Twice it was mentioned that the cause of WWII was boredom. Is this actually a real theory?
No, it's hubris by arrogant fools.
Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
171–180 of 486 posts
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only disturbing if you reject the premise of the question in advance—that the concern is addressing inaccurate factual information. Connecting users with good information is literally the function on which Google wad founded, and applying AI to that mission has been a Google vision from very early on. It would be weird and worrying if Google selectively choose not to do that with information that might have poli…
Right, anyone who finds this offensive is implicitly agreeing that removing unfactual results would skew the results to be politically biased.
So it's wrong to be offended at the possibility of mass-scale censorship just as a matter of principle?
Search results are always going to be biased the same way that any media is always going to be biased. Have the regimes of the 20th century not taught us that it's naive to think we can objectively correct for that without opening the possibility for significantly worse repercussions?
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add some context: remember that Google has employees who felt personally threatened by election results (immigrants and transgender employees). Nobody knew what Trump would do. The worst fears turned out to be overblown, but it was hard to make the case for not worrying at the time. Telling people they had nothing to worry about would have simply been offensive. There are few election results that employees would…
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Considering he continues to have a severely underwater approval rating I’d wager it’s less derangement and more the majority view.
If anything the “it’s all normal, everything is fine” folks whose reactions are more interesting here. It’s certainly not the consensus view.
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#174My biggest takeaway is that Sergey Brin needs to stick to technology. The “boredom” explanation for Trump’s victory might be the stupidest one yet.
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#175I’m fascinated by the parallels between the fascination with this leaked all hands and the external interest in the interns cultures of elite universities and the like - is the implication that Googleplex and Harvard Yard share a similar space in our culture now?
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
What media organization on this planet doesn't make decisions about what users should and shouldn't see? Breitbart does it, The New York Times does it, your local news channels do it. Google as a news broker is literally just showing you what Google wants to show you. I don't know why you'd think they wouldn't have a bias, or filter their output based on it. All media does.
None of those is a fraction as powerful as Google, which is an $800 billion goliath with multiple hyper entrenched monopolies. Those monopolies entirely change the equation and expectations. Search, Android, YouTube. All three of those are either monopolies or close to it. YouTube by itself is worth a solid 20 times what the NY Times is. Breitbart is maybe worth $100m, a top 100 US Web site with a couple million read…
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Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in the Bay Area, I grew up in San Francisco, I'm firmly left-leaning in much of my political views. I upvoted your comment because in my opinion you are right, although overstating it a bit. The "Left Coast" is biased. There is a lot of tribal knee-jerk reactivity, and there are rabid haters. (Yeah yeah the right has 'em too. There's a reason Tim Chevlier and David Gudeman were both fired. Not my point.) "Not…
Thank you for understanding the thesis of my comment. It's already getting downvoted unfortunately. The most absurd thing to me is how is this kind of rhetoric acceptable at a company sponsored event? It is obviously politically motivated and totally biased. One speaker nearly started crying about Hillary losing. How is that fair to employees at Google that are conservative?
How is Trump winning fair to the Iranian immigrants working at Google?
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's discuss climate change then, because despite that being a field reinforced by science it is also one that is considered highly political in today's environment. Can you claim you're politically neutral if you are not willing to listen to people who deny climate change? The problem with attempting to force a politically neutral stance is that it allows politics to invade where it shouldn't. Your logic is fundame…
> Can you claim you're politically neutral if you are not willing to listen to people who deny climate change? If you're literally not willing to listen to any arguments for/against a hypothesis at all, then sure, you're likely more invested in the political aspect than the science itself. But if you're just arguing in favor of what the majority of the established literature suggests, then no, because being pro-scien…
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the debate works. We're not talking about two rational individuals forming a debate in good faith where they're able to change each other's opinion.
We're talking about people latching themselves to an anti-empirical evidence, anti-scientific approach to things such as climate change or vaccinations. The debate becomes political when there's enough people and policymakers believing in something, scientific process be damned, to actively affect law.
The debate about vaccinations causing autism for example is a absolutely political one, enough that we see people eschewing scientific fact in a way that endangers large portions of our society. Yet when we talk about an environment needing to be politically neutral, then their opinion must be treated with equal weight. We've seen this occur with people who are anti-evolution as well, where they demand their opinions be taken seriously and allowed into the greater debate. And it shows with our current society.
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#179For those interested in watching the video without feeding into Brietbart's ad/engagement numbers, I've mirrored it here: https://yossarian.net/google.mp4
As a notice (since the original post is too old to edit): I'm going to take that URL offline within the next 12 hours. Hopefully by then it'll be mirrored in enough other places.
Re: Google’s first all-hands after 2016 election [video]
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only disturbing if you reject the premise of the question in advance—that the concern is addressing inaccurate factual information. Connecting users with good information is literally the function on which Google wad founded, and applying AI to that mission has been a Google vision from very early on. It would be weird and worrying if Google selectively choose not to do that with information that might have poli…
Right, anyone who finds this offensive is implicitly agreeing that removing unfactual results would skew the results to be politically biased.
What's offensive is that if their candidate wins, they don't raise that question.