I found a link on FaceBook and it has justified my long held belief that there is as much misinformation on the web as there is factual information. The reason that people are generally much less wary of the internet than they used to be is because internet search engines learn about us individually and then they tell us exactly what we want to hear. It's only natural for people to not want to believe that a site which tells them what they long to hear is out to lunch but it happens anyway whether they like it or not.

Elsewhere on the web I recently entered a discussion which proved to me that this phenomenon is real. I made a couple of comments but mostly I was just watching the debate unfold out of curiosity to see how it would play out. I witnessed people providing links that proved their points 100% conclusively and then their opponents would provide some links that 100% conclusively proved the exact opposite. Then an intellectual or two would weigh in and try to sort out the apparent conflicts of information. It hasn't fleshed out fully yet and I doubt it will ever be 100% resolved but it reminded me of what sometimes happens here. There is a reason these arguments never resolve anything. There is a reason nobody ever wins and nobody ever convinces another to change their minds and convert. I think in light of the link above you can prolly figure out what that reason is.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I disagree with you .....

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Have you been standing in front of that cranked PA system of yours again?

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Bill

Nope. The amp is in the shop actually. Cooling fan comes on way too early and then just stays on. Hopefully it's something simple; I might have to solve my problem by getting a bigger one but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Hi BMW: regarding the vid you linked to. That is a very good reason never to be logged on to Google or its competitors when we use them for searching. And a fine reason not to get our news from Yahoo, and to seek better sources. And an absolutely excellent reason to pay as little attention as possible to Facebook, and to look very closely at things like their privacy settings and other preferences.

And in general, to be hugely sceptical of these rapacious and over-dominant giant corporations and to think hard about their financial agendas - which are not too mysterious and hard to fathom.

However, regarding this:

Hm. I think there are other, more powerful reasons why arguments on the internet and everywhere else so seldom change anyone's mind. I think it has a lot more to do with the way the human brain functions than software algorithms.

But I'm not going to argue over it.

Cheers - C

EDITED: to add emoticon.

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Politics is the candy coating of the turd that is the organized crime of government. Now, discussing which crime family is more psychopathic than the other might be a conversation brushing up against reality. Everything else is the candy thrown to the special needs mentality of those who still have not seen through the ruse.

What color M&M do you like?

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I have some Fender gear.
(Telecaster, Jaguar, Villager 12 String. Mustang l, Bronco, SCX2, Rumble 350, HRDIII, Rumble 2x8 Neo Cab)
http://www.reverbnation.com/modwiz

No argument here. How about we agree there are more reasons than just one? It certainly can't help if the info can't be trusted.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

That, my friend, is deep.

And I like Green M&Ms myself...

Ah, too late I realised I should have stuck a silly little smilie on the end of that last line, to show it was light-hearted. I'll go back and add it now...

A-a-anyhow.

So: are we simply saying that we don't care to have Google and others filtering what we see in an attempt to give us what they think we want? Especially if they do it without us knowing, and most particularly if they don't tell us the criteria upon which they do it?

Or: do we think that if everyone was viewing the same information then arguments would be much more consensual, because people would only be able to draw one conclusion from a given set of data?

Cheers - C

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Disagree. Misinformation is more widespread, and far easier to find. Search engines work on popularity of hits, not quality of information within the things people are hitting on. Many peoples search skills are basic and poor, and assessing the quality of what is returned is variable.



This doesn't prove either are right, but it's very easy to find any supporting information online, for any given POV. I studied internet research as part of my Communications degree, and a commonly put argument was that today, access to information is not a problem, we have far too much, all instantly accessible - sorting the good from the garbage is the real skill people need.

Many 'legit' looking websites, with what looks like facts and good research, can be fronts for organisations with agendas, or at worst, frootloop conspiracy theories, and if they're aiming to push that agenda, or misinform, they often try to hide who they are, so the information cannot be judged openly. Knowing who you are getting your information from is one of the key criteria we use to assess its quality with some objectivity.

guys, I work closely with my marketing department at work and I can tell you 100% sure, this technology is out there and it's just as described in the video.

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That was my implication, yes. To both ... but the second one would only work if the information provided was actually factual. As Drubbing quite rightly pointed out, search engines (even without filters) show you what is popular but not necessarily what is correct.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I think there are certain benefits to filtered results for web searches. Anyone who ever searched for information on how to 'scat' before they started filtering results can tell you that.

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It's not so much the filtering, it's the idea they do it without us knowing and our subsequent lack of control over the filtering. At the end of the video the guy didn't ask for them to stop filtering. He asked them to make the filtering better so as to include a better well rounded sample and to give us some measure of control over it.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.