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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 answe

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.

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.