwin’s Law isn’t.
How you reach that conclusion is never made clear nor substantiated in any way, and yet you apparently feel pretty confident about the validity of the former and the non-validity of the later.
Saying “your understanding is shitty” is neither a reasonable debunking nor conductive to discussion in any way, and given the available evidence for your claim compared to mine your response tells me that the issue is not if my claim is probabilistically correct, but rather that you just didn’t like it. Hence the specific wording and style.
Honestly questioning the availability and interpretation of evidence doesn’t produce a “you have a shitty understanding of probability”, that’s a positive claim of certainty about a claim being objectively wrong (while also choosing to be derisive about it, bringing us back to the emotional charge).
You and Thom certainly made a decent attempt at evasion here – picking out one word from one comment to dismiss what was said, rather than actually addressing any arguments made.
It looks like you succeeded in derailing any real discussing, but unfortunately for you that hasn’t fully distracted from the solid point made.
A+ for effort, but I’m afraid your obvious bias and hypocrisy is still clearly displayed for all to see.
Not even close. I argue with conservatives all the time, but don’t call them SJWs, for obvious reasons. I also argue with liberals sometimes, but not all liberals are SJWs either. (In fact, some of them loathe SJWs as much as I do.)
When people like me say ‘SJW’, we are talking about a specific kind of individual, as in those on the far left who view everything under the lens of identity politics, where everything they disagree with has to be sexist/racist/etc. And then they turn around and shit all over white males, while claiming that the ‘-ist’ labels don’t apply to them, because reasons. And I’m not even going to get into safe spaces and trigger warnings.
I will grant you though that SJW is not a good term to use to describe them (as that would be an insult to real social justice warriors), but I think calling them ‘progressives’ is giving them too much credit. So SJW it is.
Edited 2016-12-08 00:39 UTC
Not everybody embraces “progressive stupidity” and victimizing loser ideologies, even if embracing libertarian socialism. There’s a whole lot of difference between Joseph-Pierre Proudhon, Bakunin and Makhno – and the whiny “I need safe space ’cause bad man said words” brats we see today.
it happens that stupid people outnumbers “smart” ones by, probably, 3 or more orders of magnitude. Without a kind of censoring, what I am totally against to, it is all not only possible but also highly probable that myths, superstitions and flat ignorance will be next to top in an ill conceived/constructed (sometimes on purpose, like it seems to me on this case) search.
Like Humberto Eco said:
Note, though, that I^A'm perfectly OK with them speaking out, the right thing to do is invest more time and effort on educating whoever is close to us (no, it is not true because you saw it on Internet!) to be aware of the problem and to try best methods next time. Hopefully, things will improve then.
Edited 2016-12-06 10:16 UTC
Nothing gives more credence to antisemitism that attempts to outlaw or censor it.
Then why oh why did the antisemites find their voice in this US election cycle, where antisemitism isn’t outlawed or censored?
> where antisemitism isn’t outlawed or censored
Really? Beside the Supreme Court decisions on the so called “hate speech”, these days just using the word banksters (because we know who you really mean by that!) or critisizing Israel can get one in some serious hot water in too many workplaces and public settings.
Thus, half of the country are guilty of crimethink and are easily branded anti-semites. Way to go!
It’s still more “free” than some place like Germany regarding those issues.
True. Germany is an occupied country, with plenty of nasty feelings under the surface. For now.
Yeah? And America voted in a President who was loudly supported by anti-semites.
Yes, Germany probably has lots of it under the surface. But American beat Germany to it, showing your theory to be bunk.
You are going in circles with that tiresome smear.
The fact that some antisemites supported Trump does not make him antisemitic. By that logic, tens of millions of people who stated to have voted for Obama because he was black made him a racist for sure.
It’s precisely this sort of witch-hunt and wholesale smear that have driven people to go for a schmuck like Trump.
So like when people accuse Muslims of being violent, so some Muslims show how peaceful Islam is by being violent?
Edited 2016-12-07 13:30 UTC
I disagree with your assessment that there is anything to fix per se. Lies and deception exist since the beginning of mankind. Technology only changed the reach of those. But it hopefully equally spread knowledge.
Yes some of those lies are evil and disgusting, but I cringed at the idea of “removing fake news”. I don’t have the right to decide if the belief that a man could be born of a virgin or that the earth is flat are real or not – emphasize on belief, not fact. I can try to educate, make fun of or ignore those beliefs, but I sure don’t want to have a restricted internet of only the allowed news.
You’ve said it better than I could. Any attempt to “fix” this problem will only make it worse and bring other censorship issues into the mix. Leave it alone. The only fix for stupidity is knowledge, and any attempt to suppress the stupid only give it more credibility to the people who believe it in the first place.
I see no problem what-so-ever with internet search results. Instead of filtering out the endless list of things people whine about, why not try actually educating people instead? You know, raise a generation of well-rounded thinkers & root problem solvers who don’t crumble when they see or hear something they don’t like.
I have no tears to contribute to people who want to cry over google search results.
You mean, uncle Jimmy’s neighbor’s cousin twice removed?
That guy’s a dick.
Am I the only person, who has disabled/blocked any suggestions from google? I know what I want to search, no need for suggestions, thank you.
It makes me sometimes almost cry to watch otherwise very sensible people to rely only on search suggestions. And many click on first search result also, although it is clearly visible that this result doesn’t contain anything usable. People, what is wrong with you???
I’m amazed at the anti-science and uninformed comments here. I agree with Thom, but I’d take it up a notch: even people with degrees turn anti science when they’re away from academia long enough apparently.
TheGuardian DELIBERATELY clicked the bait. And BATED on loads of bull $h!t. All in the name of Journalism. Untamed merchandising.
World is whatever I say, as long a coin drops at their coffins. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it!
Who dares to be the truth bearers? The pitonisas of XXI century?
Who can stand up to being truthful, at least to themselves, at least to the end of the day, this day?