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You Will Not Understand This

stanleylieber.com

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Re: You Will Not Understand This

#231

Post by BucketSort »

joshcanhelp wrote: post #219
BucketSort wrote: post #178

I disagree with mostly everything here, which surprises me since I'm usually in line with most highly voted opinion pieces on here. I'd like to say something in particular about Facebook. I maintain a strict rule of only being friends with people I care about. It allows me to keep up with my family and friends, discuss local community events and news, and keep up with the local music scene. My belief is that a lot of…

N of 1 here but I am in the category of people who hate Facebook (been off for a year) and very much miss the pictures, invites, and updates from people I love. When I used FB, I unfollowed/unfriended folks I didn't care about, really curated the experience as best as I could. I truly miss the interactions with people. But what I read over and over about the amount of data being collected, combined with the very stro…

I'm not trying to advocate staying on these platforms if they don't work for you. I'm mainly trying to say if it doesn't work for you, just move on. I'm saying don't linger on past abusive relationships, find something better and don't harbor the negativity from the past. I know what I said is very naive and has plenty of holes in it, but I was taken aback by the negativity of this post and responded with the inverse.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#232

Post by michaelbuckbee »

cyphunk wrote: post #202
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personalization seems to help if only because you need to disambiguate the english language. I'm often searching for "ruby" (the programming language not the gemstone) and need to find "gems" (modules for the "ruby" language) and often these have names that have other meanings like "devise", "pundit", "ransack", "bootstrap", "carrierwave", "paperclip", "fog", "cucumber", "refinery", etc etc. Similarly, having som…

you imply that when someone that is not a programmer, and say works in the rare stones industry, goes to google to search for ruby gems, that they are not shown a bunch of programmer garbage?

I'm implying that Google "learns" over time that I'm more interested in ruby the programming language and that a jeweler would over time get more gemstone related resources.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#233

Post by pawelk »

cyphunk wrote: post #202
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personalization seems to help if only because you need to disambiguate the english language. I'm often searching for "ruby" (the programming language not the gemstone) and need to find "gems" (modules for the "ruby" language) and often these have names that have other meanings like "devise", "pundit", "ransack", "bootstrap", "carrierwave", "paperclip", "fog", "cucumber", "refinery", etc etc. Similarly, having som…

you imply that when someone that is not a programmer, and say works in the rare stones industry, goes to google to search for ruby gems, that they are not shown a bunch of programmer garbage?

Personalized disambiguation can be really handy. I'm a hobby woodworker, I've recently bought a vintage Record #4 hand plane and wanted to learn more about it. I found out this model was manufactured in 1939-1945.

So without thinking I type record plane 1939-1945 into Google. And guess what? I get information about hand planes, pictures of hand planes in the images section, links to ebay auctions for vintage planes etc, and in between these there were only a few results related to aircraft combat during WWII.

The same query in incognito mode doesn't return even a single link related to hand tools.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#234

Post by TheCoelacanth »

ordu wrote: post #142
jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

The problem is I don't want to find relevant results. If results I looking for are relevant, than I need not a great search engine to find them. If I know what I want to find it would be pretty simple to find them with grep over internet. If I want to find local takeaway pizza, than all I need is to find where am I, and then to add my location to a request. Probably I wish to use not the text prompt search engine, bu…

What I would prefer is context sensitive filtering options to let you refine your search after you have performed it. For example, if I search for "ruby", there will be results related to the programming language, the gemstone and for people named Ruby, and Google is guessing which one I want based on what it knows about me, so why not give me visibility into which one it is picking and let me switch to the others?

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#235

Post by Bartweiss »

hzay wrote: post #74
jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

Pretty sure OP gets the idea of personalization. Google's personalization is like piling up chairs in order to reach the moon. It's nowhere near its promise of reading the user's mind and helping him. Instead its present implementation simply stops your world view from expanding in any direction, by serving you the same stuff that you knew over and over again. This is not personalization. This is a child's imitation…

Robin Sloan did a great bit of fiction about what truly superb Google personalization would look like. No search bar, no results list, just the "I'm feeling lucky" button. You click it, and then the relevant thing happens.

I think about that every time I go off to incognito to make Google stop hobbling my results and give me the thing I was actually trying to find.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#236

Post by gooseus »

UncleMeat wrote: post #211
gooseus wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I was hoping to find... of course knowing how to do that is completely esoteric. I don't know why they couldn't just put another button next to I'm Feeling Lucky that says "Pretend you don't know me". My problem nowadays is with the idea that Google, et al, all believe they're own myth of being the best at XYZ user experience and if you disagree then you're a curmudgeon or an idiot who "doesn't get it".…

Because it is another premier feature to maintain. Because more buttons mean more people accidentally hit the wrong button and then complain about shitty search results.

A button that appends that querystring parameter to your search query is a "premier feature" that a multi-billion dollar company is hesitant to maintain?

They already have a button that would cause far more confusion if accidentally pressed (Feeling Lucky) since it results in a page that isn't a set of google search results.

Sorry, gotta say that those are pretty weak counterpoints... I expected something about how Google's business interest has everything to do with personalized search and each non-personalized search would result in less revenue, or something like that.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#237

Post by BucketSort »

NDICjQ2zlm5vJ6S wrote: post #210
BucketSort wrote: post #178

I disagree with mostly everything here, which surprises me since I'm usually in line with most highly voted opinion pieces on here. I'd like to say something in particular about Facebook. I maintain a strict rule of only being friends with people I care about. It allows me to keep up with my family and friends, discuss local community events and news, and keep up with the local music scene. My belief is that a lot of…

I agree that too much negativity is unhealthy and makes living needlessly less enjoyable, but what you're advocating here is willful ignorance. Ignoring bad aspects of certain services or people does not make them magically disappear; it's a short-term solution at best. By refusing to face the issues right now, you make them harder or downright impossible to solve later, or even cause more serious problems. And Faceb…

I can't fight every battle in the world. And it's not ignorance. I'm aware of some dubious practices, but almost everything has this duality. I'm sure you have some electronics made by low wage Chinese workers. Do you fight that battle? My statement is more about being a happy person than ignorance. And in my view, if you are happy, you are productive and creative, which is good for society and the people in your life. We must ignore many injustices and negativity in the world, because everything in our lives are riddled with it. Thus, I'm aware of my selective attention, and I do so because I wish to be the best person I can be for myself and my community.

Does this mean Facebook gets a free pass? Of course not. These are valid concerns. But if I'm not going to act on something, I'm not gonna give it attention. Again, I'm not saying these issues should just go away and people should shut up. I'm saying pick your battles and win them, don't battle everything and win nothing.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#238

Post by TheCoelacanth »

nilved wrote: post #208
IanCal wrote: post #34

> Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. Yes, I am aware that this is likewise no accident. This is not an example of low search quality and can easily be the opposite. If I search for ruby gems, I probably want code. If someone else does, they may want actual gems. > The qual…

> If I search for ruby gems, I probably want code. If someone else does, they may want actual gems. So they search for "ruby gems" and you search for "ruby gems code." This nails in OP's point: > Insight: Google does not want you to know or remember. Anything, if at all possible.

But if they search "ruby gems" their results for gemstones will include programming results. So instead they need to search for "ruby gems gemstone", but then some clever person names their ruby library gemstone and they need to add more qualifiers and so on.
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