I Google everything • Hacker News Board

Re: I Google everything

#71

Post by ArbitraryLimits » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #27

Great article. A side point, but one that is more interesting to me: in my social circle, I'm the only person who actually Googles everything. When I sit down to have a conversation with most people, and questions about facts come up, I instinctively start Googling. Almost no one else does this. People will prefer to spend an entire conversation trying to guess the population of e.g. Greece, rather than spend 5 secon…

It's almost as if they were more interested in having a conversation than in looking up trivia...

Re: I Google everything

#72

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:39 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #66

freehunter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence; the only time I can recall hearing it is when person1 is telling person2 that person3 was talking shit about them. In that situation, the "about you" part is implied, and you can leave it off. "Don't worry about it man, he's just talking shit." That implies person1 is saying pe…

> Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence No, no, no! In the UK it is not uncommon! People over here are talking shit all the time, often not about anyone.

Indeed, we often like to talk shit every Friday night after work, typically over a few pints.

Though you may encounter the odd person in everyday life who is 'full of shit'.

Such is the British way, we tend to use these as terms of endearment just as much as genuine insults.

Re: I Google everything

#73

Post by blaabjerg » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:41 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #66

freehunter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence; the only time I can recall hearing it is when person1 is telling person2 that person3 was talking shit about them. In that situation, the "about you" part is implied, and you can leave it off. "Don't worry about it man, he's just talking shit." That implies person1 is saying pe…

> Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence No, no, no! In the UK it is not uncommon! People over here are talking shit all the time, often not about anyone.

I think that's why he qualified the statement with "in my experience", which means he's talking about usage in the US.

Re: I Google everything

#74

Post by tgrass » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #27

Great article. A side point, but one that is more interesting to me: in my social circle, I'm the only person who actually Googles everything. When I sit down to have a conversation with most people, and questions about facts come up, I instinctively start Googling. Almost no one else does this. People will prefer to spend an entire conversation trying to guess the population of e.g. Greece, rather than spend 5 secon…

Refusing to use one's phone to access information during a conversation is not necessarily Luddite (not that you said it was).

In modern architecture after the boisterous 1920's when design was seeking to incorporate the concept of the machine and industrial life into our domestic living, designers found themselves in the 30's longing for more organic expressions. Life had changed. The economy had crashed and values shifted.

Just because technology is available does not mean it is always what people want or even that people will use it to its utmost capacity. Sometimes we just want to hang out.

Re: I Google everything

#75

Post by elliottkember » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

I hate this fact. Not because the internet is in peril of going down, or because it's not convenient (of course it is) - but because we're confusing access to information with knowledge.

Access to information will tell you a number, or an answer, or even give you an amount of text about something. But knowledge lets you understand the bigger picture - how something came to be, or why.

At some point we become the needle on the gramophone, rather than the record. All we can say is what we've heard or read. It's the opposite of thinking, and it makes me worry.

Re: I Google everything

#76

Post by freehunter » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #66

freehunter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence; the only time I can recall hearing it is when person1 is telling person2 that person3 was talking shit about them. In that situation, the "about you" part is implied, and you can leave it off. "Don't worry about it man, he's just talking shit." That implies person1 is saying pe…

> Yes, that's the same thing I was referring to. Talking shit (with no modifier) is, in my experience, an uncommon phrase to use in a sentence No, no, no! In the UK it is not uncommon! People over here are talking shit all the time, often not about anyone.

Language is a wonderful, complex, irritating thing. The same words in the same language meaning two different, completely context-sensitive things. The same word being used in completely different ways. Not being able to describe the use of a word without long, protracted arguments giving multiple examples of the usage. Even in the same county, the same language is used differently based on geographical region.

It amuses me to hear a US citizen use words and pronunciations I know are from the UK, just due to exposure to the BBC. In the US, Hyundai is pronounced "hun-die" or "hun-day", but I have a coworker who is very much an American who pronounces it "high-un-die" because the only time he hears the word is when watching Top Gear.

The Internet makes it difficult to tell which dialect the author is speaking, spawning these arguments and fostering communication between people 3000mi away from each other. That's a wonderful thing. Now if only I could figure out what a curry is and why everyone seems to love it over there.

Re: I Google everything

#77

Post by rubidium » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

kilburn wrote: post #47

rubidium wrote: post #42

The stuff that can be looked up on Google constitutes a very small sub-set of the interesting things to know about the world, because a vast majority of knowledge doesn't exist yet (e.g. google stops being regularly helpful after year 2 of a PhD, for example). The Einstein quote is a perfect case-in-point. He didn't memorize the stuff in books, but he also didn't spend his life looking up stuff in books (modern trans…

> google stops being regularly helpful after year 2 of a PhD, for example ... and then you switch to google scholar ;)

Which stops being helpful after year 4 : )

Re: I Google everything

#78

Post by illuminate » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #20

sp332 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's ambiguous, but the article probably meant shit-talking.

Or even just shit like urban legends. Like when my sister-in-law says, "you know Chipoltle is owned by McDonald's, right?" and in the time frame it takes for me to think I doubt that I've already looked up the truth on my phone.

You should probably have used an example where you weren't smugly wrong, it WAS true at one point.

Re: I Google everything

#79

Post by jsavimbi » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 5:06 PM UTC

> Shit-talking in the pub.

I've become that guy, that whenever a sticky fact comes up for debate, people just turn to me because they know I'll be looking it up.

What I really enjoy is when some asshole refutes the evidence and stops talking to me. For good.

Re: I Google everything

#80

Post by illuminate » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

Claudus wrote: post #49

I'm a free thinker. I don't really appreciate people who want to "sit around and wonder about shit they can look up". I'd much rather sit around and think or discuss things that cannot be looked up, to define myself as a person based on opinions I form within documented knowledge... Do I personally subscribe to absolute or relative morality? Thanks to documented knowledge, I have a decent grasp of the concepts, so I…

All you're doing here is endorsing sophistry over knowledge.

There's a place for logic and there's a place for facts. Focusing on one over the other leads to persons being so "open-minded" that their brain falls out.