

Ask HN: Why aren't people as patient as Google Search? - hifireader

Ok, I admit, I ask Google Search the same question many times per day.  Sometimes for years on end.<p>Now, if I ask Stack Overflow the exact same question multiple times per day, I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;ll make it out there alive.<p>Why is it acceptable to ask Google Search the exact same question but to people directly?  How does that affect the future advancement of mankind?  How did this phenomena affect the advancement of mankind before Google Search existed?
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dalke
You have mixed two ways to "ask a question." A search query against Google is
one way to ask a question. Stack Overflow supports the same method, through
the search box in the upper right hand corner.

In both cases you are free to ask the same question many times per day, though
I suspect in both cases if you automate it and ask it once every second then
you might get throttled or shut off. This is possible because the machine
costs to answer this sort of question is low.

Stack Overflow also has a way to post a new question, which may have
supporting documentation, etc. Google does not have a way to ask that sort of
question, in part no doubt because it requires human understanding to answer
that type of question.

It's not useful to treat both ways of asking a question as being identical.

Stack Overflow depends on a lot of volunteer labor. These are people who would
rather not answer the same question over and over again. It's possible to pay
people to do tedious work, but that would likely be too expensive for their
business model.

When I was a kid, before Google Search, there were automated systems like time
and temperature; a free number to call which would report the time. There was
no limit to how often someone could call it. NASA also had a free number to
see when the next launch would be, also answered by machine. And of course
even further back still, church clocks are a machine resource so people can
tell the time. It's acceptable for someone to look at a timepiece every few
minutes, but not to ask people for the time at that same frequency.

It comes down to that we treat machines as mindless, unfeeling automata. It's
also acceptable to drive a car without doing any maintenance until it breaks,
but do the same with a horse and it's animal cruelty.

