
Google, the Stupidity Amplifier (2016) - Santosh83
http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html
======
dorkwood
I got a good one the other day. I searched "does freezing kill bacteria", and
the featured answer came back "freezing food kills harmful bacteria that can
cause food poisoning".

I was curious, so I clicked through to read more. It turns out this text was
taken from the headline at the top of a PDF. What the Google crawler didn't
notice, however, was that the headline actually had another headline above it.
The full text read "Myth: Freezing food kills harmful bacteria that can cause
food poisoning".

~~~
pvaldes
This was accurately fixed. Freezing definitely kills most types of bacteria

~~~
umvi
Which, I'm assuming, is why all sushi in the USA must must be frozen and then
re-thawed before serving.

~~~
yawz
Really!?! I had sushi at the bar many times and it was prepared right in front
of me. Maybe you meant ingredients?

~~~
snug
Sushi grade fish must be flash frozen to kill any bacteria, worms, etc. in
order to be served frozen. Most fresh (killed, butchered and served quickly)
food isn't really great, either taste wise or health wise. Especially if it's
not fully cooked.

Most red meats sit out for a bit, either wet or dry aged, which enhances the
flavors. Fish will need to be frozen or cooked to a safe temperature.

~~~
winter_blue
I knew someone (a French person) who was a massive fan of tartare. Tartare is
basically raw meat. He'd go to expensive tartare restaurants (in Paris), where
hygienically-raised cows were killed, and the meat cut out and served, all in
the same day. He described tartare as being the best thing ever. (I've never
tried it.)

~~~
PixelOfDeath
In Germany and surrounding countries it is very common to eat raw minced pork
meat (Mett) on bread/buns.

~~~
dhimes
I seem to recall this was breakfast fare.

~~~
groby_b
It is indeed. (Or dinner - we do sandwiches for breakfast _and_ dinner)

------
ve55
The worst part about this is that it's not an honest mistake, but rather a
dishonest one: Google embeds as many 'answers' into their SRP as possible so
that users do not leave their website.

If Google just displayed links to users, then the user might actually click
them, which would result in them leaving Google for another website, which is
Not Okay. One of Google's largest efforts is to make sure they're the only
website the user stays on, which is why they scrape contents from pages and
display them on their SRP, why they want to hide the address bar from web
browsers, why they push projects like AMP so hard, and many other things.
Conveniently these efforts are also all of the nature that they can just claim
they're helping the user get what they want more quickly - as long as they're
using Google.

Users also all trust Google a considerable amount, so very few will take any
additional action after being instantly supplied with an answer that is
scraped from some random website. Google gets 100% of the user flow, has 100%
control over what answer to show, and of course can show the user some great
ads while they're at it, while denying the source website traffic for their
content.

~~~
jtsiskin
I blame the modern web for this.

Google a question you have, especially something with mass appeal, (health,
fitness, media, culture, travel, etc.) and click any of the top links.

It will load slowly, 1000s of tracking scripts, there will be popups,
scrolling might break, you will be redirected, more popups, half the screen
covered by an ad, the site breaks, etc...

In fact I just recorded myself doing this. Watch as I struggle to read the
page, I end up not even able to scroll down:
[https://imgur.com/gallery/5fdBdcL](https://imgur.com/gallery/5fdBdcL)

~~~
dorgo
I also blame browsers. Create an empty .html file and open it in firefox. Load
time 370 ms (according to an addon). It's a local empty file. How can firefox
spend 234 ms on DOM processing? Chrome seems to be better here.

Edit: window.performance.timing.domContentLoadedEventEnd -
window.performance.timing.navigationStart

Firefox: 411

Chrome: 70 => better, but still 70ms for what?

~~~
JoshuaDavid
I get 66ms on Firefox, with the following breakdown:

    
    
        navigationStart: 0
        fetchStart: 0
        domainLookupStart: 35
        domainLookupEnd: 35
        connectStart: 35
        connectEnd: 35
        requestStart: 36
        responseStart: 36
        responseEnd: 36
        unloadEventStart: 49
        unloadEventEnd: 49
        domLoading: 49
        domInteractive: 63
        domContentLoadedEventStart: 64
        domContentLoadedEventEnd: 65
        domComplete: 66
        loadEventStart: 66
        loadEventEnd: 66
    

So it looks like the bulk of the time is actually whatever happens between
fetchStart and domainLookupStart, and between responseEnd and
unloadEventStart. The actual time from domLoading to domComplete is only 17ms,
which is about 1 frame on a 60hz monitor.

Note: refreshing the page with the javascript console open takes ~200ms on my
machine, and certain extensions can make it even slower than that.

------
coffeefirst
Yep, I've also noticed a lot of really weird stuff from sketchy sources
embedded in the answers panel.

We forgot that the reason search engines were effectively exempt from
libel/copyright etc. is because were just describing the web, they published
the map but the content was on all the individual websites.

It's a lot harder to argue that model still applies when you've got algorithms
building out these micro-articles from increasingly disparate pieces.
Somewhere here there's a line between a preview of a link and republication.

~~~
52-6F-62
That has come to my attention more recently when looking for short answers to
small medical questions surrounding a condition—things I'd forgotten, etc. I
quickly learned how off-the-mark those can be.

The feature is really clever and works great when it works, but sometimes just
because something is formatted as an authoritative answer, it's promoted above
actual correct information. It's almost slower than just looking for a
qualifying source in those cases.

------
jhanschoo
Relatedly, for sufficiently obscure historical figures for which a Wikipedia
entry exists without any depictions in literature, we sometimes have images
from the game "Crusader Kings 2" take the spot. r/crusaderkings are full of
posts of these incidents, and at the time of this comment this is still the
case for Cynewulf of Wessex.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
There are many cases as these. Facebook is another culprit here, pulling up
info from various sources and presenting it as authoritative. I remember
looking up the Dalai Lama and seeing at the bottom: "Nationality: Chinese"
which made me laugh, but on the other hand things like these make many people
upset.

~~~
em500
> I remember looking up the Dalai Lama and seeing at the bottom: "Nationality:
> Chinese" which made me laugh, but on the other hand things like these make
> many people upset.

Out of curiosity, what do you believe to be the correct nationality?

~~~
tialaramex
I presume the Dalai Lama considers himself to be Tibetan.

Now, perhaps you would consider that we ought to demand people's "nationality"
be an actual UN member state which counts them as a citizen and since Tibet
isn't a member... That's a bit awkward though because the "One China" policy
ensures neither the Republic (in Taiwan) nor the PRC will allow the other to
be a UN member at the same time as them.

Also I find that I doubt we demand most people have documentary proof. Not
taking their word for it is already a _bit weird_ unless you're a border
official. Is Samantha Bee really Canadian? I mean, she says she is so I just
assumed...

~~~
mc32
It could also be like asking what was Mozart’s nationality? Austrian or Holy
Roman?

~~~
ginko
He was a Salzburger, which was an independent princedom back then.

~~~
mc32
Is that what he is celebrated as these days? Which country takes pride in this
composer these days?

~~~
ginko
Salzburg is now part of Austria, so..

~~~
mc32
I agree. Same for the Dalai Lama. He was once Tibetan but today he is Chinese.
That’s just how it has worked and does work, like it or not.

Obviously being in exile I have no idea what passport he carries of if he gets
to issue his own given he contends the current government, etc.

~~~
puszczyk
It think Austria is proud of their Salzburg heritage and China (CCP) works
really hard to tear down the Tibetan culture.

~~~
berdario
Han Chinese children have to learn Tibetan in school:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/12992582723...](https://mobile.twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/1299258272327688192)

I think that rumors of cultural oppression in Tibet have been vastly
exaggerated

------
fouc
I think most HN people know Google is essentially a dumb search engine.

We're not surprised when image results have no correlation with the search
term. The problem is when other people fail to notice this disparity.

They'll go on to write articles and blog post based on google's results. Later
someone else will make a wikipedia page based on the blog post. Google's
flawed results will now be confirmed by the wikipedia page.

A virtuous cycle indeed.

~~~
elliekelly
Tangentially related, I had a surprising experience using DDG yesterday. It
was... “smart” for lack of a better word.

I was watching an episode of Star Trek TNG and a character was introduced that
was a little over the top and vaguely resembled Jim Carrey so I searched “Star
Trek Jim Carrey” and one of the top results (after a bunch of YouTube clips of
some sort of Jim Carrey Star Trek skit) was the Wikipedia page for the
specific episode I was watching. And here’s the interesting part: Jim Carrey
wasn’t in it.

My search results took my misguided query and still returned the one correct
episode out of who knows how many hundreds of Star Trek episodes exist. I can
only guess that enough people have searched “Star Trek Jim Carrey” and stopped
searching once they got to information about that particular episode.

~~~
kevincox
IIRC search engines also use the text of the incoming link and surrounding
prose. So it is quite possible that enough people on Reddit (or any other
discussion site) said "The person in this episode looks like Jim Carrey $link"
the the search engine picked up on it.

------
alderz
The author has written the novel "Permutation City", which I read after seeing
it recommended here on HN a lot. It is a great book. I never thought I would
be interested in sci-fi, but this book changed my mind. It deals with
simulating conciousness and its implications.

If you enjoyed the post, and the author's website, be sure to read some of his
books too!

~~~
wcoenen
If I remember correctly, Permutation City is more about the implications of
modal realism (or "dust theory" in the book). Consciousness upload is used in
the book to enter a simulated reality, but in itself that doesn't explain what
happens when the simulation is turned off.

~~~
teekert
It does actually, and I really like this explanation: So, imagine you model a
human mind. Now you can slow this model down, speed it up, the human mind does
not know. In the novel states of the mind in time are computed, out of order,
while watching reality, the mind observes it is time scambled but the mind
itself does not notice. On the basis Egan concludes that the pattern that
forms the mind may well be present in the universe somewhere, and the next
time pattern, one time instance further may be somewhere completely different.
But the mind does not notice. So the mind can just exist without it's physical
basis being anywhere specifically... It get's one thinking.

Honestly as the other response says, indeed there is a parallel universe part
to it.. For which I didn't really understand it relation to "dust".

I also liked "Quarantine" which made Quantum Mechanics somehow more intuitive
to me. Truly a great writer.

~~~
Filligree
> Honestly as the other response says, indeed there is a parallel universe
> part to it.. For which I didn't really understand it relation to "dust".

The other universes count as part of the "dust".

The characters in the book thought it would be only random 'simulations' that
accidentally happen sometime in the universe's infinite future that kept
running them -- that is, literal dust.

They were wrong. Simulations in entirely disjoint universes also count, and
aren't nearly as predictable.

------
czzr
Interestingly a current search still shows this, and the root cause is the
fact that there are no pictures of Greg Egan available.

This is a fascinating failure mode - Google works on a best effort basis, so
it doesn’t have a strong enough concept of “there is no correct answer to this
question” or perhaps “my approach is wrong in this case”.

~~~
crazygringo
> _Interestingly a current search still shows this_

It doesn't for me. I just get his home page as the top of search results, and
a knowledge panel on the right-hand side that appears to accurately describe
him (with zero photos), and a button "Claim this knowledge panel" which he
could presumably use to correct any misinformation.

~~~
czzr
Definitely not what I saw - strange that it would be different for different
users. Doesn’t seem to be something that would be personalised.

------
simion314
This makes me wonder if Google developers ever get feedback from outside the
company, it feels like some feature is released and developers move the the
nsxt shiny thing and most feedback (the one that does not reach on a news
paper) is ignored. Probably this is expected when you have many users and most
of them are not paying.

~~~
kristopolous
I wonder this about a lot of "tier 1" software, whenever I get easy to access
critical business logic breaking bugs in Amazon, eBay, etc...

I just find it utterly unacceptable. I'd drag my developers over hot coal if
they somehow released what I see from these trillion dollars companies.

I wasn't able to "add to cart" with my Amazon app for instance and things like
YouTube and Instagram constantly crash when I'm adding new content. And many
banking apps totally freak out when I use a password manager. This is pretty
core operation. It's really amazing.

I really don't know how the valley operates sometime.

I'd imagine they supposedly have entire departments and dozens of people who
are supposed to make sure this stuff works.

Sometimes I find it so unbelievable that I try multiple devices to take the
possibility that it's just me out and it's invariably reproducible on all.

Maybe nobody at the company uses Android or maybe nobody uses their own
product? (Maybe people who work at, say, Facebook don't actually like using
it...thats understandable, but also unacceptable)

I really don't know how it happens. Maybe their tests are 100% automated and
no human checks it? I don't know.

~~~
Fatalist_ma
I think the main reason is that they can afford to not care. There is no
pressure. They can afford to be inefficient because they know that as long as
the core features work, customers will not leave.

~~~
sukilot
Maybe the reason they are trillion dollars companies because they care about
more important things than obscure or unprofitable bugs and berating their
staff.

~~~
sildur
Because they care about filling their pockets and mostly nothing else, that’s
the reason.

------
crazygringo
Is this article still relevant?

When I search for "Greg Egan", the knowledge panel in the right column doesn't
show any photos at all.

And it even has a button "Claim this knowledge panel" that he could presumably
use to make corrections.

So is this article just old news, where Google has not only corrected its
mistakes but also provided a manual way for people to fix misinformation about
themselves?

I'm not understanding why this article is appearing now in 2020.

(Also, a search engine is always going to get some things wrong. Without
knowing the _rate_ of errors, a single example doesn't really mean much of
anything.)

~~~
fxtentacle
Highly relevant. Google will monetize fully automated mistakes and you're
saying it's OK because the victims can manually clean up the mess later?

~~~
crazygringo
No information on the web is 100% perfect or accurate. Even the NYT makes a
host of mistakes daily across all its edited articles, and publishes
corrections for the most serious ones when readers point them out.

Google's results are _largely_ accurate, and as long as it has a mechanism for
correcting mistakes _does_ seem to make it pretty OK to me.

What are you suggesting any serious alternative be? That would actually work
at scale?

~~~
tpxl
>What are you suggesting any serious alternative be?

Not erroneously copy stuff?

~~~
summerlight
> That would actually work at scale?

Probably "Not erroneously copy stuff?" is not a trivial thing to do at scale.

~~~
tpxl
Not copying stuff is trivially scaleable to infinity.

Seriously, if you can't do something at scale, don't do something at scale.
Being shitty to everyone involved and then saying "but can't scale with
profits" is not OK.

------
makecheck
I’m reminded of time learning a new language, and how little it takes to
_completely_ change the meaning of something.

Imagine if you thought you understood 90% of what somebody said to you but you
didn’t catch the word “not”; you would have _exactly the wrong
interpretation_. Or what about skipping a modifier like “slightly” or
“significantly”? (And don’t even get me started on sarcasm or other things
that may not be detectable to all.) Google’s summaries, or any auto-
summarization, risk _inventing_ a new conclusion that was _never_ part of the
original.

This is a cornerstone to critical thinking as well. If you spend your time
trusting one-sentence tweets and other shallow writing, are you also asking
yourself what hasn’t been stated? For example, I could say: “Engineers
quitting Google amid latest executive actions”; the reality might be “it was
exactly two engineers”, “their reasons for quitting were unrelated”, etc. It
is _extremely_ easy to create misleading summaries.

~~~
kwillets
translate.google.com somewhat prone to misnegation. Basically one word doesn't
change the score that much, and there are things like different word order
that overwhelm it.

------
throwaway_pdp09
I haven't even read it yet but this website is exactly what I'd expect to see
all sites like, customisable to your taste (and even needs, for visually
impaired). And this is the first web page I've ever seen that does that
since... the web began I guess.

~~~
ehnto
For better or worse, some US regulations have made it a requirement for
certain websites to have accessibility functionality. That has spawned a small
ecosystem of plugins that aim to fulfill the regulatory requirements. Does
they make for a more accessible websites? Judging by the plugins I have seen
so far, I really doubt it. But it is at least a springboard to work from, and
a kick in the butt for people who truly do care and are talented enough to
pull it off properly.

That said, these plugins, and their failings, are a reminder to me that
accessibility can't be an after thought, it needs to be baked into your
product's UX.

------
vffhfhf
Do people expect google to be run by Magic?

Google, wikipedia, even facebook, twitter and reddit have been a plus to
modern human thinking.

Just coz they fail somewhere doesnot mean they are bad.

People dont remember how much things sucked before them. Also computer vision,
AI are new things.

""And your mission was to organise the world’s information. How’s that working
out for you so far?""

It working out so well. Internet is just 40 year old and we are here for fu*k
sake.

Some people have 0 bigger picture scene.

~~~
uniqueid

      > Just coz they fail somewhere does not mean they are bad.
    

But looking at the bigger picture is not especially favorable to Google et al:

Back in the 1980s, technology was advancing at a dizzying pace, and the world
seemed on its way to peace, freedom, and brotherly love.

Today the world has a dis/misinformation crisis, and authoritarianism is
rising.

Even if none of that is _the fault_ of Google and social media, it casts doubt
on _the benefit_ of today's internet. How great can it be, given the state the
world?

~~~
ddalex
I think you may be missing the forest for the trees, no offense intended.

The world is still on its way to peace, freedom and love.

What has happened is that the new communication paradigm surfaced truths that
there were before but not acknowledged. Violence against blacks didn't start
with Rodney King and didn't end with Jacob Blake. There were there before, and
they got pushed into the spotlight exactly by the advancing technology of the
Internet: videocameras, cell phones, search, video distribution, forums, etc.

We are in the midst of the most important revolution of humankind - the
knowledge revolution. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions before,
it's going to turn up the society on its head, and it won't be pretty. But the
society that follows will be way better that the one we have now.

~~~
uniqueid
That is an attractive theory, which I also held for a long time. Sadly, as I
see it, the world is not playing ball. There comes a point where you have to
face the world as it is, not as it is supposed to be.

I still think technology has equal potential for good, as it does for bad. I
hope our industry will adapt, to tilt the balance back to the former.

I'll leave it at that. I wrote and deleted several longer replies to your
comment, but they all wound up sounding even more condescending :)

------
dredmorbius
Wayback Machine:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130303005243/http://gregegan.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130303005243/http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
NB: That points to what turns out to be an old version of a continuously
updated page, from 2013. Actual content, which was offline at the time, dates
to at latest 2016. Apologies for any confusion.

------
CarbyAu
I like science. My kid is two.

Major disappointment when Google('rockets') results in only sportsball.

As in, zero indication that the word 'rocket' is to be associated with
anything else.

So I used duckduckgo. Same result.

1\. Bitterly disappointed in the state of search engines today.

2\. Reinforced the idea of teaching critical thinking to my child...

------
libso
On a related note, how do I block Google from showing me the Answer blurb when
I search for something, especially on desktop browsers?

------
donclark
I feel the same for Google, and other search engines as well. Are the results
given pushing us to come together as a people - towards common goals?

------
fredfoobar
I've come to think that most of the tech on Internet act as a stupidity
amplifier, consider: Twitter, Facebook

------
bbotond
Cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zB4HA5...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zB4HA54_0dsJ:https://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=hu)

------
nikolastojkov
Imagine taking headlines as concrete facts. Oh....

------
yters
ai cannot understand irony

------
dwighttk
Published 2012, but updated since then... I think it should say 2016

------
mm41
Entitlement... There are 189 Greg Egan on Linkedin alone. No wonder Google
doesn't show only his face. If his claim is valid, the result right now seems
pretty ok to me...

~~~
StormChaser_5
Why entitlement? If you just searched for Greg Egan and got a bunch of images
for Greg Egan's that would be fine. But google is pulling together info as a
bio of Greg Egan the science fiction author, presenting it as authoritative,
and including a picture - not someone with this name but that specific person.
The author being annoyed that Google is falsely saying this is what he
specifically looks like doesn't sound entitled to me

~~~
mm41
But it doesn't! Just look him up right now and you will see his bio doesn't
include pictures of random people. There are pictures of his books covers and
picture of other people users have been searching for (probably other authors
and people loosely connected to him) Then in the middle part there are indeed
fairly random pictures but these have nothing to do with his bio. They are
just Google results.

