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I Google everything

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Re: I Google everything

#111

Post by coyul »

sstrudeau wrote: post #95
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…

This reminds me of one of my favorite Tom Waits' quotes: "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now." A lot of people I know argue against this line of thinking but they're usually mis…

I think of this as analogous to the way computers have increased productivity at work. It's not necessarily that you get your work done faster, it's that you can have a better product in the same amount of time. So instead of wondering about the stuff that's easy to look up, wonder about deeper things. I love Tom Waits, but he's off the mark here: like so many other things, a "deficit of wonder" is a social problem, not a technological one.

Re: I Google everything

#112

Post by ams6110 »

freehunter wrote: post #48
corin_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Talking shit" can mean exactly the same thing as "talking bullshit", in the UK at least.

In the US, talking shit means saying something negative about someone. John said I stole money from him? He's just talking shit. This could include truths; perhaps I did take his money, but there's more to the story than John mentioned. John paid me money for a service I performed but he thought it wasn't worth what he paid. John said I'm a cheat when I beat him in poker, but that was just the way the cards fell. He'…

Bullshitting is not necessarily lying. It's saying whatever you think you need to say to advance your objectives. Truth or falsity is irrelevant[1].

[1] Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

Re: I Google everything

#113

Post by Wingman4l7 »

jedbrown wrote: post #107
elliottkember wrote: post #75

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 need…

Trivia is not useful knowledge in today's world. The most important thing is problem formulation. Once you have figured out the right question to ask, answering it is usually easy.

This is why I'm so fascinated with Vernor Vinge's "wearables" future, and why I think parts of it are such an accurate representation of the near future. For instance, high schools have classes called "Search and Analysis" -- basically advanced Googling & result interpretation. People have recognized that the ability to formulate the proper query is almost as important as being able to understand the results.

Check out his short story Fast Times At Fairmont High[1] and the short Synthetic Serendipity[2].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Vernor...

[2]: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/synthetic-serend...

Re: I Google everything

#114

Post by Wingman4l7 »

cliveholloway wrote: post #16

These days, the important thing is to know the right question. Once you get that far, the rest is easy. eg, you want to extract a date from a sentence. If you don't know the question, you might google "get date from sentence". If you do, then you'd google "date regular expression". You still need to know stuff - just not as much of each thing, so you can know more. It's like memorizing the TOC of a book rather than t…

See my comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4410649

Re: I Google everything

#115

Post by dstroot »

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…

There is an old tale of greek philosophers debating how many teeth a horse has. - "They have a small mouth that cannot fit very many teeth - they must have less than 20." - "They chew a lot so must have big strong teeth - big teeth take up more room so I agree they must not have very many." - "I disagree, they only eat grass their teeth do not not need to be strong. But they need very many teeth to chew it effectively!"

and on and on.

Finally one of them opens a horse's mouth and counts...

Re: I Google everything

#118

Post by alanfalcon »

illuminate wrote: post #78
alanfalcon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

McDonald's once having partial ownership in Chipoltle like a decade ago is nothing like "McDonald's owns Chipoltle" ... But maybe you had to be there.

Re: I Google everything

#119

Post by ubernostrum »

vibrunazo wrote: post #60
dagw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they don't seem much interested in the answer when I provide it, actually. I'm the sort of person who would happily spend an entire conversation trying to guess the population of Greece and frown upon anybody who tried to Google it. I like the fun, social 'game' of trying to work out random stuff from a few first principles . Having someone Google for it and tell me is like someone telling me the ending of a movi…

That's interesting. I didn't know people would think like that. Your post explains a lot, now the world makes much more sense. Thanks for posting it :) Now I wish people online would put a huge disclaimer saying "I'm only interested in arguing for the fun of it, not in finding an actual solution" before their posts. That would have saved countless hours of online typing wasted for nothing. I mean, nothing wrong with…

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

Re: I Google everything

#120

Post by greggman »

ggchappell wrote: post #106
vibrunazo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I didn't know people would think like that. Your post explains a lot, now the world makes much more sense. Thanks for posting it :) Now I wish people online would put a huge disclaimer saying "I'm only interested in arguing for the fun of it, not in finding an actual solution" before their posts. That would have saved countless hours of online typing wasted for nothing. I mean, nothing wrong with…

> But I wish I could accurately tell when that's the person's goal, versus whether it's a person who actually finds solving real problems more fun than talking, like I do. I think you're still missing it. Have you never enjoyed a movie with a surprise ending (as the GP pointed out)? Would it have been just as fun if someone had given you a 30-second summary of the plot? What about working out puzzles, brain-teasers,…

I think there may be a generation gap. Most older people I know don't even think to look it up. Many younger people instinctively look it up

I'm not denying it can be fun to debate and guess but there are plenty of times it just better to look it up and then move on to deeper more meaningful conversation

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