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The only way for search engines to get better is to model the mental state of the person making the query. If you were asking another human being to help you wi
by cromwellian 13y ago
The only way for search engines to get better is to model the mental state of the person making the query. If you were asking another human being to help you with a query, they'd take into account your mental state, conversation state, and what they know about you and the situation, to narrow down and disambiguate the query. When people can't do this kind of social modeling, we perceive them as autistic.
If you could fit an entire Google data center into your mobile phone, maybe this kind of digital personal assistant could be taken offline, but for the current state of technology, big data requires the cloud. Even in the 24th Century, the Enterprise Computer is a centralized data store which tracks queries made from com-badges.
- username223 13y ago> The only way for search engines to get better is to model the mental state of the person making the query. No. Another way is to make their behavior more predictable. If I type "Chinese" into the search box, Google may tell me about the Chinese language, or it may send me some ads for local take-out places. Either it guesses which I want, or it makes it easy for me to specify what I'm asking; I know which I'd prefer.
- cromwellian 13y agoThat would be frustrating for the user if the previous few queries were about learning foreign languages, or about the Great Wall. If I'm having a conversation with you about learning foreign languages, and then I ask you about Chinese, I expect you to know I'm not talking about food. Having to overspecify a query that could be determined from context is particularly annoying on mobile, or via voice.