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> I don’t even know how to find useful information online anymore for everyday things like “how hot is too hot outside for a cat?” Maybe this wasn't a real exa

by gundmc 5y ago

> I don’t even know how to find useful information online anymore for everyday things like “how hot is too hot outside for a cat?” Maybe this wasn't a real example, but searching exactly this (quotes not included) returned the answer in a knowledge box at the top of the page and the first several organic results had the answer very clearly in the text.

wutbrodo 5y ago
Yea I'm very curious about this too. Oddly enough, it's not the first time I've heard someone on HN complain about a search query being hard for Google to answer, tried it, and found the answer in the first result (and the next half dozen).
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Humans are lazy. It would be more effort, after constructing their argument, to actually sit down and test that the argument passes a basic sense test. So, they don't. And most of the people reading (and upvoting to signal "I agree") won't either. Why should they? They agree with it, there's no sense in fact checking things you agree with, right? You can see this in the recent Google 2FA threads too, lots of people were quite sure Google is doing this to get their phone numbers. The facts don't line up with that, but who has time for facts? They know they're right, and so do the people upvoting. If you point out the facts a handful of confused people might agree, yeah, what you're saying does seem to match reality, but that's no match for the self-assurance of those who haven't checked at all. Much of the time you can get a long way on just lots of people believing you, without any basis in reality. But Mother Nature couldn't care less what you believe, and it's tricky for people who think this way to sense where the line will be until they've stepped over it. Better versions of the (apocryphal) story of King Cnut the Great can get this across. The courtiers pretend to believe their King's claim to command the sea, but the sea of course couldn't give a shit, it's just water, it obeys Mother Nature's laws (in this case Gravity via a fairly circuitous process causes Tides) but not the whims of men.
  - gbear605 5y ago
    In this case, you’re the courtier of King Cnut. I just did the search and the first correct result is the sixth and the first five are incorrect, including the seemingly definitive answer at the top of the search.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Lazy? People who think this way? Mother Nature? Claiming to command the sea? I’m just talking about SEO spam.
zargon 5y ago
When I do that search, neither the knowledge box nor the top 3 results answer the question.
eloisius 5y ago
I almost never even register the knowledge box at the top because I don’t _just_ want the answer, I also want at least a little context and chance to vet the credibility of the answer. In this case it says appropriate internal temperatures for cats, but I’m looking for the kind of answer my vet would give me if I asked if it’s okay to leave my cat on the balcony during the summer. I don’t want to take her temperature. The majority of the links on page one repeat the 105 degree internal tidbit so I could easily filter them as irrelevant, but they are all couched in paragraphs of keyword fluff and narration “many cat owners like to let their cats play outdoors during the summer months but how sunny is too sunny for your furry feline companion blah blah blah”
subandi 5y ago
The knowledge box can be 100% wrong, I reported a case where the shown answer was taken from a pop-quiz site - but it wasn't the actual answer, just the first possible (and diametrically wrong) of multiples choices for a user to click on.
polytely 5y ago
note that you cannot trust the knowledge box, I can't recall a specific example but I've seen some wildly wrong things in those.

by gundmc 5y ago

wutbrodo 5y ago

Yea I'm very curious about this too. Oddly enough, it's not the first time I've heard someone on HN complain about a search query being hard for Google to answer, tried it, and found the answer in the first result (and the next half dozen).

tialaramex 5y ago
Humans are lazy. It would be more effort, after constructing their argument, to actually sit down and test that the argument passes a basic sense test. So, they don't. And most of the people reading (and upvoting to signal "I agree") won't either. Why should they? They agree with it, there's no sense in fact checking things you agree with, right? You can see this in the recent Google 2FA threads too, lots of people were quite sure Google is doing this to get their phone numbers. The facts don't line up with that, but who has time for facts? They know they're right, and so do the people upvoting. If you point out the facts a handful of confused people might agree, yeah, what you're saying does seem to match reality, but that's no match for the self-assurance of those who haven't checked at all. Much of the time you can get a long way on just lots of people believing you, without any basis in reality. But Mother Nature couldn't care less what you believe, and it's tricky for people who think this way to sense where the line will be until they've stepped over it. Better versions of the (apocryphal) story of King Cnut the Great can get this across. The courtiers pretend to believe their King's claim to command the sea, but the sea of course couldn't give a shit, it's just water, it obeys Mother Nature's laws (in this case Gravity via a fairly circuitous process causes Tides) but not the whims of men.
- gbear605 5y ago
  In this case, you’re the courtier of King Cnut. I just did the search and the first correct result is the sixth and the first five are incorrect, including the seemingly definitive answer at the top of the search.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Lazy? People who think this way? Mother Nature? Claiming to command the sea? I’m just talking about SEO spam.

zargon 5y ago

When I do that search, neither the knowledge box nor the top 3 results answer the question.

eloisius 5y ago

I almost never even register the knowledge box at the top because I don’t _just_ want the answer, I also want at least a little context and chance to vet the credibility of the answer. In this case it says appropriate internal temperatures for cats, but I’m looking for the kind of answer my vet would give me if I asked if it’s okay to leave my cat on the balcony during the summer. I don’t want to take her temperature. The majority of the links on page one repeat the 105 degree internal tidbit so I could easily filter them as irrelevant, but they are all couched in paragraphs of keyword fluff and narration “many cat owners like to let their cats play outdoors during the summer months but how sunny is too sunny for your furry feline companion blah blah blah”

subandi 5y ago

The knowledge box can be 100% wrong, I reported a case where the shown answer was taken from a pop-quiz site - but it wasn't the actual answer, just the first possible (and diametrically wrong) of multiples choices for a user to click on.

polytely 5y ago

note that you cannot trust the knowledge box, I can't recall a specific example but I've seen some wildly wrong things in those.