Another unintended consequence of Google doing the things that Google recommends you don't do (in this case, scraping sites).
Can we talk about how terrible a piece of pro-hillary propaganda that was?
Namely this:
> America is ready for the leadership of a Hillary Clinton. A new history will be made when she becomes the leader of the free world. The world of women everywhere will change
Sure, this sounds very reminiscent of 8 years ago, but what's even scarier is the opening paragraph:
> She has paid her dues as a political candidate
Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?
I think "She has paid her dues" is meant to be justifying the claim that she's fit to be a candidate, not that she should win. Last time around there were suggestions that Clinton didn't have the political experience necessary to make a good president, and that's a harder argument to make now.
(I do think it's a pretty fatuous article, not that that's a huge surprise from the Huffington Post. But it's probably not far off the mark -- the factors it lists really are likely to make as much difference to whether anyone votes for Clinton as any details of her policies or past achievements.)
Joelrunyon's top comment was a straw-man -- nobody said "paying your dues" was a sufficient condition -- so it seems fitting that the next snarky post down the thread would sarcastically attack the idea that it's a necessary condition.
When gjm11 said "justifying" they obviously meant "supporting". And yeah, after Obama's train-wreck foreign policy and complete disconnect with legislators on both sides of the aisle, it's pretty reasonable to highlight your experience as a positive quality.
It wasn't a straw man. I have no public opinion on Hillary as a candidate. I have a problem with arguments being made about candidates in the manner that the article made them.
It's worth noting that Obama himself was not originally planning to run in 2008 due to lack of experience in public office. Tom Daschle is responsible for pushing him to run precisely because he had no track record on hot topic issues that weakened the competition.
Yeah, I totally agree that is worth noting -- I think until Obama beat Clinton in some of the early contests, the conventional wisdom from virtually everybody (who follows politics) was that it was just too early for him to go for the big prize.
But I am curious whether that will hold -- whether candidates like Obama will remain outliers -- or whether that kind of thing will become the new normal.
Our political system is somewhat sick; having any record is a political liability. That is why our politicians almost all speak in tongues incomprehensible to any normal human being.
But the people favoring the established/experienced candidates are mainly the ones engaged and participating in the system which (perhaps insanely) doesn't include 98% of voters.
So I wouldn't be that surprised if candidates with very limited experience in government become more common.
> Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?
Yes. Source: Click around the Facebook comments of any substantially large digital publication. Tonnes of people don't even vote. Of those that do, most vote for the parties they're already loyal to. Of the few that are in the middle, most decide according to whatever is fashionable. It's a vanishingly small few that bother to evaluate issues, track records, etc.
I get voting on party - what scares me is voting on someone because they "paid their dues" - which is especially mind boggling when you look at people's approval ratings of those same candidates in their previous jobs (typically congress - which is hanging out at around 16%).
I think the "paid their dues" thing is meant to be necessary but not sufficient. That is, a lot of people would be cautious of voting for someone who had no significant political experience.
why the downvotes? Most people wouldn't consider half a term in congress significant experience. I can't think of many presidents with less. That doesn't mean he did a terrible job or was completely unqualified or anything of the sort. It's just a statement of fact that he didn't have very much experience at the time. Frankly, even though I disagree with his views on most things, I don't think he's actually done that badly. He hasn't done great IMO mind you, but I'm mostly content with how things have gone the last 6 years.
Wouldn't you like Alexis Tsipras a little better if he'd spent more time wearing out chairs in Brussels, eating canapés and learning what leads to results and what leads to nothing worthwhile? I mean, before he started attending really serious meetings where failure is serious?
Sorry - that also scares me. What is even worse (in my opinion) is people voting on candidates based on last names (which seems to be the trend lately) - especially when that's seen or used as a positive aspect.
People disapprove of Congress as a whole, but tend to like their individual Representatives and Senators. You don't vote your guy out of office just because the other 532 jerks in Congress you can't vote for or against don't let things run your way.
Yes, because their reps bring pork from D.C. back to their district. Who does not like a new school built/paid for by Fed money? Voters don't realize that the money is actually the tax money that they themselves paid into the system.
It is all very calculated, and in my opinion, is the epicenter of what's broken in the US political system.
I don't know how calculated it is, it seems it's one of those things that developed and people smart enough to realise what's happening decided it's a-ok with them.
But, yeah, the disconnect is huge. I've seen Americans on the internet brag about not taking advantage of unemployment benefits, completely ignoring that they spent years paying into them for that exact reason. And, to be honest, ever since I've started looking at the government as an entity that I've outsourced a lot of my needs/wants to (roads, physical safety, parks, etc), I've been a lot happier paying taxes.
Most people are becoming desensitized to the power of their vote to actually do the research as to who is the better candidate. Nobody seems to care as long as they are not directly affected in their day to day life. Reactions flare up for issues which become popular in the social domain, the issue settles and everybody forgets and moves on
We are all terrible at decision making especially on complex issues. I would guess that people doing deep 'research' are still making shortcuts as well (they just don't realize it). The key here is that the aggregate of terrible individual decisions should point to a better overall decision. Which is why increasing turnout is really important
It's very sad that people only vote their party. People need to learn to cross the line when it makes sense to. We are nearly perfectly split down the middle. This is a weak position to be in.
Well, it looks to me like people rarely vote for a candidate. More often, they're voting against a candidate because they believe that the other team is evil and must be stopped.
And it should be obvious that we're already in the end game for this strategy: if you vote against the other guy because he's evil, then your guy doesn't need to be good, he just needs to be perceived as slightly less evil. So it becomes a race to the bottom.
The cause of this seems to me to be the forced gerrymandering of voting districts so we don't get a meaningful voice in politics (other than as implied by the color of our skin, which is what the voting rights act requires).
But I think that, while getting rid of gerrymandering is a necessary part of any solution, the ultimate fix is to do away with the institutionalized two-party system. If today's problem is that the decision is binary (if I hate A then I must choose B), then offering three or more choices forces some thought and decision (at the very least: I know I hate A, but is B or C a better alternative?).
Politics is full of "this is why we can't have nice things." :)
Anyway, I don't think anyone really thinks like this, or at least a lot fewer than the people who talk like this. This is the kind of stuff that people come up with when they are already convinced and trying to make their case and not how they become convinced.
There is a common fallacy (or cognitive bias, I'm not sure what to call it) that affects almost everything we think but seems particularly pervasive in politics.
We use far more rational arguments to justify or argue for our positions and opinions than we do when adopting them. Adopting opinions is emotional (a bundle in itself), associative. Rational thought plays a part, but it's much smaller than we like to admit. We also see the logic in arguments with the logical conclusions we have already reached far more readily than the other way around.
"she has paid her dues" and "the world of women everywhere will change" seems convincing to someone who is already convinced. I doubt it convinces anyone (or many, anyway). In this case, it's almost testable. There are people on the other side of politics who are woman and have paid (or will have paid) their dues. If Hillary loses and one of them runs next time, do you think she'll switch?
Why not just flag the submission? Just like the hit piece we had last week on Rubio under the guise of prison reform.
Look, we likely will have to filter any story where a candidate is mentioned because its been obvious for far too long that their supporters who are in the press will slip in favorable or unfavorable stories as they are instructed to do so all under the guise of hard journalism. Best yet there are entire groups devoted to landing such stories onto as many sites as possible.
We have two years of war on women, etc, crap coming, because we live in an age where politics of identity are more important that what you stand for and when what you stand for isn't popular to throw out the race/sex/etc card.
Why flag the submission? The submission illustrates a real problem (maybe?) and people have a (potentially interesting) discussion about it. I don't see any reason to flag it.
Sanders? An admitted Socialist? How about Rand Paul? Someone that has actually fought on the right side of issues important to the HN community. Sanders actually supports an 80% tax rate. If you want an economy that resembles Romania in the 1980s, vote for Sanders. If you want freedom, vote Rand Paul. Democrat values are inconsistent with entrepreneurial. They want to disincentivize success with higher taxes and they want to subsidize failure through increased government handouts. If you want less of something tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. under Obama, food stamps have quadrupled. Black unemployment is higher than it was under Bush and wage growth is non existent. Look at economic charts from 2002-2014 make note of what party was in control of Congress and thus the budget. Look at Clinton's economic performance during the 1990; correlate that to the party controlling Congress. It's fascinating.
Research Cheis Dodd's role in Congredd during 2006-2008. See what Bush was warning about in terms of the housing market and what the Democrat response was when Bush warned about Fannie/Freddie instability. He was essentially laughed at by Chris Dodd and friends.
This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing because it seems like the Democrat marketing machine has done a good job obfuscating the issues. Whenever someone gets close to real scrutiny of the issues, they conveniently pull 'racism' or 'war on women' out of a hat. Meanwhile, I bet a majority of Americans can tell you the name of the Charleston shooter but have no idea what percentage they paid in Federal income tax or payroll taxes last year. Rand Paul released his tax proposal and more people seem to be concerned about a stupid flag. These supposedly 'big' news stories aren't that important. They're distractions. Who gives a flying -- what race that white NAACP lady was? Who cares what comic book the Charleston shooter read when he was 15? Distractions. Give them bread and circuses..
The highest tax rate in the US as recently as 1978 was 70% [1], and had been as 91% (!) from the forties through the sixties. So I don't know why you assume that a high tax rate on the very wealthiest leads to Romania, 1980.
America's incredible post-war boom and burgeoning strong middle-class all happened at a time when the very wealthiest had very high tax rates.
>This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing because it seems like the Democrat marketing machine has done a good job obfuscating the issues.
Actually it was the Republican marketing machine's "southern strategy" that started that. When you decide to explicitly become the-party-that-appeals-to-racists it takes a really really long time to dig yourself out of that hole. Especially because right now is when the people that grew up with those messages are in/coming-to power.
They also co-opt the previously fairly moderate evangelical crowd with red-scare tactics around the same time.
Personally the deaths of multiple people at the hands of a domestic terrorist and the racist societies that support him matter more to me than how much I pay in taxes.
I agree with some of your points, but in some ways I think you are overly optimistic. I bet that the majority of the people not in Charleston couldn't name the Charleston shooter either (not that his name is particularly important). Your point about them not knowing tax rates is absolutely accurate, though.
Do you really want a third Bush in the White House for a third Iraq war?
Alternatively, do you really want a Bush picking the next two or three Supreme Court judges? It would set back the country into the 1960s. Voting rights, equality, access to abortion. All rolled back to 1960s with an imbalance of power in the supreme court.
Really? Set the country back to the 1960s? You also actually think Bush is going to be the nominee? You don't seem to know much about Republicans if you think that. As far as the 1960s goes, the economic picture was much better then than it has been over the past 8 years. The JFK tax cuts caused a decade of prosperity; the middle class was much stronger, wage growth was steady. What we have now is a generalized malaise. If you're suggesting some kind of war on women malarcky, ask yourself why in Hilary's State Department and in Obama's White House do women still make 70% of what men make? These anti-republican memes are getting a bit stupid. Remember Hilary supported the Iraq War, the Libyan War (which did not even get Congressional approval as was required under the War Powers Act.) Hilary also strongly supports and supported the Patriot Act and warrantless NSA surveillance of Americans. Her only accomplishments as Secretary of State were aggrevation of Russian relations, the loss of American allies Libya and Egypt to Muslim extremists, more nonsense in Syria as well as facilitating the failure of Iran's Green Revoluion. She and Obama also a let the Pakistani doctor who provided the Bin Laden tip to be captured, imprissoned and tortured by the Pakistanis as a reward for his helping the U.S. She also racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles. The woman has zero accomplishments, either for woman or anyone else. She has never worked as a chief executive of anything, she has barely ever had a real job; she's a lifetime political hack and the U.S. is worse for having her in the national dialog. Remember it was Rand Paul that fought the NSA and Rand Paul that has promoted the end of civil asset forfeiture and he has also called for the ending of racist sentencing guidelines as wel as decriminalization of drugs. Hilary represents a totalitarian Democrat plantation owner. She's a horrible choice for the school board, let alone President of the United States. She's an evil snake and anyone who supports her is either mentally ill or profoundly ignorant or just brainwashed. If she cared about women she wouldn't have defended a child rapist. She also wouldn't have defended Bill Clinton amongst multiple credible allegations of rape, harassment and other misconduct. She also would have declared Boko Haram a terror group when she had the chance. I could go on for days; the point is that Hilary Clinton deserves to be in jail or scrubbing toilets in Siberia. I didn't even touch upon the Clinton Foundation "donations" from foreign governments while she was Secratary of State. Or the email servers. Or the utter lack of transparency she has demonstrated over her long illustrious career as a leech suckling upon the blood of the American people. I'd vote for Sheila Jackson Lee or even Michael Jackson before I'd vote for Hilary.
Too bad people in their 20/30s don't recall the Whitewater scandal. The Clintons ripped elderly people off on mortgages. How anyone could vote for that witch is beyond me.
It will be amazing if Bush doesn't end up with the nomination. In past elections, his money advantage would be a lock. Even allowing for disruptive technological/cultural changes, his stance as the moderate nominee is a huge advantage in blue/purple states that tend to look for the candidate most likely to swing their state.
I think that is why kattuviriyan added the screenshot: I get the same as you, it's probably a country-based feature (or what DuckDuckGo calls bubbling).
I get "Diego Maradona" as the 2nd result (the HN thread is the 1st one :) . I'm in Uruguay (South America) where the FIFA news are huge, and logged into my Google account, so that must be it. Interesting to see the "bubble effect".
I opened on an incognito window and it gives me answers similar to the ones posted above.
Edit2: for the curious, the link it gives me is
"Diego Maradona would like to be the next president of FIFA"
Two Points.
Google answers questions, it sometimes gets those questions wrong, but it's getting better. I'm not that worried about the odd wrong answer because that's a consequence of fledgling deep learning software. Things will get better. Of course, some idiot's going to listen to Google one time, and do something disastrous with the "advice" and then they might have to tone it down a bit, but I for one welcome our question answering overlords.
Of more concern is the possibility that Google is increasingly correct, and the algorithms and heuristics it uses know us better than we know ourself. Nothing's going to fuck with democracy more than the knowledge that free will is a myth and the outcomes for Very Important Things are already decided.
Media in the UK are stopped from reporting on Exit Polls before elections and there's a move to ban all polling because knowing how people will vote is enough to adversely affect elections. I can see this being applied to issues like this, but even that's problematic. I don't know if a machine accurately telling everybody who will win is better or worse than a machine only telling Important People who will win.
I'd rather see the media banned from telling people who to vote for than see a ban on all polling. But something like that would be impossible to enforce given all publications / news networks have a political bias.
A multi-party system does not guarantee that there will be no political problems (particularly not if it polarizes into what's effectively a two-party system), but a two-party system is practically guaranteed to not represent minority opinions, and very likely to degenerate into a "vote for the lesser evil".
Not to mention the issues of access you run into when money and influence are able to build up behind one or two campaigns. Two insanely massive parties are basically like competition between two massive marketing budgets. Trying to compete against the Republican or Democratic parties is like trying to start a new cellular carrier from scratch to compete with Verizon and AT&T.
Sure, if you managed to get enough "viral" support and maybe some wealthy investor you could mount a campaign big enough to get into a debate but the frameworks that have grown around the two-party system make it very difficult to take advantage of any popularity boost.
Trying to compete with the two established parties in a "winner takes all" system would require working against the entire political system which is overwhelmingly made up of people in those two parties.
>There's no correlation between having a lot of parties and a sound, well functioning political system.
Absolutely true, but it is remarkable that the Danes had 10 parties to choose from at our election for parliament last week and the US is supposed to be able feel represented by only two parties.
Denmark is pretty much as homogeneous a society as it is possible to be in a modern world and yet we have 10 parties, granted many have very similar policies. It's completely unrealistic that a country of 320million people should feel that their views should represented by two large parties, when 5.5million people in a small Scandinavian country need 10 parties (9 of which managed to get seats in parliament)
To be fair, while we only have 2 parties (with any chance at all) those parties are spectrums. Not everyone within the parties agree with each other. There are wings to each party, and the candidates selected in primaries reflect that.
For example, whether you love or hate them, the tea party has almost been a third party in America. Yes they ran as republicans so they'd have a chance, and do agree on a lot of things, there is no question that there are also lots of things mainstream republicans and tea party candidates disagree on.
While we stick to the 2 parties, there is a wide spectrum of viewpoints still available within those parties. The republican primary in particular will show that not everyone agrees.
The US does have more than two parties. Most ballots have anywhere from 3 to 6. It's just that nobody votes for them unless they happen to nominate someone from the big two.
I do understand that there's more than two parties, I should have made that clear. The US system is more or less a "winner takes all" system, leaving small parties little or no change for representation, even if they do represent a large percentage of the population. It is pretty much the same "problem" the UK has.
If the Americans are happy with the system, then then there's no issue, but if a large population group feels unrepresented then I don't think it's a fair system. There's a valid point to be made in terms of the size and diversity in the US might pose a problem for a parliamentary style of government, in as so fare as a plethora of parties could gridlock legislation.
"a sound, well functioning political system" is not the goal, or we'd all adopt the single party run like a corporation model from Singapore.
The goal is to represent all the citizens' wishes as best as possible when taking decisions about issues of common interest. And the more power is concentrated in unaccountable parties, the less chances we have at doing that.
Italy may have more than 2 parties, but they are already moving towards a less democratic system where only 2 of them matter. They are already at the point where the only way to access significant positions is through a party. Independents are heavily penalized and mostly eliminated from the picture.
Then there's the lack of internal democracy in those structures supposed to democratically represent the people. Party members are forced to respect party lines instead of what they personally believe, and in some cases the party line is dictated by a single person - the founder/CEO/father-figure of the corporate party (Berlusconi, Grillo, etc.).
What about the results of the two party system make you think it hinders democracy? Bearing in mind that the average voter is basically my mom?
We have pretty much exactly the government my mom wants. Harsh drug laws, extreme jail sentences, generous social security, lots of regulatory protections, etc. Probably the only light between her and Obama is she dislikes his foreign policy (she's from a Muslim country, which makes her exceptional there) and dislikes the trend towards legalized gay marriage and weed (positions well represented by the republicans, who she sometimes wants to vote for). Her biggest disagreements are with laws that derive from Supreme Court dictates (e.g. free speech protections).
These positions derive from an coherent worldview--one that has a low opinion of individual humans and values authority and the idea that people need to be told what to do for society to function smoothly (a common viewpoint not just here but across Asia).
So again, what about democracy in the U.S. isn't working? We have pretty much exactly the kind of government you'd expect given the views of our voters.
Duverger's law describes how the plurality rule (there can be only one winner) in elections usually results in a two party system, and the Hotelling-Downs model explains the Median voter theorem which shows that these two parties will generally settle on the (centrist) outcome preferred by the median voter. Neither are obvious and intuitive so without this understanding it can look like democracy is broken. Surround yourself with people who are both uninformed and hold opinions far from the median voter and you'll be convinced it's not just broken, but manipulated.
I hadn't heard of the Hotelling-Downs model, but I was just thinking that the fact FPP leads to two parties doesn't mean the positions of the parties don't reflect the polity.
"Surround yourself with people who are both uninformed and hold opinions far from the median voter and you'll be convinced it's not just broken, but manipulated."
Are you saying it's not broken and manipulated?
I have an epic speech ready to prove you wrong if so.
Well, in my country multi party systems basically work like this:
Unresolved issue comes up, party forms specializing in said issue, if party gets support big parties integrate unresolved issue, issue is now resolved.
And you got it completely around! In america your mom gets the government she is been told to want. That is why you have a two party system. Barrier to entry is "spent multi hundred millions on media control, if that's not possible you wont get votes, ever" and that's well backed by facts.
My mom didn't grow up here, and she doesn't speak English as a first language so she barely consumes U.S. media. The idea that her viewpoints are the result of media indoctrination is ridiculous. The area that the media hammers hardest (foreign policy) is the one area where she disagrees with the government, and she opposes things the media is broadly in favor of (gay marriage, decriminalized marijuana).
To pretend you are not a product of your environment is just silly. I know that basically all my thought process is crafted by the countries i grew up in. Travel the world a bit, you'll get it eventually.
You're changing the goal posts. Of course your views are shaped by the country you grew up in. That's not the same as saying they're manipulated from up high by the media. My mom grew up in Bangladesh. Even when I, much less she, was a kid, we had one TV station that was off the air half the day. Nobody was spending billions to influence her opinions. Saying her voting patterns here in the U.S. are the product of media manipulation is frankly offensive as it denies her agency and free will.
The motivating philosophies behind American voting patterns are present all over the world: distrust of individualism, strong reliance on government to organize social affairs, condemnation of speech that tends to upset the social order, etc. Whether you're talking about a New England farming town or a Bangladeshi village, these viewpoints are recurring. There is a good reason why: they are beneficial in a society with limited resources that must work closely together to survive.
You have no free will? Only what your country taught you? Speak for yourself because you are not arguing that the majority is not in agreement you are just saying "you are a stupid American" which is one of the few acceptable slurs.
Putting words in my mouth... Ofc there is free will, but if you think media manipulation means you are forced in front of a television you are just a blabbering idiot.
It's all about perspective. If you personally lean to the left, you won't see the left-leanings of CNN/MSNBC/most media. If you lean to the right, you will (and won't see Fox news as being as biased as it is).
What makes me think it hinders democracy are the studies (as highlighted in, for instance, Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy) showing that democratic sustained with fewer viable parties and less proportional representation in the national legislature, which the US system is a notable example of in both cases, produce governments with which citizens are less satisfied than other democratic systems.
Some of them are caucuses organized by the parties themselves with slim guarantees of a fair electoral process. It's really the closest thing to election by acclamation in a unique communist party without being such a clear departure from democracy.
This way it's the most limited choice possible: like the school bully who asks you whether you want to be hit with the left fist or the right one :-)
Hyperbole much? Out of fifty-something Presidential elections under the Constitution, there have been two close family members of a past President elected, the families involved winning a total of five elections.
That's not the same couple of families winning every time.
no, but let's say that either Jeb or Hillary wins a couple of terms. If that occurs, then at the end of their term, we'll be able to say there have been THREE different last names in the white house in the last 35 years.
yes, but odds are fairly good that hillary will run against jeb. And half of all presidents have served 2 terms. So it wasn't "assuming the results to make my argument", so much as "pointing out how much worse it will be in a fairly probable future."
It's bad enough now that we've had 4 terms of bushes, and that hillary's a lock for the democratic nomination. my point stands already.
Every time? Hyperbolize much? Bush and the John Adams family are the only families to have more than 1 President in them. How about we stick to facts? As far as "only country in the world.." How many countries of the world have Royal families? How many of those were elected? Someone explain why the British Royal family gets a single pound in tax-payer money. What does the King of Sweden actually do again?
Let's be intellectually consistent instead of just bashing the U.S. because it's fashionable.
Someone explain why the British Royal family gets a single pound in tax-payer money.
Speaking of intellectual consistency, the British taxpayer gets more money from the royal family than the family gets in taxes. The government administers estates owned by the royal family and takes the revenue - the net cash flow is about £100M annually from Lizzie and crew to the UK taxpayer. This isn't soft measures like "enhances tourism". It's direct income from the estates.
If the UK gummint were to cut them off, the Windsors could take back control of their estates, and the gummint would be that much in the red. Continuing in the vein of intellectual consistency, the UK is a representative democracy - the people who pass law are voted in by citizens. The monarch does not make law, so elections for the monarch are meaningless in the context of law- or policy-making.
You can hate on the royal family all you want, but it doesn't change that they contribute more financially than they get, and they don't get to make law. And the UK has a multipolar political system, though it's stupid FPTP voting method gives it a lot of similarities to a two-party system. Ultimately though, your hated royals actually inhabit a country with more political choices for the proles than the US has.
Nice example of how much ground "AI" has to cover before it can be considered "intelligent". OTOH, lot of humans struggle with differentiating facts from opinions, so can't be too hard on these systems.
300 million people and (as is all too possible) another Clinton, another Bush? Someone should do justice to the sickness this demonstrates. Good example for Kim in N. Korea.
The point is the people get their way, albeit slowly. It is popular to believe the US is a fascist country, mainly because it is very powerful regardless of objective reality.
All this teaches us is to take Google's first answer with a huge grain of salt, if not almost immediately discard it in favor of further research, even when there's a "simple" question like "how tall is something" (remember Google got Stephen Colbert's height wrong as well: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/google-stephen-colb...).
Okay, this is weird. I'm almost certain that within the last year or two one of the main Googlers said something like "People just want to be told what to do" It was quite a controversy at the time, and people argued that he was just being flip.
I thought it would make a nice addition to this story, juxtaposing people's desire for easy answers with an example of the type of easy answers Google provides folks. It could have kicked off a discussion about the very, very fine line between "helping people" and "telling them what to do"
Only now I can't find that quote anywhere on the internet. Huh?
I think they realized that they can easily influence our political landscape by pushing desired candidates and ideas to the top of the search engine results.
But what he said does have truth to it. Most people are employees (they need to be told what do do). It's just an easier way to live.
*Edit: I forgot. So many people on HN work for Google and I can't criticize the king.
Given that google shows different people different results for the same query, to tell people what they want to hear, I wonder if others see the same result I do.
In a couple of years we'll be hearing from digital marketers who worked on Hilary's campaign about how they "hacked Google results" that one time. That's only if she wins, though. If she doesn't we'll never speak of this again.
The thing that scares me is that Google is probably right (my political leanings aside).
It's scary because the political machine (the "news" and media) probably gives off a signal that a deep neural network has learned. It might be that simple.
Our entire democracy could be exposed for the sham that it is. It doesn't matter what a candidate has done or says they're going to do, it only matters what media keeps saying about it 24/7.
I've seen this over and over. I'd tell someone about a particular congressmen's voting record and bills he's sponsored and they'll say "wow, that guy sounds too good to be true, I'd vote for him", then tell them it's Ron Paul's voting record and they'd say "That guys is crazy" and then repeat everything they've ever "heard" about him.
That's just one example, but voters only know candidates by the media's labels, not by their actions or platform.
It's even worse on the Internet with younger voters. If you look at /politics on Reddit, it's all propaganda that bashes the opposition. Link titles are changed to invoke anger.
I hate to see when this generation grows up and Twitter and Reddit are the sole sources of political information.
The "hands up don't shoot" is a good example. Forensic evidence came out and it was proven that this never happened, yet it didn't fit the political narrative. CNN and most of the mainstream news continued to push it as if it was fact.
..err..so you guys get identical search results? Are you all on Tails over Tor with en_US? I get:
"Who will replace Sepp Blatter? - ESPN FC", "Who will be Zambia's next president? | - sardc" etc.
While it's kinda funny, I think it's made pretty clear that text is a summary generated from the first search result that is clearly linked below, only a moron would consider this an endorsement of Hillary by Google.
I think it can confuse a lot of people at first glance because Google generally displays the best answer to the query in that space. Funny to see it in this context.
I would prefer seeing answer to this question from prediction markets, not analysis of websites aka "experts opinions". It's much easier to understand mechanism that generated such prediction and you know that those people actually bet their own money on result.
Can we talk about how terrible a piece of pro-hillary propaganda that was?
Namely this:
> America is ready for the leadership of a Hillary Clinton. A new history will be made when she becomes the leader of the free world. The world of women everywhere will change
Sure, this sounds very reminiscent of 8 years ago, but what's even scarier is the opening paragraph:
> She has paid her dues as a political candidate
Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?
This is why we can't have nice things.