How Google's black box Knowledge Graph can kill you

The gullible will believe what they are told without question, just as they have since the dawn of time.

People unfortunately aren't diligent fact checkers. They'll believe bad news more readily than good easily and often with more relish. 'So and so told me' is generally considered good enough evidence...

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is."

- Terry Pratchett

First Law of Magic

"People believe something to be true either because they want to be true or because they are afraid it might be true." Toss in A. C. Clarke's "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and here we are.

How standards change:

Google: Well what you're looking for is impossible for a machine to get right all the time, but this is its best guess.

Public (past): Cool, thanks, we acknowledge it's limits (I mean, it *is* only a computer, duh!), but it should help most of the time.

Public (present): This article.

Google needs a tickbox for people to opt out of 'just trying to help'-grade features, and for people who are just looking for any excuse to hate Google.

Obligatory xkcd

https://www.xkcd.com/978/

Google is a mere beginner at confusing people. Genealogists have been at it for centuries resulting in people allegedly becoming parents after they'd died - and probably before they were born as well. It's not easy matching names to construct profiles of people. Perhaps they should have tried it out on historical data first and then rolled it out slowly - and stopped when they discovered what a pig's ear they were making.

Duh

"Is it OK to treat truth as collateral damage in the supposed march of progress?"

Ask any politician and don't get partisan on me - it's not like one of the two false dichotomy sides is pure.

Just different spin on the same lies.

Mencken:

Elections are an advance sale on stolen goods.

"Those other people will pay for it - I'll pick their pockets to give you stuff."

Thing is, you're always those other people. Because we're all in this together, like it or not.

Tin-foil hat time

Perhaps this is deliberate. The response of the Chocolate Factory and the other scumbags is to insist that they are able to access the unique identifiers that the government creeps have on everyone - or to start supplying the government creeps the unique identifiers.

Interestingly enough, the few times I have used "OK google ..." to look up something on my phone, it has replied:

"According to wikipedia..."

But, what should we believe?

So, I am at work and someone discusses Chris Froome...

"What I don't understand is, how can he win the Tour de France and have Asthma?".

"Well, presumably, it is reasonably mild and the Salbutamol returns his lungs to full function. Perhaps that drug is capable of boosting your lungs above normal capacity, hence its presence on the 'banned' substances list".

"Yeah, but my daughter has Asthma and she couldn't do that".

(face aghast) "But surely you don't equate that anecdotal 'evidence', akin to 'My Gran smoked until she died at 90 and she didn't have Cancer, so...', with this case?".

"Well, it just seems so unlikely".

"So, if he was seeing a doctor since he was 8 and can prove he took medication all his life?".

"Says who?".

"The BBC in this case."

"Well, I don't trust the BBC".

"Who do you trust?".

"No-one".

"So, if you didn't see it with your own eyes or hear it from your closest relative or believe something in the first place, you don't believe something someone else says?".

"Basically, yes".

There is no point discussing anything much further with anyone that takes that view (which the person concerned retracted after more discussion because it is effectively untenable).

This was a grown man and is not isolated - a different colleague suggested that part of the drive to work was great "Because there are no speed limits". Multiple people assured him that there were and that perhaps he meant no enforcement. "No, you can drive as fast as you want". And, so the argument proceeded until we gave up because his view was, No enforcement, no limit.

I think the general trend to not believe anything and to allow 'equal' views from all sides is akin to the "We don't believe in Science in our family" trend that somehow allows people who are either stupid or insane to carry on in their belief despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

There are facts, incontrovertible facts, plain truths and opinions.

So, when the BBC give equal time to a Climate Change denier, effectively suggesting his (a politician's) view has the same weight as the (massive) majority of scientists that have studied the science then they are doing us a disservice, even if they say it is an opinion.

This is why the US has states that give equal time to Intelligent Design in schools against Evolution.

We are truly further than ever from the Enlightenment, started only a few centuries earlier and which really, really ought to have happened by now.

Bigly Sad!

Every respondent in this thread has the attitude

"My opinion is right, anyone who thinks differently is wrong."

The biggest problem with the internet is that it allows everyone with the same views to organise into ever larger, self re-enforcing cliques that are intolerant to any other points of view.