Given the personalization algorithms deployed by the major search engines, its hard *not* to see the search engine as a participant in browsing.
. . . bob > On Jun 30, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> wrote: > > "There's only 1 reason to interfere/intervene in the milieu around you, that > is to participate. " > > Is a search engine a participant in people's web browsing? One can define > it that way, but that's not the usual business model. The usual model is > to watch and learn, and sell their observations in some way to a third party. > Most science is about teasing apart causation in as much detail as possible > in a controlled setting. And engineering is about putting it back together > in useful ways. Not everything can be understood or controlled that way, but > the parts and pieces often can be. That's a fine thing to do, just not the > only thing to do. > > I have no problem with activism. If there's no knowledge about how the > parts and pieces of a social system work, nor experience with similar system > dynamics behave, then, by all means dive in to the blood and muck, if that > sort of thing is fun for you. But if I'm going to spend time debating, say, > potential legislation, with people that don't share my particular > preferences, then it is a good if we negotiate a protocol for identifying > good and bad arguments, so we don't just talk about our preferences all day. > The failure to find and maintain such a protocol means the activity becomes > political, and is no longer a good faith discussion, but a rivalry. The > fewer mutually accepted rules -- the nastier or more pointless the discussion > may become. And the faster it gets nasty, the sooner we can found out who > the big dog is, because that's all that is at stake. > > And it is not about objective reality, it's about precision of terminology. > What is nailed down sufficiently-well for an analysis about the logical > consequences of the nailed-down thing or system of things. It's not clear > what this group of people is willing to nail down, even temporarily. Just > like it isn't clear what climate change deniers are willing to nail down. > It is bad faith, not skepticism, when people put their monetary or > ideological goals ahead of the evidence, and then claim they are interested > in the evidence. That's what I mean by corruption. > > Marcus > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
