Saying "Google it!" tells me the person probably has no source, no idea how unreliable the information floating around on the web can be, and no understanding of how to find and appraise a good source.
Even on searching in Google Scholar, we sometimes find that the research literature often includes papers that offer divergent estimates and opinions.
But there's something really cool you could do that would educate the person you're talking to (both in terms of instructing them how to google, and communicating to them the key thing you've found out) -- all the while being polite and formal! --
Say something like "I used this search query [foo bar] to discover [result-x&y]." Do that enough times and you'll make the whole world a better place. :)
Except you have to be careful, because if they do personalization of search results, Google is so ad skewed these days you don't know 100% what results they'll get.
That is why it's best to just give a domain name AND describe a suitably qualified query.
It's just incredible how some people voluntarily participate in debates on the internet, and then compare people that try to engage them to sealions harrassing them. No one forces you to make any claims on the internet, but if you choose to do that it's on you to provide sources. That comic should have shown someone lecturing a bunch of sealions, and then being offended that they ask questions.
The "sealioning" concept seems invented solely to soothe the ego of people who always have to have the last word. Those who can't stand to let a conversation end without looking and feeling like the winner.
If something's not worth your energy, just walk away. Don't stew so hard that you need a webcomic to reassure you that you're a well adjusted person that's obviously in the right and your opponent is a grotesque sea creature that doesn't any social etiquette.
I don’t spend my life chronicling every source of information I come across so I can provide a complete bibliography for every statement in conversation.
When I make a claim, I’m not writing a thesis or going for my PhD. I’m just reciting some blurry memory that such and such may be so. People that challenge me to provide peer reviewed citations of such claim are not engaging in civil conversation.
The point of this article is not Google algorithm biases, it is the need for each of us to understand the reliability of the sources we use to form our own beliefs.
When I ask questions on slack I'm looking for wisdom and human interaction.
Yes I can google stuff. But I want to open the door to bonus knowledge. Eg. "Oh you want to use the subprocess library but we do it a bit differently because of X and Y. Here's a link to where we do it in library Z."
That's not what the article is about, though. It's about how conspiracy theorists should shoulder the burden of proof, and it would be about 80% shorter if it just said that.
It's the job of people who want things to do it or don't.
I claim that 1 * 1 = 1. I don't want to prove it. Terrence Howard not only claim that 1 * 1 = 2, but he also wants people to believe. As the person who wants things, it's Terrence's job to persuade people on what he wants.
About the only things worth correcting are when the externalities of someone's incorrect opinion are significant. For instance, if someone mandated the ban of vaccines that's bad for us all.
But if someone not at my company thinks that the best tool to write a web application in is a hand rolled web server framework in C99 then it's advantageous to me to let him fuck those guys up.
About anything where loss is internalized properly to the party participating I think it's best to let that party kill themselves over it.
Unless, of course, they'll pay you lots of cash to tell them the truth.
The same behaviour is desirable for the opposite reason in your high-trust environments. There you don't produce citations. You are hinting at the direction of truth. The hint is way more important than the cite.
The "burden of proof" might apply well to formal debates where a consistent set of participants are all acting good faith, but that's hardly the case in most online discussions. Even when people asking for sources are asking in good faith, it is unreasonable to jump into a conversation that you are not educated on and demand explanation from the person you disagree with.
Countercounterpoint - accusations of "sealioning" are often used against people who genuinely disagree. The underlying assumption is that no good-faith disagreement is possible because the accuser is obviously correct.
I agree. I've been accused of sealioning when the person I responded to has either provided no sources or spewed a bunch of garbage links in place of making an argument. In political discussions, I've somehow been mistaken for a Trump supporter and a "brown, socialist immigrant," when I am actually neither of those things. The internet is weird, sometimes, man.
> I've somehow been mistaken for a Trump supporter and a "brown, socialist immigrant"
This can be also a technique used to lure people into giving their private info.
Instead to ask on internet: Are you a republican white? and obtaining a standard "not your business" they claim that you are brown and socialist, expecting you to correct themselves and reply "not, I'm asian and will vote for X" or so.
This way they can obtain the info to classify you without you even taking notice of it. Is an old trick.
What must be taken in mind is that who you are is irrelevant for the discussion most of the time. Facts are either true, or false (or unknown), no matter who will say it.
Well, people who were going to classify me based on race and what it says for "party preference" on my voter registration card aren't generally open to being convinced of anything, in my experience. I've given both variations of the answer before: that I'm so white I'm provably related to a 17th century American colonial governor (literally true); or, that it's none of their damn business. As far as I can tell, both have had roughly the same effect, which is little to none.
Giving something a name doesn't automatically make it bad. Internet discussions (HN included) seem to mostly just be people who have no idea what they are talking about speculating wildly, and treating their speculations as unimpeachable. We would benefit a lot from a greater focus on providing sources and evidence.
The description of it as "harassment" is incomprehensible to me. Why post on a discussion board if you aren't willing to handle disagreement, and defend your claims?
TBH, if you want to convince me that someone who is disagreeing with you politely is acting in bad faith, you have an uphill battle.
Generally, it's pretty easy to tell if they're acting in bad faith if you look at their account/post history, especially on sites like twitter dot com.
The average person on HN is pretty smart. I see a lot of comments writing this off... it's not their responsibility, the other person should want to learn, etc. etc.
But if you wanna be a great person who does his civic duty and more to improve mankind, do please help others out in the way I outlined elsewhere, tell them "I used the search query [foo bar] to discover [result-x&y]."
You're both answering their question, while teaching them to be helping themselves in the future! I think framing search queries for good results is a bit of an art, and a lot of folks here are really good at it -- please share this skill with the world!
I have found this to be the hardest thing to teach at work. I think a lot of times more junior folks thing more senior folks know things, when actually they just spend a lot of time researching things. But I've found it hard to describe how to do that. It's much easier for me to describe how some technique / algorithm / API works than to describe how figure that out from first principles. But it's much more important to learn how to figure things out than it is to learn any specific thing.
I actually think this is a fairly simple thing to teach at work. If I'm being asked a question by a junior, I will frequently go do a few minutes' research, then come back and say "this is the answer, found on these [wiki pages|Slack threads|JIRA tickets|Google docs]. I found it by searching these terms in [appropriate place]." If I'm the one asking, I frequently say "Okay, I can accept that as an answer, but can you show me how you arrived at that?"
Both of these things, when done in good faith, are moves that help the ignorant asker to learn. I've never been put off by a sincere request by someone to show them my work, so to speak. I don't think anyone should be put off by asking something like this sincerely, either.
What I mean by finding it difficult to teach this is that a lot of times it doesn't sink in, or takes a very long time to. Telling people what search terms you used and how you decided what results to click on, and how you distilled what you found in those results into an answer, still does not provide an easy follow path to coming up with search terms for new problems in the future, having good taste in the results to follow, or distilling results into an answer. There is no step by step guide to coming up with search terms, it seems to largely be a function of experience alone.
The point about sources on the internet being of dubious quality is quite important. The ability to critique sources is utterly missing from a lot of people's education, and it took the internet to expose it.
It's also one of the most frustrating things to explain to someone when their "research" is wrong:
"Yes, I know he's called doctor in those early papers, he was struck off the register. No, it doesn't cause autism, that was made up. No, I'm not a doctor, but I'm not the one making the claims."
All those rebuttals require a diversion that wouldn't be necessary to explain if people were educated in how to assess sources.
I don't know what to do about it, because it manifests as a dubious presentation of crappy sources, but the explanation of what makes a credible source itself is a long and somewhat vague story:
- Other credible sources support it
- Independent sources support it
- Connects with existing models of the world
- History of being credible
- Incentives align, no obvious conflicts
All of those are things for which you can create an alternate universe. Your own network of outlets that support each other, your own flat-earth physics and lizardmen politics, and your own history.
this but with memes and any social media based jokes/things. Sorry I got off social media for a reason, so if you want to infect my life with endless inside social media jokes you are going to have to explain them to me. I will not research a meme.
I don't think it's terribly surprising. When you open something up to the entire world, you shouldn't be surprised when a fairly broad cross section of the world takes you up on it. Just the influx of new people alone can lead to something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September , which definitely was a thing.
45 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadSaying "Google it!" tells me the person probably has no source, no idea how unreliable the information floating around on the web can be, and no understanding of how to find and appraise a good source.
Even on searching in Google Scholar, we sometimes find that the research literature often includes papers that offer divergent estimates and opinions.
This behavior shouldn't be rewarded.
But there's something really cool you could do that would educate the person you're talking to (both in terms of instructing them how to google, and communicating to them the key thing you've found out) -- all the while being polite and formal! --
Say something like "I used this search query [foo bar] to discover [result-x&y]." Do that enough times and you'll make the whole world a better place. :)
That is why it's best to just give a domain name AND describe a suitably qualified query.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
If something's not worth your energy, just walk away. Don't stew so hard that you need a webcomic to reassure you that you're a well adjusted person that's obviously in the right and your opponent is a grotesque sea creature that doesn't any social etiquette.
When I make a claim, I’m not writing a thesis or going for my PhD. I’m just reciting some blurry memory that such and such may be so. People that challenge me to provide peer reviewed citations of such claim are not engaging in civil conversation.
Such titles & articles are incredibly annoying. Super sick of seeing them around Hacker News.
Don't do this... Don't do that. ...from some random stranger.
"Hey stranger, listen to me, so I can tell you what to do... let me hypocritically tell you to tell someone not to do something!"
Yes I can google stuff. But I want to open the door to bonus knowledge. Eg. "Oh you want to use the subprocess library but we do it a bit differently because of X and Y. Here's a link to where we do it in library Z."
I claim that 1 * 1 = 1. I don't want to prove it. Terrence Howard not only claim that 1 * 1 = 2, but he also wants people to believe. As the person who wants things, it's Terrence's job to persuade people on what he wants.
https://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507...
Terrence's burden to prove comes from the burden of want, and not from the fact that he has issued proclamations.
But if someone not at my company thinks that the best tool to write a web application in is a hand rolled web server framework in C99 then it's advantageous to me to let him fuck those guys up.
About anything where loss is internalized properly to the party participating I think it's best to let that party kill themselves over it.
Unless, of course, they'll pay you lots of cash to tell them the truth.
The same behaviour is desirable for the opposite reason in your high-trust environments. There you don't produce citations. You are hinting at the direction of truth. The hint is way more important than the cite.
The "burden of proof" might apply well to formal debates where a consistent set of participants are all acting good faith, but that's hardly the case in most online discussions. Even when people asking for sources are asking in good faith, it is unreasonable to jump into a conversation that you are not educated on and demand explanation from the person you disagree with.
This can be also a technique used to lure people into giving their private info.
Instead to ask on internet: Are you a republican white? and obtaining a standard "not your business" they claim that you are brown and socialist, expecting you to correct themselves and reply "not, I'm asian and will vote for X" or so.
This way they can obtain the info to classify you without you even taking notice of it. Is an old trick.
What must be taken in mind is that who you are is irrelevant for the discussion most of the time. Facts are either true, or false (or unknown), no matter who will say it.
The description of it as "harassment" is incomprehensible to me. Why post on a discussion board if you aren't willing to handle disagreement, and defend your claims?
TBH, if you want to convince me that someone who is disagreeing with you politely is acting in bad faith, you have an uphill battle.
But if you wanna be a great person who does his civic duty and more to improve mankind, do please help others out in the way I outlined elsewhere, tell them "I used the search query [foo bar] to discover [result-x&y]."
You're both answering their question, while teaching them to be helping themselves in the future! I think framing search queries for good results is a bit of an art, and a lot of folks here are really good at it -- please share this skill with the world!
Both of these things, when done in good faith, are moves that help the ignorant asker to learn. I've never been put off by a sincere request by someone to show them my work, so to speak. I don't think anyone should be put off by asking something like this sincerely, either.
It's also one of the most frustrating things to explain to someone when their "research" is wrong:
"Yes, I know he's called doctor in those early papers, he was struck off the register. No, it doesn't cause autism, that was made up. No, I'm not a doctor, but I'm not the one making the claims."
All those rebuttals require a diversion that wouldn't be necessary to explain if people were educated in how to assess sources.
I don't know what to do about it, because it manifests as a dubious presentation of crappy sources, but the explanation of what makes a credible source itself is a long and somewhat vague story:
- Other credible sources support it
- Independent sources support it
- Connects with existing models of the world
- History of being credible
- Incentives align, no obvious conflicts
All of those are things for which you can create an alternate universe. Your own network of outlets that support each other, your own flat-earth physics and lizardmen politics, and your own history.
Wasn't the whole point when Tim Berners-Lee begat this thing to connect researchers, so that knowledge could flourish?
Still TBD, TBL.