Give it a google

[-]Dagon5y170

Note that even in the failure case (success rate of AirBNB hosts in Las Vegas), you still learned something - that it's not a simple enough question for easy answers.

SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully. This is the only reason I can think that your main point (you'll learn something valuable in a very short time on almost any topic, so use this technique early and often) would not apply to most of us.

[-]Adam Zerner5y80

Note that even in the failure case (success rate of AirBNB hosts in Las Vegas), you still learned something - that it's not a simple enough question for easy answers.

True! A noteworthy consolation prize.

SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully. This is the only reason I can think that your main point (you'll learn something valuable in a very short time on almost any topic, so use this technique early and often) would not apply to most of us.

Yeah, that does sound plausible and it hadn't occurred to me. Makes me think back to The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think.

[-]pjeby5y70

SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully.

Interesting. I thought it was because Google progressively dumbed down their search and optimized it for finding things that most people wanted to find, but not what I wanted to find. But I suppose there's no reason it can't be both causes.

[-]magfrump5y30

it's not a simple enough question for easy answers.

It's also plausible to me that it requires enough intersections (owns a house; rents the house out on AirBnB; in a single metro area; measures success in a reasonable way; writes about it on the internet) gets small enough that there are no results.

Looking for general advice (how to succeed as an AirBNB host) might give a model that's easy to fill in, like "you will succeed if the location is X appealing and there are f(X) listings or fewer."

That still seems like a pretty easy answer to me, but it could only be found with slightly better Google Fu.

I think that leads to a need for heuristics on how hard to try rephrasing things or when to give up quickly rather than getting sucked down a two day wiki walk rabbit hole.

[-]supposedlyfun5y30

SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully.

So true and breaks my heart. I can feel the increased Googling difficulty, in my bones, over the last 18 months or so. Tragedy of the commons strikes again.

When the Internet was young, I would go straight to cnet.com for device reviews. When Google got good, I would go to Google. Now, I go straight to cnet.com for device reviews.

[-]Adam Zerner5y30

Interesting to hear. I've always had a vague sense that search results aren't that great in general but haven't noticed a change over time. Could easily just be me though.

[-]supposedlyfun5y20

It could be me, too. I used to have to think about SEO when I was in charge of a previous employer's minimal online marketing/blogging, so plenty of this sensation could be confirmation bias (tendency to blame bad Google results on SEO rather than Google, whose product it is). But I think I can spot a page that was generated primarily through SEO--probably with a better accuracy rate than me differentiating between GPT-3 and Wittgenstein.

[-]ChristianKl5y20

It's worth noting that Google isn't the only search engine around. There are times when Google seems to have editoral decisions to show certain results and Yandex as an independent search engine gives you better results.

[-]digital_carver5y160

An addendum to this, perhaps as a next level, is to give it a non-google search.

DuckDuckGo helps me avoid the SEO-driven spammy results more easily than with Google, which is particularly apparent when searching about products, or terms that could be construed as product-related. My hypothesis is that the SEOptimizers have learnt the specifics of what Google's algorithm looks for and so have refined techniques to get their less-deserving clients rise to the top, and (thankfully) those techniques don't work with whatever alternate algorithms DDG uses. (To be clear, it's not a strict "DDG is always better than Google" thing, rather that they're surprisingly good at complementing each other, one being good when the other gives weak results.)
Million short is useful when I'm searching for something that's had a lot of media attention, but I want to avoid the mainstream media pieces on it. It excludes the top 100/1000/.../million websites on the Internet (as ranked by Alexa) from its results, which is sometimes exactly what you want.

For the sake of completion, some other alternate search engines are Metager , Qwant , and Mojeek (all of which claim privacy as their primary benefit). And I love me a bit of wiby when I'm feeling nostalgic about the old, simpler, 90s Internet of plain personal pages, and want to experience some of that again.

[-]Elizabeth5y30

I am delighted to learn about million short

[-]NancyLebovitz5y100

Have a theory about why people can be reluctant to google. It may be excessively bitter.

To a large extent (especially for neurotypical people, though it seems to depend on the subject) learning is an unconscious process. The result is that people don't know how they learned and don't know how to teach.

What's more, people are apt to want to just get things done and also apt to have punishment as an easy strategy. So they shame people for not knowing what they are supposed to have picked up somehow.

This means that googling indicates that you didn't know something already, so googling means getting past an emotional barrier.

That's certainly not the only thing that's going on. I think asking questions as socializing is a thing, and so is not realizing the amazing scope of what can be searched for. And for some of us, just being old enough that the habit of googling didn't get developed.

I'm a frequent and pretty habitual googler, and I've mostly stopped calling it "living in the future".

[-]Adam Zerner5y30

Meta: Upvoted to counteract downvotes.

1) This strikes me as an honest attempt at world modeling. 2) I don't share the viewpoint but I think it meets the bar of being plausibly true. 3) Given the intended content, I don't think it was written in an excessively bitter tone at all.

Using the criteria of "I want to see more/less of this" that the FAQ recommends for voting, I want to see more comments like this. I worry that currently, people are fearful about coming across as too bitter and it gets in the way of honest attempts at world modeling.

[-]bfinn5y80

I remember the first time I realised the full potential of web searching. In the late 1990s I met a guy on a course who was a specialist consultant on software testing. A few months later we realised this would be useful for my company, but all I knew was the guy’s name. We racked our brains as to how to contact him - if I’d known where he lived we would have gone to the library and looked him up in the relevant city’s phone book!

Then someone had the bright idea to try typing his name into a search engine (probably Alta Vista back then.) Lo and behold, up came some rudimentary web page he’d created for himself, including his email address. We sent an email to it, and within hours got a reply saying he was in Texas at the moment (we were in London) but would be back in the UK soon and would get in touch.

This was miraculous. We could now track down and communicate with someone anywhere in the world, given only their name.

[-]Adam Zerner5y20

Wow, that's a great story.

[-]mingyuan5y80

Hello to all my housemates reading this, 30% of the time when you ask me a question this is the answer :P

[-]Aaron Bergman5y60

I'm frequently surprised that my parents will spend effort on something or ask another person for help without Googling; both are well-educated and comfortable using the internet, but it just isn't their first instinct like it is with me. Perhaps there's a correlation with age, where older people weren't trained to use Google as a first-line troubleshooting device.

[-]effective-egret5y30

I've had similar experiences with my parents and some of my colleagues. Often people will ask me how to do something related to work that can usually be solved with a quick google. When I discussed with my partner about this, she said she could think of a few reasons why it maybe better to ask people around you first.

1. Since people around you are in the same environment as you, you can usually get a lot more specific advice.

2. It's possible that they are asking you questions because they enjoy interacting with you and want to use it as an opportunity to learn something and interact with you at the same time.

[-]niplav5y60

Another datapoint: After googling "How to stop biting my nails", reading a few of the results and trying out one of the instructions, I stopped biting my nails.

[-]Adam Zerner4y50Review for 2020 Review

Thinking about this now, not to sound self-congratulatory, but I'm impressed with the quantity and quality of examples I was able to stumble across. I'm a huge believer in examples and concreteness. Most of the time I'm unhappy with the posts I write in large part because I'm unhappy with the quantity and quality of examples. But it's just so hard to think of good ones, and posting seems better than not posting, so I post.

I still endorse this post pretty strongly. Giving it a google strikes me as something that is still significantly underutilized. By the population at large certainly, but even for rationalists too. Maybe "significantly" is too strong a statement for rationalists actually. I'm not sure.

Something I really wish I talked about in the post is the idea that humans are not automatically strategic. I think that is probably the root of the problem.

[-]Brendan Long5y30

Related to dishwashers, something I learned about recently is that having detergrent in the pre-wash step makes a big difference, but a lot of people don't know this because of the detergent packs (which don't fit in the prewash compartment). My dishwasher doesn't even have a prewash compartment, but it does work better if I throw another tablet in the bottom of the tub (although it would be more efficient to get powdered detergent).

https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04

[-]Richard_Kennaway5y20

Now try telling them that the entire library fits inside of this little machine. And that the machine fits inside their pocket! Madness!

Madness indeed!

[-]pseud5y10

In general, bet sizing is an incredibly complex topic, but all you have to know is to size your bet between 1/2 and the full size of the pot.

This isn't correct. There are frequently occurring situations in NLHE where betting much less than half the pot or much greater than the full pot is the correct move. This is true both by theoretically-optimal strategy[1] and by practically-optimal strategy[2].

This can be used as a data-point when considering the epistemic status of things learned while doing a "quick Google".

[1] i.e. the Nash equilibrium strategy

[2] i.e. the strategy that makes the most money against real, human opponents

[-]Adam Zerner5y20

Yes, but I think "bet half to full pot" is the 80/20 answer, and the point of "give it a google" is often to get that 80/20 answer.

[-]pseud5y20

I assume you mean by "80/20 answer" that betting between half and full pot will be the correct sizing approximately 80% of the time one bets. I think the actual percentage is significantly lower than 80%.

[-]Adam Zerner5y20

Maybe, but "incorrect" is a spectrum. Sometimes it's a close second. Especially for someone who is googling for "basics of poker strategy".

[-]pseud5y10

I think a quick web-search is useful. Having read something is an improvement over having no knowledge, and it's ridiculous that people don't do a quick web-search more often. I'm not disagreeing with your point that Googling is better than doing nothing to learn at all.

My first comment just pointed out that what you learn may be quite inaccurate or out-of-date.

Now, I'll go further and suggest that what you learn may be purposefully misleading. When it comes to politically or financially sensitive topics (and a searcher won't always realise when a topic is such) those supplying the information you access may be influenced by (or be one and the same as) those with an interest in you receiving incorrect information.

To continue the poker example, a good poker player is unlikely to give away information for free. Therefore the information you read after a quick google is unlikely to be particularly good (there are exceptions: some players will give out some minimal information in the hope that readers will then pay money for more information).

For a variety of reasons, there is plenty of fine information about poker strategy on the internet, and plenty of the most basic stuff (which is, after all, what the web-search we are discussing is about) is free. For other topics, we won't have so much luck.

When searching the web, sometimes we leave empty handed, sometimes we leave worse than we started.

But mostly we learn something. I'm not disagreeing with the point of your post, just adding my own thoughts.

[-]Austin Chen5y10

Great article. I think there's a lot of day-to-day things that we just bumble through in our lives, applying the algorithm of "deal with it the way I dealt with it the very first time I thought about it". But a 2-minute Google crawl can improve your algorithm immensely. 3 examples that I Googled after reading this article:

Can you eat the leaves on a strawberry? I'd habitually plucked and thrown them away my whole life, but Google says that I can just eat the whole berry!
Should you pop a zit? I'd always done so assuming it would speed up getting over the zit, but Google says letting it heal naturally is overall faster
What's the correct way of wiping poop? I'd barely ever thought about this daily behavior, doing probably the same motion I've done since I was a kid ("fold 3 sheets, wipe once, throw away"), but Google suggests installing a bidet; and failing that, adding a bit of the water to the sheets.

[-]TwelvePlusOne5y-30

GIYF!

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

149

149

149

Poker

Health

Shopping

Tennis

Restaurants

Dishwasher

Cooking

Covid

Bike rides in nature

Airbnb

Conclusion