The Mushiness of the Mushy Middle, Quantified

Benweingarten.com ^ | 2015-08-20 | Ben Weingarten

[fredericbastiat1]

From Politico's article on how Google can use its search algorithm to control what people see during elections, and thereby manipulate their outcomes:

Republicans, take note: A manipulation on Hillary Clinton’s behalf would be particularly easy for Google to carry out, because of all the demographic groups we have looked at so far, no group has been more vulnerable to SEME—in other words, so blindly trusting of search rankings—than moderate Republicans. In a national experiment we conducted in the United States, we were able to shift a whopping 80 percent of moderate Republicans in any direction we chose just by varying search rankings.

Of course as J. Christian Adams points out in a must-read piece on the Left's Catalist voter database, Democrats did not seek (or require) moderate support in order to win the presidency in 2012.

[Objective Scrutator]

Liberals have been known to Google bomb endlessly to get the results they want. A few of them are smart enough to automate the process, but many of them do it with nothing else other than their keyboards and all the time they have by being unemployed. “Miserable failure” returning George W. Bush was an example of Google bombing.

This is a good example of why Dogpile should be used as your primary search engine over Google; while it still utilizes search engines run by Leftists, the algorithms make it much more difficult for Leftist sources to exclusively appear as the search results.

[DustyBowl]

Who’s afraid of the 35 billion dollar eigenvector? I’ve got a folder with maybe 70 different alternatives to the big one? That article is a little bug eyed. No regulation is necessary. Given the vastness of opinion out there? This is why we have a democratic republic and electoral college actually. But, keywords set the direction in the first place. Without that initial “bias” there’d be no telling what meaningful result might be returned. Oh the horror of mathematics. Who must now shield the public from the reality of mathematics? Probably the same people who must shield the public from the gritty details of the actual study. This is not to say it is a picnic out here...