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Google-fu and Scihub-jutsu

gleech.org · 2,531 words · saved by 1 readers

16th March 2024 •  a class on foiling the forces of evil (finding information) •  Confidence: Techniques likely to change substantially by 2026. Finding information is harder than it used to be - and the situation may soon get really bad. This is because the total amount of optimisation in the world is now increasing massively. But you won’t get to pick the objective function. Audience interaction: What fraction of your info comes from the internet? Audience interaction: What fraction of your info comes from Google specifically? But what specific threats do you face as an internet person seeking information? Hard for you to see, because you don’t know how good it used to be. Audience interaction: who has noticed it getting worse? Audience interaction: who has added “ reddit” to their search queries? Audience interaction: who has noticed that exact search with “” doesn’t work anymore? I don’t want to demonize Google unduly. They are as much victim as perpetrator. As well as destroying

Finding information is harder than it used to be - and the situation may soon get really bad. This is because the total amount of optimisation in the world is now increasing massively. But you won’t get to pick the objective function. 1 Audience interaction : What fraction of your info comes from the internet? Most people say 70%. There’s then interesting arguments about things like testimony chains, like about whether a book written in the last 20 years counts, since the author will almost certainly have been totally saturated in web info. Audience interaction : What fraction of your info com

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