Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
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Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#2I'm not sure that counting gay porn searches (example they gave in the article) is a reliable indicator of whether the seeker is gay. This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn.
I was curious about this phenomenon and found many forum posts where straight guys say they've watched gay porn.
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#3I purchased this book on sale at the Kindle store to get a detailed sense of what his methodology was, and it seems he just uses Google Trends to compare search volumes across locations combined with Google AdWords to give the data a numerical scale and break down the data demographically. It seems statistically dubious at best, especially the part where he makes assumptions based on search autocomplete results (which vary based on location, IP address, browser, OS, and other factors).
You can read more about his methodology in his papers here [1]. He wrote his PhD thesis on "Essays Using Google Data". I can't think of a better way to do these estimates with the limited data provided, but I'm just not convinced it's a strong enough proxy for the conclusions he's making.
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#4Do you recall when you last read in the newspapers about how someone convicted of murder has their searches used as evidence against them?
What comes to my mind when I read this is what the base rate of suspicious searches is. If 10% of days include at least one suspicious search in the base population, the value of such a search as evidence of malice is greatly reduced. But most people don't consider base rates.
On the topic of the differences in parents' concern for their boys vs their girls, for genius vs overweightedness, there's a simple rationale: for future career and relationship success, a boy's intelligence and a girl's looks are relatively more important than vice versa. It's not right or fair, but it's believed to be true, and that's what makes people search for it.
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#5I purchased this book on sale at the Kindle store to get a detailed sense of what his methodology was, and it seems he just uses Google Trends to compare search volumes across locations combined with Google AdWords to give the data a numerical scale and break down the data demographically. It seems statistically dubious at best, especially the part where he makes assumptions based on search autocomplete results (whic…
Bear in mind that he had a look behind the curtain - working at Google and talking to the relevant people about the results does give reason to believe that he knows more about what he's talking about than a dilettante on Google Trends. And if there's anything that economics PhD does you for, it's a large dose of statistics.
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#6This is a well understood phenomenon in the world of Garbology [1] called the Lean-Cuisine Syndrome [2]
In one study garbologists found that people uniformly underreported the quantity of junk food they eat, and overreport the amount of fruit and diet soda they consume. Most people also underreport their consumption of alcohol by 40 to 60 percent; on the other hand, heads of households regularly exaggerate the amount of food their families consume. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbology
[2] http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Lean+Cuisine...
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/05/books/we-are-what-we-throw...
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#7I'm not sure that counting gay porn searches (example they gave in the article) is a reliable indicator of whether the seeker is gay. This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn. I was curious about this phenomenon and found many forum posts where straight guys say they've watched gay porn.
Might that mean that you are bi? I mean, if you like watching it you might enjoy doing it.
If your first response to that suggestion was visceral, maybe you actually have some aversion to the idea that you are. It makes sense, the world is easier for straight people, but it might bear closer examination.
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#8I purchased this book on sale at the Kindle store to get a detailed sense of what his methodology was, and it seems he just uses Google Trends to compare search volumes across locations combined with Google AdWords to give the data a numerical scale and break down the data demographically. It seems statistically dubious at best, especially the part where he makes assumptions based on search autocomplete results (whic…
> assumptions based on search autocomplete results (which vary based on location, IP address, browser, OS, and other factors).
I imagine you could just do the same searches in an Incognito browser window and get results not tailored to you, nor your location, IP, etc. (Or, I would be rather surprised if google searches were STILL tailored to some determinable attribute of you in an incognito browser window.)
I also imagine Seth did this (but only because I would be very surprised if he did not).
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#9I'm not sure that counting gay porn searches (example they gave in the article) is a reliable indicator of whether the seeker is gay. This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn. I was curious about this phenomenon and found many forum posts where straight guys say they've watched gay porn.
> This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn.
And yet I have never. Does this mean I am (on some ruler) "straighter" than you? (Not that I care, or think this matters.)
(I once discovered gay male porn on the parents' computer of a woman I once dated, while trying to fix it. Awkward...)
Re: Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
#10I'm not sure that counting gay porn searches (example they gave in the article) is a reliable indicator of whether the seeker is gay. This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn. I was curious about this phenomenon and found many forum posts where straight guys say they've watched gay porn.
Might that mean that you are bi? I mean, if you like watching it you might enjoy doing it. If your first response to that suggestion was visceral, maybe you actually have some aversion to the idea that you are. It makes sense, the world is easier for straight people, but it might bear closer examination.
This does not necessarily follow. I have (ahem, my username is not anonymous but I don't think this is controversial anymore) enjoyed porn of a nature that I wouldn't necessarily participate in. You can also enjoy porn that is completely fantastical and thus impossible to participate in, such as the infamous "hentai", or (I will never understand this) that "my little pony" porn genre, or from an unrealistic (or is it... fantastically realistic?) flash game such as "Super Deepthroat" (introduced a while back to me by a female Redditor who claimed she could ONLY orgasm to it, perhaps surprisingly), and if this article is to be believed, human women are generally turned on by ANY sexual expression, even if they claim not to be, which would ostensibly include scenarios they would be unwilling to participate in: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/fashion/12bisex.html
(To any future employers, friends, clients, interlopers and all others who encounter this after getting to know me... None of this should terribly surprise you. ;) )