
What happened to the dinosaurs? - ntakasaki
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/05/26/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs/?hn
======
bennettfeely
> "Is abortion right", returns from a strongly pro-choice viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+abortion+right)

> "Is abortion okay", returns an excerpt from a strongly pro-life viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+abortion+okay)

> "Does God exist", returns an atheist's viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=does+god+exist)

> "Is God real", returns a strongly theistic viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+god+real)

I feel like Google isn't doing a good service by providing quick and very
biased answers to very big questions.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I take issue with your analogy, as these are all moral questions. In contrast,
"What happened to the dinosaurs" is a factual question.

~~~
mod
"Does God exist" seems pretty factual to me.

~~~
cmsj
That seems overly simplistic, given the diverse claims as to the nature of
God/Gods.

To pick one, the Judaeo-Christian god seems to be unwilling to allow proof of
its existence. This seems to be intentional, to place the acceptance/rejection
of its existence onto a plane of personal faith, rather than provable fact.

------
Animats
Xin Luna Dong at Google works on the problem of web site factual credibility.
See her talk at Stanford.[1] There's a database of well-known facts, and when
web sites mention those subjects, their credibility is rated by detecting
disagreements with those facts. This in turn affects their search ranking.
This helps detect satire sites, fantasy baseball vs real baseball, Obama
"birthers", and such. She said the system is live for some topics, but not
fully rolled out yet.

[1]
[http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/150429.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/150429.html)

------
rebootthesystem
I long for an age where pre-medieval superstition are expunged from popular
culture. It's truly embarassing to see a large percentage of humanity still in
the grip of ideas promoted by decrepit old men wearing funny hats.

Men who have contributed absolulely nothing to the advancement of society,
culture, science, medicine, engineering or any of the real things that improve
the human condition.

These people truly need to be laughed at and ridiculed. From the Pope all the
way down the hierarchy and similarly for all religions.

Think about what these people do and contribute every day versus what
teachers, scientists, doctors, engineers, construction workers and business
people contribute. There is zero comparison.

It's 2015. Ridicule them. Don't apease or respect them. And please, oh,
please, do not give them the respect of having equal standing to scientific
theories on the internet. A search for anything creationist should only
deliver solid explanations of how utterly ridiculous it is to even begin to
consider any part of the entire contrived framework.

How much longer are we going to tolerate the men with funny hats piss all over
centuries of accumulated and massively tested scientific knowledge? 100 years?
200? 500? Why?

~~~
DanBC
The pope beleives in evolution and wants evolution to be taught.
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-
francis-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-
declares-evolution-and-big-bang-theory-are-right-and-god-isnt-a-magician-with-
a-magic-wand-9822514.html)

Mocking people does nothing to change their opinion. I'm trying to change your
opinion with this post. Would I be more sucessful if I called you names?

I totally sympathise - I hate the fact that so many people believe absolute
nonsense. But then I know plenty of atheists who also believe absolute
nonsense.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Whether the Pope chooses to capitulate or not does not matter. The massive
enterprise known as the Vatican only serves to promote a set of superstitions
and delusions that have infected human brains for centuries. That place needs
to be shut down. They need to return all the money they've stolen from the
poor and the place needs to be turned into a museum of primitive thinking.

With regards to ridiculing them. Tolerance is a delicate thing.

What if you had a million people still believing and promoting the "fact" that
blood-letting and human sacrifice were necessary in order to cure disease and
promote good crops? And what if they pointed to a set of words chiseled out on
some stones as being the command from their god to engage in human sacrifice?
And they demanded legal protection from our government? And, of course, tax
exemption? And, of course, to be able to teach this to your kids and my kids
in school? And every politician had to swear that they believed in this horse-
shit because they need those million votes?

What do you do then? Do you embrace and tolerate them? Or to you fight them at
every corner, even ridicule them, in order to eradicate their influence form
society?

Should a politician who says her or she believes in this shit be allowed to
hold office? Should a President swear on the chiseled tablets as a sign of
entering into a covenant with the people? Should a whole nation proclaim to be
under the protection of these gods who want human sacrifice?

No, of course not. And if you tolerate them. If we accept them. If we allow
them to even for a microsecond sit at the same table with scientists we fail
to evolve as humans.

You have to laugh at them in order to shift them into an uncomfortable
position where they'll have to really question what they are saying. Why don't
we, as adults, say we believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus? Nobody has
proven they don't exist? In fact, you can't prove they don't exist. Yet anyone
would be laughed out of a room if they proclaimed these kinds of beliefs. And
that would be the right reaction.

No, this is nonsense. It isn't the 1,500's any more. A creationist and their
horse-shit have no place anywhere near scientific facts, schools and certainly
nowhere related to an online search of the Theory of Evolution. To allow such
a thing is a disservice to humanity.

This needs to stop. Let's stop pretending it is OK to believe in flying
horsemen, talking snakes, singing bushes, parting seas, getting help from a
god on a test while on the other side of town a little kid is dead from
cancer, etc., etc., etc.

I am not a militant atheist but I am really getting tired of the bullshit. The
constant barrage of nonsense being placed on a level plane with science isn't
sitting well with me. None of this nonsense deserves any respect at all. None
of it. They get rich of the poor and our governments give them special
standing. That's irrational. Absolutely irrational.

Nearly everyone on this planet today owes their lives to science. Yet we don't
ridicule morons in funny hats who believe in singing bushes and supernatural
beings.

Here's the problem: Politicians like to talk about economic disparity. They do
not talk about the real long term problem of intellectual disparity. Fast
forward to 100 years from now. If things don't change we will have a situation
where there will be a huge gap between those educated in the sciences and
those left in the dark through supernatural beliefs and the lack of education.

I know ignorant religious people who home-school their kids and teach them
such nonsense as the earth being 5,000 years old. They are so far behind
already that they might as well be cave men with iPhones. It's sad, really.
They live their lives justifying everything that happens through divine
intervention and intent. They are absolutely and totally ignorant in the
context of modern scientific knowledge and completely closed to learning or
considering anything new. For all they know the earth might as well be flat. I
can see a future where it won't be rich vs. poor but ignorant religious vs.
scientifically literate. This disparity will cause cataclysmic clashes. I
mean, just take a look at some of these tribes in the middle east. They ARE
cave-men with iPhones.

No, you have to laugh and ridicule them. In 2015 these ideologies do not
deserve any respect whatsoever. None.

Harsh? Probably.

I have done this to people BTW. In some cases they've cussed me out and in a
some they have engaged me in conversation. No, I am not an ass about it. I
simply smile and politely ask something like "You don't really believe that
stuff, do you?". Have I convinced anyone? Don't know, but I did make them
think. One of my favorite questions is: "Do you really believe in a singing
bush?" and it goes from there.

~~~
DanBC
You don't have to be an utter cunt about it, and being a cunt is unlikely to
change anyone's beliefs. If anything it will make their belief stronger.

You are creating and strengthening that which you hate. Your behaviour is
counter productive. It is entirely unhelpful to behave as you do.

You claim to be rational yet in that fucking huge wall of text you didn't
bother to include any research on effective methods to change behaviours.

Your emotional response is _identical_ to that of a faith based response -
your response is pure emotion and faith and is devoid of fact.

But those people are the ones we should be mocking?

~~~
rebootthesystem
I am perfectly comfortable being a cunt with people who refuse to use reason
and choose to be so ignorant OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS after some of this
ignorant nonsense started.

It's like telling someone they are being a fucking cunt for ridiculing and
rejecting someone who believes in human sacrifice to Aztec gods. It IS fucking
primitive nonsense and it should no longer be tolerated in any form.

And, no, it isn't emotional, it's rational. There's nothing emotional about
taking the position that people who believe such incredibly ridiculous
nonsense are absolutely delusional. They are and that's absolutley objective
with no emotion attached whatsoever.

Sorry, you are wrong.

Would you accept medieval beliefs being imposed by leaders in your town? Of
course not. And you would be doing so objectively and not based on emotion.

Religoius superstition needs to be ridiculed and relegated to the history
books. It needs to be no different than when we study primitive civilizations,
their beliefs and customs. This should be taught and studied but nobody in a
million years would propose it should be tolerated or respected in any way.

------
rasur
I'd really rather prefer there was some online repository of facts, constantly
updated via Machine Learning over publicly available information, which might
give up to the second responses of the kind 'Our current understanding is ...'

Is there one already? Wolfram Alpha is close, I guess. Wikipedia is not quite
what I'm thinking of. Google is working on something, not sure if it's public
though. Their search engine.. also not quite what I'm thinking of.

What/where have I missed?

~~~
jameshart
This is an example of precisely the kind of false-positive that you would
expect to have emerge when you leave it up to machine learning over publicly
available information to try to figure out the answer to a question.

~~~
rasur
I kind of agree TBH, although I would say their search engine (as it is today)
and a 'fact-repo' are quite different things. I'd expect a higher level of
rigour in the fact-repo ML checking processes.

------
jasonkostempski
Reminds me of one of my favorite @profbriancox tweets:

"Wading thru much bollocks trying to research evolution of pigments. I suggest
Google introduce a logical "and.not.god_did_it" switch"

[https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox/status/115080841411051520](https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox/status/115080841411051520)

~~~
Nadya
"evolution of pigments -bible -god -creationism"

Knowing how to properly use Google is useful. The three most useful tools for
Google searches are "-", "*", and "site:" in my opinion.

~~~
shabble
"inurl:pdf" is great for finding copies of papers, too. "filetype:" supposedly
works as well, but I've had much less luck using it.

------
pnathan
There's a very interesting and subtle shift of the perception of what truth
and facts are in the last ten-fifteen years. A friend once said to me, years
ago, "Google is my memory".

I'm not even remotely qualified to untangle the issues, but fundamentally it
seems the problem is that truth is being mediated by the electronic systems "I
feel lucky" rather than critically analyzed. It's similar to the old newspaper
mediation of truth, but far more widespread.

------
zrail
Real time updates now make Google bombs even easier to accomplish. The result
described in the article is #2 on the page, after a one day old article
describing the problem. This article is in the "In The News" section.

------
ceejayoz
I no longer get that article, so I'm guessing the flagging worked.

~~~
jfuhrman
It's #2 in the organic search results for me.

~~~
ditojim
same. pbs has an actual explanation about 7 links down.

------
protomyth
Since we have a Presidential election coming up in the US, expect a lot of
psychotic SEO activity.

~~~
philabitlipowit
That may explain it, I just noticed sanatorum has been subtly removed from our
standard spell checkers.

I don't think it is healthy when santorum is red, and I hope we can get that
part of the namespace back after the election.

