Ask HN: Why are RationalWiki articles always high up in Google search results?
RationalWiki admits to their political-bias and outright incompetence in maintaining a purely objective stance on topics:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:I_thought_this_was_supposed_to_be_RATIONALWiki
So, why do they seemingly always show up high in Google search results?
5 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 20.3 ms ] threadBut I see the page you linked to already covers that, in spades.
What searches are you doing to end up there? It rarely shows up in my searches, unless I'm searching for specific hot-button topics.
And are their answers incompetent?
This is an objectively wrong statement. The existence of Mathematics is a negation of this statement in its entirety. Observations are purely objective. Measurements are purely objective.
> Are their answers incompetent?
Do you consider purposely substituting biased views in place of objective observation a form of incompetence? I don't. I consider it a form of intellectual dishonesty. That is far worse.
Name one news source which you consider to have "a purely objective stance on topics".
Because I can't think of a single one.
And I would rather have one whose biases are worn on the sleeve, than shrouded in a false disguise of neutral objectivity.
Even if we restrict ourselves to mathematics, consider Georg Cantor, who demonstrated the existences of multiple types of infinities. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor :
] Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was originally regarded as so counter-intuitive – even shocking – that it encountered resistance from mathematical contemporaries such as Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré and later from Hermann Weyl and L. E. J. Brouwer, while Ludwig Wittgenstein raised philosophical objections. Cantor, a devout Lutheran, believed the theory had been communicated to him by God. Some Christian theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor's work as a challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected.
] The objections to Cantor's work were occasionally fierce: Leopold Kronecker's public opposition and personal attacks included describing Cantor as a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of youth". .... Writing decades after Cantor's death, Wittgenstein lamented that mathematics is "ridden through and through with the pernicious idioms of set theory", which he dismissed as "utter nonsense" that is "laughable" and "wrong".
Which of these observations were purely objective, and in the 1800s, how would you be able to tell?
> in place of objective observation
The choice of what to observe and what to report is based on views of what is important, so therefore subject to subjective bias. You cannot have one without the other.
This is beyond and silly and pedantic. We are all supposed to rely on what YOU can and cannot think of?
If you really want some mathematical objectivity then maybe go read through Serge Lang's Algebra and come back with me on which parts you found to be subjective. You might find some!
> Which of these observations were purely objective?
Sigh ... so you have an anecdote of something that at a particular point in time was unproven and conjectured. That status allowed others to make subjective claims against it. And you are using this to try to argue that everything at all times is never objective? That is silly. Can you really not see the flaw in your logic here? The clue word was: anecdote.
> The choice of what to observe and what to report
I never made this differentiation anywhere in my comment. I pointed at blatant intellectual dishonesty which is stating things either false or in a fashion that might provide a more naive reader with a false pretense or to perhaps make something concrete appear ambiguous, etc.
You are trying to restrict all possible forms of intellectual dishonesty to reporting bias. You are doing this is either out of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. I am guessing the latter as you seem to have no moral contention with it.
And yes, you can have things that are not subject to bias. Dropping an apple from a window always causes the apple to fall towards the earth and not away from it.
This conversation is pointless because you are either a troll or a supremely dishonest individual.
No, of course not. I asked for your help in identifying "a purely objective stance on topics" precisely because I am limited in my understanding.
I am expressing my ignorance. You imply such sources do exist, so please educate me.
You wrote: "I pointed at blatant intellectual dishonesty which is stating things either false or in a fashion that might provide a more naive reader with a false pretense or to perhaps make something concrete appear ambiguous, etc."
Where did you point that out? You implied it, but have yet to demonstrate a concrete example.
> "you are either a troll or a supremely dishonest individual"
While you have yet to take any of my questions seriously.
1) "What searches are you doing to end up there?".
To clarify, among other things, RationalWiki contains summaries of activities by people that leftists sometimes categorize as "fascist", "fascist adjacent" or "white supremacist." It is one of the few sources which do that. So if you search for those names, then it's likely you'll come to a RationalWiki page.
2) "And are their answers incompetent?"
To clarify, I used "incompetent" because your top-level comment used "incompetence." I wanted some examples of answers which were demonstrably wrong, and some indication that they were wrong more often than other sources that Google might use, and perhaps some indication that their biases were the reason for being wrong.
You wrote "Dropping an apple from a window always causes the apple to fall towards the earth and not away from it."
But dropping a helium-filled balloon does not.
So if you are news source, and only talk about falling apples and never about helium-filled balloons floating away, you are reporting the facts yet resulting in biased reporting.
If your news show often reports about fraud in the welfare system, and never covers wage theft, then it too is both factual and biased.