Google search turned stupid again

[RoGeorge]

It happens from time to time, and this weekend started to happen again.  I mean, Google search suddenly returning very poor results. 

The query almost doesn't matter any more, it returns the most popular "whatever" instead of what I'm searching for, with results that disregards the context or the other helping words in the query.

Anybody else noticed that starting this weekend?

[mc172]

Search engines return results in an order that makes them the most money.

[pcprogrammer]

Not with google, but I have had problems with Aliexpress search on many occasions. I then flush the cookies for all sites with ali in the name and it starts to work normal again.

So you might try that.

[Stray Electron]

It happens from time to time, and this weekend started to happen again.  I mean, Google search suddenly returning very poor results. 

The query almost doesn't matter any more, it returns the most popular "whatever" instead of what I'm searching for, with results that disregards the context or the other helping words in the query.

Anybody else noticed that starting this weekend?

   I haven't noticed Google being any worse this weekend but the results there have been ridiculous for a very long time.  I'm sure the MC172 is right and that Google ranks it's results by whomever pays them the most money.

   For people, Google consistently returns information such as criminal records even when I include terms such as -"arrest" -"booking"  -"criminal"

[RoGeorge]

To me it's much worse, but only starting from the last to days.  Before, it was OK-ish.

Another strange fact is that it started to return some results in Romanian, while the search page is set for English, and I never search Romanian terms with Google.  Before it never use to return Ro results. 

For example, today I was looking for a wikipedia page, and searched for von neumann debias wikipedia and they are all off, one is in Romanian (and also wrong), and there are only 3 pages of results, which is unexpectedly low number of pages.

Code: [Select]

Google
All
Images
News
Videos
Maps
More
Tools

About 30,000 results (0.43 seconds)

Hardware random number generator - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Hardware_random_nu...
The main application for electronic hardware random number generators is in cryptography, where they are used to generate random cryptographic keys to transmit ...

John von Neumann - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › John_von_Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. Von Neumann was regarded as perhaps the ...
Born: Neumann János Lajos; December 28, 1...
Known for: Abelian von Neumann algebra; ‎Affi...‎
Children: Marina von Neumann Whitman
Other notable students: Paul Halmos; ‎Clifford ...‎
Missing: debias ‎| Must include: debias

John von Neumann - Wikipedia
https://ro.wikipedia.org › wiki › John...
· Translate this page
John von Neumann ; Donald B. Gillies (Canadian mathematician and computer scientist)|​]] · Maurice Pryce ; Maurice Pryce (fizician britanic)|​]] · Israel Halperin ...
Missing: debias ‎| Must include: debias

Arhitectură von Neumann - Wikipedia
https://ro.wikipedia.org › wiki › Arhi...
· Translate this page
Arhitectura von Neumann este una din arhitecturile posibile (cuprinzând ... Numele provine de la John von Neumann, un renumit matematician și pionier al ...
Missing: debias ‎| Must include: debias
People also ask
What is von Neumann theory?
What is von Neumann famous for?
Was John von Neumann the smartest person ever?
Is John von Neumann father of modern computer?
Feedback

Von Neumann architecture - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Von_Neumann_archit...
The von Neumann architecture — also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture — is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by ...
Missing: debias ‎| Must include: debias

Proof of Von Neumann's debiasing algorithm - MathOverflow
https://mathoverflow.net › questions › proof-of-von-ne...
Dec 17, 2013 — John von Neumann describes an algorithm to debias the random source and output a perfectly unbiased sequence of 1s and 0s as follows:.
2 answers
  ·  Top answer: The original article by von Neumann (https://dornsifecms.usc.edu/assets/sites/520/docs/VonNeumann-am ...

Archivo:Arquitectura von Neumann.png - Wikiversidad
https://es.wikiversity.org › wiki › Arc...
· Translate this page
Archivo:Arquitectura von Neumann.png ... atribución – Debes otorgar el crédito correspondiente, proporcionar un enlace a la ... Uso en es.wikipedia.org.

Stanford, Kyoto & Georgia Tech Model 'Neutralizes' Biased ...
https://medium.com › syncedreview
Dec 11, 2019 — As one of Wikipedia's fundamental principles, NPOV is battle-tested and used widely to debias text in the wild, which is why Pryzant and his ...

An Empirical Survey of the Effectiveness of Debiasing ...
https://aclanthology.org › 2022.acl-long.132.pdf
PDF
by N Meade · 2022 · Cited by 2 — Self-Debias to be the strongest bias mitigation tech- ... Wikipedia using increased dropout regularization. SELF-DEBIAS. Schick et al. (2021) propose.
Images for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
Image result for von neumann debias wikipedia
View all
Feedback
View all
Related searches
Image of Von Neumann architecture
Von Neumann architecture
Image of Von Neumann architecture
Image of Marina von Neumann Whitman
Marina von Neumann Whitman
Image of Marina von Neumann Whitman
Feedback
von neumann bottleneck
von neumann iq
john von neumann born
john von neumann biography
john von neumann books
what was john von neumann famous for
1 2    3 Next
The expected result was about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor#Von_Neumann_extractor but a standalone page.  This is not the only search weirdness today.  Usally it came back to normal after a week or two.  It happened before.

I was just curious if such things happens to everybody, at once, or if it's sparse.

[mclute0]

Google has gotten pretty bad compared to decades ago, but I remember using sites like Excite, Lycos, and Infoseek when they first came out.

You might try using Googles advanced search page and use the options to reduce the results to match your desire, but they will still try to give you paid ads as results.

Remember that exclusions are singular without wild card so Truck≠Trucks but Tr*==Truck & Tr*==Trucks & Tr*==Tricks & Tr*==Traps.

Google also changes their search algorithms frequently and sometimes they make mistakes. You can always send them a feedback message on any really bad query results, and they will probably look at it at some future date.

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

[mcinque]

Search engines return results in an order that makes them the most money.

maybe OT, but please argue on this, i would like to hear your point. clicks on organic results do not generate money, only ads do.

[mc172]

How do you know that the results are "organic" and how do you know that clicks on those "organic" results are not generating money?

I haven't got an argument other than: it's all about money.

[mcinque]

How do you know that the results are "organic" and how do you know that clicks on those "organic" results are not generating money?

I haven't got an argument other than: it's all about money.

you know that they are organic results because they haven't "ad" beside.

organic results does not generate directly money by a click.
google makes money by knowing what people search/want and what kind of website is successful. knowledge is power, because you can use it to sell ads by knowing which ones to show and to whom, making them successful and thus creating a successful service (google ads).

if google manipulated the results by putting specific websites at the top not because of their relevance to the search, it would lose users, because users would not want a search engine that offers results that are not in line with their searches. if it lost users it would decrease knowledge about what people are searching for, so it is not in its interest to do such a thing.

what you see are experiments by google trying to come up with results for all sorts of reasons (new sites, user intent testing, and other things we can't know)

yes, it's all about money, and google knows how to make money, but it's not by proposing random/odd results that you succeed as a search engine

[RJSV]

Online cash transactions, sure anyone wants security doing that.  But what's freaking irritating is the 'holes' that frequently appear, where goole-grow goes 'stupid' on me, often in political related searches.  While same time (folks know this) will 'complete' something as stunted, as 'The'.  (Well, almost that bad)!
  But, especially frust, when I can't get back to, for instance, some specific Jimi Hendrix video, etc.  Just cannot get it back up to go click on, in results list.
That's, like 17th century 'tech'.  Sounds vain, petty problem, but people buy and like their smartphones, for entertainment.  Can't buy a DVD player, so easy, or even an AM radio.  That stuff gets me to curse,...(not a good attitude to retain!).

[Siwastaja]

Anybody else noticed that starting this weekend?

I think I first really noticed it in 2004 and frankly, never seen any improvement after that. Total hit-or-miss every time. More usually miss. Since around 2004, people started to use Google as an address translator so they can type "facebook" instead of facebook.com, and Google encouraged this behavior by purposely dumbing down the algorithm.

Google was actually good in 1998-1999 when it really started replacing Altavista which became too full of popup adds and other bullcrap.

[SiliconWizard]

Anybody else noticed that starting this weekend?

I think I first really noticed it in 2004 and frankly, never seen any improvement after that. Total hit-or-miss every time. More usually miss. Since around 2004, people started to use Google as an address translator so they can type "facebook" instead of facebook.com, and Google encouraged this behavior by purposely dumbing down the algorithm.

Google was actually good in 1998-1999 when it really started replacing Altavista which became too full of popup adds and other bullcrap.

Agreed.
The sneaky way of pushing incomplete URLs to search engines is infuriating, and sure Google encouraged it, but web browsers *implemented* it so that it would be "transparent" to the user.

It has now become the norm, and the URL bar now doubles as a search bar on all browsers I know of. I personally HATE it. It's infuriating both ways: when you enter some URL and it goes through a search engine behind your back, and when you actually enter search keywords and it gets automatically completed with a past URL. Firefox has only made it worse as the search field they have put on the default home page redirects immediately to the URL bar.

As the meme went,

all your base are belong to us

[thm_w]

I don't see how searching for "facebook" and getting the result "facebook.com" would somehow dumb down the algorithm. What else would you be searching for?
The auto typo correct though, yeah, thats dumbing things down, so then you have to go in and add quotes.

Anyway, a lot of the reason is likely spammers/SEO'ers targeting google and not google getting worse at search.

[Siwastaja]

I don't see how searching for "facebook" and getting the result "facebook.com" would somehow dumb down the algorithm.

I mean, when this is the primary use case, then it's a good idea to tune the algorithm in such way it returns facebook.com as the first result, instead of pages that discuss facebook - for example, Wikipedia page about facebook.

Such tuning then affects all the results.

Another "optimization" they seemingly did is to try to return as many results as possible, like it looks fancy if you have 27 000 000 results. You obviously can only see the first few hundred.

This all just means it isn't optimized for the original primary purpose - finding information on the Internet.

[mcinque]

I don't see how searching for "facebook" and getting the result "facebook.com" would somehow dumb down the algorithm.

I mean, when this is the primary use case, then it's a good idea to tune the algorithm in such way it returns facebook.com as the first result, instead of pages that discuss facebook - for example, Wikipedia page about facebook.

That's exactly what happens here: 1st result. It's normal and it's what I expect.


On the side there are infos about your search (the facebook company?), the most authoritative result: wikipedia.
You can give a feedback on the results and that suggestions may help to tune google on your preferences.

If you are seeing different results, I think what you are experiencing are results based on your web and google behavior: depending on what sites you give importance to, google adapts and suggests certain sites rather than another.

Try browsing incognito or with a different IP to see if the results change.

[Siwastaja]

You just don't get what I am saying  .

Many others use Google to find Facebook.

Google is optimized this use case in mind, as well as some other very simplistic pseudo-searches.

I don't enter "facebook" into Google and thus I am not interested about what results it gives with this search term.

Is this now clear?

[mcinque]

I mean, when this is the primary use case, then it's a good idea to tune the algorithm in such way it returns facebook.com as the first result, instead of pages that discuss facebook - for example, Wikipedia page about facebook.

aside from the fact that misunderstandings can happen, I just responded to the example by showing that it was exactly as you asked

yes, so many use google to search for a site instead of typing it into the address bar (which they don't even know what it is; many think the Internet is google), but technology has to adapt to its users: google does the same.

if you search for a www.facebook.com google understands that you are looking for the site and returns the facebook site as the first result.

Google is optimized this use case in mind, as well as some other very simplistic pseudo-searches.

From what I can see, that's not exactly the case.

However, you can use advanced search operators to improve how google does your search, for example by entering

facebook -forum -review -discussions -news -trends

[Zero999]

I don't see how searching for "facebook" and getting the result "facebook.com" would somehow dumb down the algorithm.

I mean, when this is the primary use case, then it's a good idea to tune the algorithm in such way it returns facebook.com as the first result, instead of pages that discuss facebook - for example, Wikipedia page about facebook.

That's exactly what happens here: 1st result. It's normal and it's what I expect.
(Attachment Link)

On the side there are infos about your search (the facebook company?), the most authoritative result: wikipedia.
You can give a feedback on the results and that suggestions may help to tune google on your preferences.

If you are seeing different results, I think what you are experiencing are results based on your web and google behavior: depending on what sites you give importance to, google adapts and suggests certain sites rather than another.

Try browsing incognito or with a different IP to see if the results change.

Google generates stupid search results! This is supposed to be news? You search for Facebook and it gives pro-abortion propaganda at the bottom of the first page, which just shows Google's political bias. It's important to take this into account when searching for anything remotely political, or where different sides of the US political spectrum disagree on a matter. Unfortunately this bullcrap is starting to infect some areas of science and engineering, especially the theoretical side.

[Haenk]

Search engines return results in an order that makes them the most money.

maybe OT, but please argue on this, i would like to hear your point. clicks on organic results do not generate money, only ads do.

You are thinking way too small. Think outside the box.
The results shown are very often linked out via tracking URL, so Google (or Bing or whatever search engine) can improve their correlation "your search term" <-> "the content that matters to you and probably others". So in turn, they could better match search terms; that match could be sold for more money as a fine tuned search term to advertisers.
So even clicking on the search term will generate profit in the long run.

[mcinque]

Search engines return results in an order that makes them the most money.

You are thinking way too small. Think outside the box.

we don't have multimillion-dollar search engine companies or run them, so we can't know more about them in terms of how to generate profit from searches. I don't think we can think better of them since their goal is just to make money, what they do is done to make money, even if it seems bad.

So even clicking on the search term will generate profit in the long run.

That's exactly what I told. "Search engines return results in an order that makes them the most money."

[RJSV]

Zero999: thanks
   I didn't want to say too much, but your point being, you can get Abortion (Pro) opinion shoved in your face, just by searching for Facebook.  Then, with (your) comment to that effect, a bunch of folks suddenly want to question YOU, almost a form of gaslighting!
   Who cares, about political loyalties...we all got affiliations, but I'm noting that you can't...well, NOTE things, like obvious bias, without getting stepped on by a bunch of, I guess, hypersensitive s calling you out.
   Beating up on poor, defenseless  Googl.

[Zero999]

Zero999: thanks
   I didn't want to say too much, but your point being, you can get Abortion (Pro) opinion shoved in your face, just by searching for Facebook.  Then, with (your) comment to that effect, a bunch of folks suddenly want to question YOU, almost a form of gaslighting!
   Who cares, about political loyalties...we all got affiliations, but I'm noting that you can't...well, NOTE things, like obvious bias, without getting stepped on by a bunch of, I guess, hypersensitive s calling you out.
   Beating up on poor, defenseless  Googl.

Lol.

The problem is in the US there are two extremes pushed by news outlets and politicians either: allow it in all cases, or none at all. Google has clearly picked its side and it's not helping anyone. I have my own views based on scientific evidence just as much as morality. Either way discussing politics here is against the rules. I don't intend to discuss it, just call out Google's bias.

[Siwastaja]

Yeah, but extremist / dualistic political discussion has always been part of the USA.

It's just that we have hard time understanding how it works, and take it too seriously / in the wrong way when we import it here. And when you import the political separation of USA into the Finnish (for example; I'd guess it's pretty much the same for British) culture, it actually tears us apart, in a bad way.

While in the USA, everybody can keep thinking whatever they want, and they will always find a lot of like-minded people, so no such total and utter cancel culture as driven in European medias, even in legislation to increasing degree. It's also kind of show business in the USA, but dead serious when imported here.

[SilverSolder]

Google is still vaguely useful if you choose "Verbatim" mode (in the Tools menu).  This forces the results to contain all the search terms you entered.  Imagine that, a search function that looks for the search terms you typed in.  It can only be a matter of time before some marketing genius at Google discovers this, and gets it removed...  so enjoy it while it's here! 

[Zero999]

Google is still vaguely useful if you choose "Verbatim" mode (in the Tools menu).  This forces the results to contain all the search terms you entered.  Imagine that, a search function that looks for the search terms you typed in.  It can only be a matter of time before some marketing genius at Google discovers this, and gets it removed...  so enjoy it while it's here! 

I suspect sensible, middle ground positions are not often portrayed in US media, because it isn't profitable. Someone saying "I would like to see abortion well-regulated and to be permitted under certain circumstances. Here's the evidence to support my position." won't get the same emotional response and number of views as "Ban abortion, it's murdering babies." or "Women have the right to do what they want with their bodies." It does alarm me that more of this bollocks is infecting the UK.

[RJSV]

   Had one of those 'ah ha' moments, thinking about:
   WHY DOESN'T Google do that 'Cookies' notification thing...required notice up front, when you browse some WEB site, like 'A&B Car Sales' ?
Then realized: Google doesn't need Cookies, to track someone, as the search stuff gives them (that)!  Ah, nice, they get to do tracking and don't account for it. Nice set up!
  Now, today I'm wondering about whether, maybe, Google provides the AUDIO TO TEXT service, for our TV subtitles for hearing impaired.  I've noticed, sometime around end of May this year, those TV subtitles (Comcast) have gotten dumbed-down,...sometimes in ways so humorous and lame:
   Person saying "Girl in there..." got subtitled as
                              "GORILLA"

[SilverSolder]

   Had one of those 'ah ha' moments, thinking about:
   WHY DOESN'T Google do that 'Cookies' notification thing...required notice up front, when you browse some WEB site, like 'A&B Car Sales' ?
Then realized: Google doesn't need Cookies, to track someone, as the search stuff gives them (that)!  Ah, nice, they get to do tracking and don't account for it. Nice set up!
  Now, today I'm wondering about whether, maybe, Google provides the AUDIO TO TEXT service, for our TV subtitles for hearing impaired.  I've noticed, sometime around end of May this year, those TV subtitles (Comcast) have gotten dumbed-down,...sometimes in ways so humorous and lame:
   Person saying "Girl in there..." got subtitled as
                              "GORILLA"

Human translator replaced with speech-to-text software.  What could possibly go wrong? 

[RJSV]

    People responding have it, almost correct, but I wanted to take a moment to join, but emphasize the distinction, between taking A SIDE,...that being the abandoning of 'neutral' presentation purely for profitable 'clicks' or simple traffic increase, by way of controversy.  That's well known.
   The direct point on Google, however, is this extremist/dualist dynamic is played, virtually exclusively on ONE SIDE, (almost in defiance of common sense, if business model calls for 'whichever'.).  There's no 'whichever makes for clicks'.
   "...Google has clearly picked it's side...",. Yes, thanks I could not have said it simpler.
AND a virtual monopoly.
   In Europe: "...tears us apart, in a bad way...".
Again, thank you: Our US monopoly Google is not
   "Turned stupid" on us...  Just a tired old pretend.
   I have CATS that put on a RUSE with less naked stupid.

[DonKu]

I think I first really noticed it in 2004 and frankly, never seen any improvement after that. Total hit-or-miss every time. More usually miss. Since around 2004, people started to use Google as an address translator so they can type "facebook" instead of facebook.com, and Google encouraged this behavior by purposely dumbing down the algorithm.

Somewhere around 2004 it seemed my search results for "ski area hours," for instance, inevitably included at least one website named https://skiareahours.com . It was click-bait, of course, "This domain is for sale" click-bait. The writing was on the wall for those who see.

google is your friend for trivia pursuit and popular culture. maillists are your friend for technical information. google returns results faster than the speed of gossip. It typically takes a day or two for a maillist to return the correct answer.

[ebastler]

google is your friend for trivia pursuit and popular culture. maillists are your friend for technical information. google returns results faster than the speed of gossip. It typically takes a day or two for a maillist to return the correct answer.

I don't follow. When I search for information -- certainly including technical information -- which I expect to be locatable via a lexical search, Google comes through for me most of the time. (And certainly more often than Bing or DuckDuckGo.)

If course, there is technical information which may be difficult to locate by just "searching for terms". I don't expect Google to have a deep understanding of anything (technical or otherwise), and it does not.

So questions along the lines of "Why does my ABC not work as expected" or "What is the best circuit to achieve XYZ" are indeed better asked on a forum or mailing list, where actual human experts can hopefully answer them. But I don't blame that on deficiencies or doctoring of Google's search algorithm.

[DonKu]

google is your friend for trivia pursuit and popular culture. maillists are your friend for technical information. google returns results faster than the speed of gossip. It typically takes a day or two for a maillist to return the correct answer.

I don't follow. When I search for information -- certainly including technical information -- which I expect to be locatable via a lexical search, Google comes through for me most of the time. (And certainly more often than Bing or DuckDuckGo.)

If course, there is technical information which may be difficult to locate by just "searching for terms". I don't expect Google to have a deep understanding of anything (technical or otherwise), and it does not.

So questions along the lines of "Why does my ABC not work as expected" or "What is the best circuit to achieve XYZ" are indeed better asked on a forum or mailing list, where actual human experts can hopefully answer them. But I don't blame that on deficiencies or doctoring of Google's search algorithm.

Let's try it this way: google regurgitates obsolete technical information along with everything else. Such obsolete information causes you to waste time in at least two ways. First, you must learn the hard way why the information is bad, why it's no longer applicable. Then you must manually cull all of the bad hits, one at a time.

On the other hand, if you want to know what Spock's uniform looked like in The Original Series, google's your friend. Because trivia's timeless.

[AnalogueLove1867]

Yeah.
Google definitely does lead its users to the results that make google money and make google look good ( politicized results or latest mainstream news).
 it is definitely less useable than it was ten or fifteen years ago.
truthfully, it is impossible to get away from this issue with other search engines.
Still, you do get a bigger range of results by searching the same thing in different engines.
google, yandex, dogpile, ask.com ( ask jeeves ), Lycos, AOL, wolfram-alpha, baidu, yahoo, bing, excite, duckduckgo, webcrawler ... etc etc etc
Each have different flavors of result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

[SilverSolder]

Yeah.
Google definitely does lead its users to the results that make google money and make google look good ( politicized results or latest mainstream news).
 it is definitely less useable than it was ten or fifteen years ago.
truthfully, it is impossible to get away from this issue with other search engines.
Still, you do get a bigger range of results by searching the same thing in different engines.
google, yandex, dogpile, ask.com ( ask jeeves ), Lycos, AOL, wolfram-alpha, baidu, yahoo, bing, excite, duckduckgo, webcrawler ... etc etc etc
Each have different flavors of result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

Many/most of the search engines are "fronts" to either Google or Bing -  those two are the only remaining "real" search engines, as far as I know (apart from Yandex obviously)

[RJSV]

   I have, or had, 'TACKTLE' memory, for the simple volume control wheel, on my AM radio.  Never, did I push up for louder volume, followed by cursing:
"Crummy radio products! Blah blah blah...dang thing won't even RESPOND...What's wrong, now ?".
   NEVER.  But now, a 'glitch' here, there seems all part of the landscape.  And I can't buy a radio, at least common retail.
   So, I tune in via my phone.  On the house WIFI (expensive boxes).  As an Engineer, I pushed that volume control, on AM radio, expecting results...simple common sense.
But now, a person has to start, down the line of reasoning; Did I move too far from server?  Is it my complicated (Google-Android) phone ? Or, crummy marketing driven 'radio' station, POD CASTS and all that?  I mean, dropout after dropout after....well, you get the idea.
   A year ago, I decided; Get the the BOOK, dummy!
So I purchased 'Android for Dummies'.  Kompleat waste, chock full of subtle advertisements.  (Readers, in case my dialog seems drifting here, I'm saying this TECH corporation, 'Google' is not appearing easy for use, like AM radio example'.
   Response to that, even in my own self-musings, is that, well, at least the Smartphone can bring me across the world, whya: I can search and get all kinds of new info.  True, but it seems so uniformly 'junky'.  Plus that great big monopoly dominates so much, that simple little Radio is obsolete, not on store shelves.
   Wanna buy an old-school AM Radio ?  Sure, just log on to ABCinc.dotcom, create account / password, get a PayPal account/password. Receive 3 immediate texts asking "How useful did you find our web store?".

   Tried a (supposedly) simple contact/email to a Computer Science Instructor, regarding an interesting class;. No problem; their web site wants me to create a HOOGLE email account/password.

And, (lol), they STILL wanted me to fill out a cust feedback thingy (even though I had given up, on the Google deal).

[RoGeorge]

It happens again.  For me, Google gives now search results from forums and blog from about 10-15 years ago, and low to average quality answers at best.  It doesn't return some 15 years ago material because of its stellar quality, not at all.

Often I'm searching EEVblog with google, by adding site:eevblog.com at the end of the search.  Doesn't work any more, not broken just that it returns irrelevant results.

Yesterday I've clicked on YouTube from a live USB Linux installer (so no login and no browsing history), and I've been loathed from what I've seen in the YouTube main page.  Looking at the titles and thumbnails was enough to tell all suggestions from YouTube were absolute garbage.

Then I thought, maybe I've lived for too long under a rock without looking outside.  Maybe that's how pop culture looks like these days.  So I've search "science" in the youtube bar, and no, still trash suggestions of videos with slightly "sciency" related titles, but in fact focused on hype and superficiality, more like the clickbait kind of science. 

First page of YouTube is looking just like the wall of fame in an idiots asylum would probably look like. 

And I've scrolled a lot, for about 10-20 pages, it was all the same.  My conclusion so far:  The main YouTube page is filled with trash not because that is what pop culture looks like, or because that's what the average Joe likes to watch, no.  I think the main YouTube page is filled with trash because that is what YouTube is promoting, and what YouTube is pushing to its viewers.

I wouldn't rant about YT if it weren't for the long term implication I'm afraid will follow this.  Pushing trash into people's mind can only spiral us down.  It almost looks like the "algorithm" is educating the whole world to become the people from the Idiocracy (2006) movie.

By each year, this movie turns more and more into a new genre:  Prophetic Documentary.



 

The problem with natural selection is that it has no goals, it is only driven by environment and luck.

The environment is the one who choose who's to thrive, and who's to die.  So far the Earth and its biosphere were our environment, the filter that made us what we are today, but now we are at the point where we create and shape our own environment, which environment in return shapes us.  Maybe we should put some goals into it.

That's a circular dependency there, a feedback loop, and that can go horribly wrong if we don't pay attention to it.

So far it seems the loop oscillates.  Saying this because history tells about periods of alternating good times and bad times.  It is not the forest any more who shapes humans.  It's the other humans.  We are living by social rules, not by nature's rules.  The asphalt jungle is our forest v2.0, now with Internet and VR headsets. 

TL;DR  I hope the search results in Google right now are from 10+ years ago only because Google is re-indexing to prioritize quality over popularity.