This is -close- to what I've felt since I searched for 'windex' at Google, and finding that the first listings related to a computer program, not a brand of window cleaning products. But it is sufficiently off of what happens to merit clarification. Google doesn't "find what people believe to be the most authoritative source." It finds what other web page writers choose to link to. If Google really sorted out what -people- believe are the most valuable, then it would be immensely better. But its resource is not a representative group of people, but a group of those who write web pages. I think we all recognize the importance of that difference.

I'm not sure whether I prefer Direct Hit (now morphed into Teoma, IIRC) or about.com's directories... But I find myself checking all three.

Posted by: Frank on May 29, 2002 10:07 AM

 

Frank:

Good point. Psychological reality is also partially a function of what subculture(s) you belong to. On the Internet, many tend toward the geeky.

The Jargon File has an excellent definition of evil that explains evil as meaning someone or something whose operating assumptions are too different to be worth dealing with. Usually someone in a different subculture.

Thus you have scientists, who insist above all else on careful logic,accuracy, and narrow claims, describing politicans as evil because of their broad pronouncements. But good scientific talking is not good public speaking: all the qualifications and references neccesary slow down the rhetoric too much. Politicians hate uncertainty: science is, in some sense, founded on it.

Posted by: Chad Lundgren on May 29, 2002 02:04 PM