4 ms·

Couple of things. You'd need to check with Tor for a fair comparison to rule out geographic/workplace affinity. also.. Your starting perspective governs the

Couple of things. You'd need to check with Tor for a fair comparison to rule out geographic/workplace affinity. also.. Your starting perspective governs the search term. I'm confident vaccines are safe overall - so I'll search for "are vaccines safe?" (positive connotation). Someone who believes that vaccines are causing brain damage has already formed a contrary opinion, so in all likelihood would be expected to search for "vaccines cause autism" (negative connotation). The question is the same, but it's been presented differently, and Google will respond to the question asked. Believe it or not, I'm not actually blaming Google for this. In essence, it's still trying to answer the question asked, but I think we need to seriously reassess what the heck we're doing and maybe launch public awareness campaigns about how this all works at a fundamental level.

creato 8y ago
> Someone who believes that vaccines are causing brain damage has already formed a contrary opinion, so in all likelihood would be expected to search for "vaccines cause autism" (negative connotation). I understand this, in fact, "vaccines cause autism" was exactly one of my test searches. As for Tor: I don't have it and I'm not going to bother. And if nothing else, my region is a well known hotspot for anti-vaccine idiocy, so I would expect that to bias the test in favor of the filter bubble hypothesis, not against it.
- headmelted 8y ago
  ^^ This makes me feel better, believe it or not. I still think an Internet search / social media PSA campaign is urgently needed.
  - creato 8y ago
    > ^^ This makes me feel better, believe it or not. Frankly, why trust me? Why not try this yourself? I wish no one would trust random commenters on any social media, whether it be facebook or hackernews. I'd rather you not trust me, I only spent 5 minutes on it. For someone such as yourself with such a strong opinion on the topic, I think it is worth spending a bit more time on it. This is one of those rare issues where if you think there's a problem, it's not hard to check for yourself.
    - headmelted 8y ago
      I have, insofar as searching from my own connection in multiple incognito windows - but as we've said that tells me nothing. I'm not going to download Tor because honestly I don't want my ISP thinking I'm up to no good (paranoid and ridiculous as I realize that is). Totally agree otherwise on trust not being a substitute for critical thinking and applied reason, and yes, it's the biggest problem of all of this.

creato 8y ago

> Someone who believes that vaccines are causing brain damage has already formed a contrary opinion, so in all likelihood would be expected to search for "vaccines cause autism" (negative connotation). I understand this, in fact, "vaccines cause autism" was exactly one of my test searches. As for Tor: I don't have it and I'm not going to bother. And if nothing else, my region is a well known hotspot for anti-vaccine idiocy, so I would expect that to bias the test in favor of the filter bubble hypothesis, not against it.

headmelted 8y ago
^^ This makes me feel better, believe it or not. I still think an Internet search / social media PSA campaign is urgently needed.
- creato 8y ago
  > ^^ This makes me feel better, believe it or not. Frankly, why trust me? Why not try this yourself? I wish no one would trust random commenters on any social media, whether it be facebook or hackernews. I'd rather you not trust me, I only spent 5 minutes on it. For someone such as yourself with such a strong opinion on the topic, I think it is worth spending a bit more time on it. This is one of those rare issues where if you think there's a problem, it's not hard to check for yourself.
  - headmelted 8y ago
    I have, insofar as searching from my own connection in multiple incognito windows - but as we've said that tells me nothing. I'm not going to download Tor because honestly I don't want my ISP thinking I'm up to no good (paranoid and ridiculous as I realize that is). Totally agree otherwise on trust not being a substitute for critical thinking and applied reason, and yes, it's the biggest problem of all of this.