The Ministry of Truth?

There was an article in New Scientist about Google wanting to rank websites by truthfulness instead of popularity (which is sort of how it works now, although in truth it is a tad more complicated than that.  Keep in mind Google recently announced they also want to rank websites based on mobile friendliness as well.

First, in the interest of truth, New Scientist is a non-peer reviewed science weekly published in the UK.  Second, Google is attempting to address a real issue... if you're searching for truth a search engine isn't necessarily the way to go.  There is an entire industry based on boosting websites rankings (Search Engine Optimization) in results; search engine results are more about popularity than anything else.  Do a search for vaccines and pro and con websites seem to get equal billing.  Very democratic but then democracy also has nothing to do with truth.

The described proposal is to cross-reference web site information against the Google Knowledge Vault to fact check information to influence rankings.  This is pretty cut and dried when it comes to how many inches are in a meter, somewhat less so when you're talking about whether a politician cheated on his wife. So the question the becomes who gets to decide what is true and what is not?

There is no doubt that search engines serve as powerful tool in the shaping of public opinion, what people see when Googling Scott Walker or Elizabeth Warren can influence millions and possibly the outcome of elections.  This is no different than the power once wielded by the great newspapers of the past, but then theoretically there was a journalistic code of ethics, are programmers and software geeks bound under any such code? Should they be?

There are dangers and benefits both present in such a proposal, what do you think?

Be of Good Cheer!

Truth Never Dies...

We spend our time blogging about how horrible things are, and they are. We get all wound up and going on an anti-Obama thread, and then some realist goes and blows it by asking, "what can we do about it? How can we fix it?" And that's when the dark pessimism sets in. How do you get the powerful to relinquish their power and return it the people, the rightful owners?

Fausty, a UK libertarian blogger, wrote a nice blog post awhile back entitled simply, Truth. In it, he puts the impending great global collapse in an optimistic light, rejoicing that the rotten edifice of lies will groan under it's own weight and eventually come tumbling down.

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."  -- Winston Churchill

Fausty celebrates truth, the increasing lack of which is discrediting the official commentariate and the lying liars in the political and business class that they report upon. We proles have educated ourselves, he notes, and we've learned much over these past few years, so much so that we smell their stinking lies as soon as they are unpacked, we no longer uncritically accept the propaganda.

Even as we get smarter, the mouthpieces have gotten more brazen with their tenuous twaddle, straining credulity to the point of breaking...

In 2008, for instance, the authors of most of the top-rated comments in national newspapers like the Telegraph would have been dismissed as "swivel-eyed loonies", had they expressed then what they express now, with such passion.

He's right.  We're caught in a slow-rolling avalanche of debt and despair, but they continue spinning fairy tales with a determined seriousness that sometimes has me thinking that maybe they really believe what they're saying.  Man's capacity for self-delusion is stunning.


Real Hope and Change:  Progressivism's End

The global progressive money-manipulating, freedom-stealing scheme is at its end, yet the practitioners continue spinning tarradiddle-stuffed fantasies to buy themselves more time. But like a losing gambler with a cocaine jones, they can only stave off the inevitable for so long. The jig will be up.

This is the part of Fausty's post that completely flipped my thinking around, wiped away my pessimism and gave me hope:

The funny thing about truth is that once it's out, there's no way of stuffing it back into its box. Once born, it lives and nourishes.

Lies and spin, on the other hand, must be constantly tended and patched up. To achieve that aim requires an enormous expenditure of effort and resources. The greater the lie, the greater the stakes and the harder the fall for its proponents. The web of lies eventually destroys itself via its own mass of contradictions; it ceases to make sense. Once born, the big lie ensures its own destruction.

That's where we are now - truth gaining on the lie. People are waking up in ever greater numbers.

Yes. The truth will out. Humankind has survived for millennia, and Americans in particular have a gift for reinventing ourselves. To quote a song from the wonderful musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, "Up from the ashes grow the roses of success."