jimrandomh comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 15 March 2012 01:35:17AM 21 points [-]

Google's autocomplete has a problem, which has produced controversy in other contexts: when people want to know whether X is trustworthy, the most informative search they can make is "X scam". Generally speaking, they'll find no results and that will be reassuring. Unfortunately, Google remembers those searches, and presents them later as suggestions - implying that there might be results behind the query. Once the "X scam" link starts showing up in the autocomplete, people who weren't really suspicious of X click on it, so it stays there.

Comment author: beoShaffer 15 March 2012 02:42:56AM 4 points [-]

Personal anecdote warning. I semi-routinely google the phrase "X cult" when looking into organizations.

Comment author: CarlShulman 15 March 2012 03:02:46AM 10 points [-]

Does this ever work?

Comment author: beoShaffer 15 March 2012 04:07:12PM *  3 points [-]

I think so, but it's hard to say. I look into organizations infrequently enough that semi-routinely leaves me a very small sample size. The one organization that had prominent cult results(not going to name it for obvious reasons) does have several worrying qualities. And they seem related to why it was called a cult. -edit minor grammar/style fix

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 03:04:05AM 1 point [-]

Thanks; I updated the post to reflect this.