Is google putting its thumb on the scale?

[Jimmy Higgins]

It seems like dismal believes Google is a fact checker.

 

[dismal]

Tip: Some of us here are discussing what could cause certain google search results. Any belief that anyone here has said anything even slightly racist seems to be entirely a projection on your part. You may want to have your therapist and add it to the list.

Your denial rings hollow.

This is a bunch of ignorant racists up in arms because some non-human algorithm is spitting out a bunch of black people when that of course is forbidden.

The contortions to deny this are amusing.

I know flinging about accusations of racism is like crack to "progressives" (as we can see by the glorious parade of luminaries entering this thread to fling some more accusations about...) but it's actually rather sad and pathetic and leads to Trump getting elected.

 

[dismal]

My point is that it's also a stretch to call Einstein "an American".

While Google doesn't say "an American" ( I don't think that's a stretch, though), he's both on the list of American scientists and American physicists. He's also on the lists of German scientists German physicists, and German mathematicians, and on the lists of Swiss scientists, Swiss physicists, and Swiss mathematicians.
I don't think that including him on the lists of American scientists or physicists is inaccurate, though including him on the lists of German one might be, since he renounced German citizenship before becoming a scientist, but I think Google more likely just counts all of the citizenships a person ever had.

Ok, it's not that big of a deal to me really. Having read books about the man, I did actually understand he had eventually moved to America when I posted my comment.


oops, I mean:

ZMFOG WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THIS ARE YOU SOME KIND OF ANTISEMITE!!!!![/progressive]

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It seems like dismal believes Google is a fact checker.

Or, alternatively, you could have gone with what I actually said: that I believe Google aspires to provide relevant search results.

Assuming we are supposed to be discussing this. Can I get a ruling?

 

[ZiprHead]

How can someone be a physicist and not also be a mathematician?

 

[Derec]

How can someone be a physicist and not also be a mathematician?

A physicist would certainly have to be proficient in mathematics, but that wouldbnot make him a mathematician necessarily.

 

[untermensche]

Your denial rings hollow.

This is a bunch of ignorant racists up in arms because some non-human algorithm is spitting out a bunch of black people when that of course is forbidden.

The contortions to deny this are amusing.

I know flinging about accusations of racism is like crack to "progressives" (as we can see by the glorious parade of luminaries entering this thread to fling some more accusations about...) but it's actually rather sad and pathetic and leads to Trump getting elected.

Accusations follow behavior like this.

I know this is wrong.

People might begin to think black people are as good as white people.

 

[dismal]

How can someone be a physicist and not also be a mathematician?

Einstein's early (and most important) work relied very heavily on mathematics but he had a buddy from school who helped him with the more advanced math.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Grossmann

On the other hand, if he counts as an American he probably did enough math to count as a mathematician too.

 

[ZiprHead]

I would say a physicist is a mathematician who specializes in physics. Mathematics is the language of physics.

 

[dismal]

I would say a physicist is a mathematician who specializes in physics. Mathematics is the language of physics.

Einstein hailed from a time where it was easier to have theoretical insights no one had had before - and then find a buddy to help you with the math.

 

[beero1000]

I would say that Einstein wasn't a mathematician (or an American, but I can see both sides of the citizenship vs birthplace argument). There are physicists who are also mathematicians (say, Ed WItten), but I wouldn't count Einstein as one of them.

I think we might be getting a little far afield from my point though...

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[dismal]

I would say that Einstein wasn't a mathematician (or an American, but I can see both sides of the citizenship vs birthplace argument). There are physicists who are also mathematicians (say, Ed WItten), but I wouldn't count Einstein as one of them.

I think we might be getting a little far afield from my point though...

Well, the important thing is you've outed yourself as a racist for discussing this.

 

[LordKiran]

I would say that Einstein wasn't a mathematician (or an American, but I can see both sides of the citizenship vs birthplace argument). There are physicists who are also mathematicians (say, Ed WItten), but I wouldn't count Einstein as one of them.

I think we might be getting a little far afield from my point though...

Well, the important thing is you've outed yourself as a racist for discussing this.

I think you're confusing this thread (and one of the people in it) for another about the meaning of 'Thugs'.

 

[bilby]

Let's just be clear here. The complaint that no one is explicitly stating is that Google's top image bar is returning too many black people to the query "American Inventors". Do I have that right? It isn't that the results return people who aren't American inventors?

Screw that then, that should be a lower priority than fixing the query "American Mathematicians" returning Albert Einstein.

GET IT RIGHT GOOGLE!

But Einstein was an American mathematician, from October 1, 1940 until his death in 1955.

He was also a German, a Swiss, and a Physicist, but it's perfectly reasonable to describe him as an American and/or as a Mathematician.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Einstein is also listed if you google "English mathematicians", or "English physicists", or "English scientists". Newton doesn't make the any of the lists, though (if you search for "British mathematicians", etc., Einstein is not listed).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes. You should be able to replicate it. In fact, I can do the searches over and over in various orders and the results are constant, namely that "american inventors" yields a virtually identical string of inventors (first 7 all black) as "black inventors" but completely different set from "North American Inventors" where the first 7 listed are white. Even searching "white American Inventors" before searching "American Inventors" gets you the same as search "black inventors", so it has nothing to do with cache issue.

Right. That does look odd.
Try "USA Inventors" and you'll see a very much whiter return.
"American" is often preceded by "Black" or African". "USA"... not so much. So Google assumes...

I doubt Google is assuming anything here. Almost everything Google is accused of in it's searches is really a case of a mirror.

As you say, "American" is generally proceeded by another term--but you missed "Native" as another common prefix. (There probably aren't enough Native American inventors to cloud the results, though.)

If the actual web page says "African American Inventor" and you search from "American Inventor" that's a match--Google doesn't care about extra words. If you search for "USA Inventor" it doesn't match, that page goes way down in the rankings (not completely off as once it runs out of complete matches it starts offering up partial matches.) Likewise, for "North American Inventor", it doesn't match and goes way down in the list.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Right. That does look odd.
Try "USA Inventors" and you'll see a very much whiter return.
"American" is often preceded by "Black" or African". "USA"... not so much. So Google assumes...

No, see my first post. It cannot have anything to do with the common use of "black american". First, the vast vast majority of the time that "american" is searched has nothing to do "black" or "african". So no semantic system would presume that connection.
Also, if your explanation that was true, the other searches with "american" would skew black and they do not. For example "famous american women" and "famous american criminals" returns mostly whites as they should based upon a semantic space, while your theory predicts it would return mostly black Americans.

BTW, even your recommended "USA Inventors" returns 6 blacks out of the first 11, which is about 4 times greater than any semantic based system would produce.

You fail to understand how Google works.

"Famous American women" would not be nearly as biased because the placement of the words matters. While it would match "famous African American women" (assuming you didn't use quotes) that would be pushed down in the rankings because of the extra word in it. (If you used quotes there would be no tainting whatsoever as "famous African American women" wouldn't be a match at all.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unintentional AI meddling sounds like a passive aggressive way of saying 'Google has their thumb on the scale'. How can anything meddle unintentionally?

"Google has their thumb on the scale" implies it is an intentional act of Google. I see no particular benefit to Google from doing this, if anything it tarnishes the Google brand and reputation for search reliability.

It seems far more likely that it's a rogue programmer rerouting searches of "american inventors" to "african american inventors" to troll, or a concerted effort on someone's part to overwhelm the AI with google bombing (like when they got searches for "miserable failure" to come up with links to "George Bush").

Yeah, this could be googlebombing or it could be someone bombing their search system (I don't know of a term for this, it's not the same as googlebombing.) Remember the flap from years ago when "French military victories" didn't return any matches and Google suggested "French military defeats"? Google learns from people's failed searches (they get a page of results, click no links and then enter another search) to try to pick out synonyms and spelling corrections. Usually this works quite well (consider how we tend to use Google as a spellchecker!) but sometimes it gets it wrong. As with googlebombing it is also subject to manipulation.

I suspect it's simply a result of people trying to promote the accomplishments of African Americans, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I ponder how hard it is to screw with the algorithm as accused. Google decides to weight a very particular search phrase with African American inventors. I'm curious how you mess with the algorithm to do that. Is there a wild card hidden in there for "American inventors" that tells Google to 'black it up'?

Or is it more likely that people look up 'famous' (read not famous) African American inventors with a generic search like "African American inventors" because other than ... well, there aren't many known by name, where as white inventors are searched for by name because umm... they are you... famous, i.e. Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, Nikolai Tesla (if you take the majority of his life being spent in the US as making him American).

Yeah, or because people generally don't care too much whether an inventor was American or not.

They're not looking for "American Inventors", they're looking for the inventor of a specific thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How can someone be a physicist and not also be a mathematician?

Very different things.

You need to know a decent amount of math to handle physics but the math a physicist is concerned with is child's play to a mathematician.