Creationists Manipulating Search Results

reallocate writes: It looks like some Creationists are manipulating search results to ensure websites pushing religion are appearing in response to queries about science. Ask Google "What happened to the dinosaurs?" and you'll see links to Creationist sites right at the top. (And, right now, several hits to sites taking note of it.) Google has a feedback link waiting for you to use it.

Comments

"What happened to the dinosaurs?"

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is that they're still here, SEO-ing the search results.

Dinosaurs, the ones related to lizards, can be traced through the fossil record to a number of extinction events.

Dinosaurs, the ones related to creationism, can be traced through the search results to the pages they've tweaked for rankings.

Re:"What happened to the dinosaurs?"

[ArmoredDragon]

Dinosaurs, the ones related to lizards

Uhh...wut? Just because they looked like overgrown lizards in Jurassic Park, doesn't mean they're related to lizards.

Here's Jur ass has had it Park's raptor:

http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/...

Here's what a raptor probably looked like IRL:

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

Now what modern animal does the likely IRL version of a raptor resemble? If you guessed lizard, then I'm sorry.

Alternate story title

[amicusNYCL]

"Everyone trying to manipulate search results"

Re:Alternate story title

[rmdingler]

Amazing isn't it ? It's like watching people covered in shit, sniffing around looking for something that stinks.

Damn. I don't get that...

Is that a focking premium cable channel?

Re:Alternate story title

[Anonymous Coward]

SEO/Marketing Asshole here:

This is slightly different than your typical manipulation in that Google is showing the result outside of the typical organic results. Google has been pulling in 'facts' under its Knowledge Graph program to return 'factual' information for common search terms (a common example is the generic name for name-brand medicine).

Having read the patent that describes the Knowledge Graph they're suppose to validate any 'facts' with Wikipedia and other trusted data sources before returning those 'facts' in the Knowledge Graph.

This is a serious fuck up on Google's part if jerks like Ham can get his stupid book and obviously-wrong facts into the Knowledge Graph. In reality the story should be about Google getting played not more focus on made-up bullshit that people made up to rectify the bible with science.

Re:Alternate story title

[rmdingler]

No. I did not get the same result.

It occurs to me you knew that and got me to search there anyway, you clever bastard.

1)You can't wash your eyes with soap.

2)You can't count your hair.

3)You can't breathe through your nose with your tongue out.

4)You just tried number 3.

6)When you tried #3, you realized it's it's possible, you just look like a dog.

7) You're smiling right now because you know you were fooled.

8) you skipped number 5.

9)You just checked to see if there was a #5.

Comedy gold

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

After the Flood, around 4,300 years ago, the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and manâ(TM)s activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out. Why the big mystery about dinosaurs?

C'mon guys. you just can't make that kind of shit up. There isn't enough weed on the planet for that. It must be divinely inspired.

Re:Why is this dribble on the front page?

[PopeRatzo]

What is so hard to believe that we created the "god" myth? It's been done many times over the ages, so we have more proof of that than the other way around.

Yes, but all those other people who created gods were just making them up, whereas the god we made up is the Real Thing!

Re:Why is this dribble on the front page?

[PopeRatzo]

Seen any suspicious rainbows lately? This might fill you in on what the governmen is doing I hear it targets Christians:

Actually, there was a big stunning double rainbow over Dublin last week as the people of Ireland rejected the teachings of the Church and approved same sex marriage.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...

Texas, on the other hand, outlawed gay marriage and got deadly floods and tornadoes.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/26/...

Coincidence?

Re:Why is this dribble on the front page?

[rgbatduke]

The real problem is, in an infinite, probabilistic universe, even the smallest chance that God exists is a certainty. Of course, there is no shortage of conflicting, self defeating pseudo-science airheads that will believe anything else rather than making an attempt at living a Christian life with a little less ego.

I do not think that this "probability" means what you think it means.

I will try to tell you. No, it is too much, I will sum up.

Suppose you have an infinite barrel of marbles, 10% of which are green. Then the probability of drawing a green marble is (wait for it) 10%. This isn't a particularly small probability. If there is a single green marble, somewhere in the barrel, the probability of drawing it is asymptotically zero, statistically neglible, less than the chance of winning the lottery, and winning the lottery in one try is far from certain. If the probability that God exists is 1 x 10^{-403} in an infinite, probabilistic Universe, then the probability that God exists is (gasp) 1 x 10^{-403}. This is most definitely not certainty. Certainty isn't the "smallest chance", it is probability 1. It is the largest (possible) chance.

Even 1 x 10^{-403} isn't in the same ballpark as "the smallest chance", by the way. It is enormous compared to the probability that all of the air molecules in the room I'm in will suddenly (by pure chance) happen to bounce in just the right way to form a big blob of liquid air in the middle of the room and leave me gasping in a vacuum as air molecules outside of the house by strange chance miss all of the myriad pathways into the room. Which in turn is unbelievably, awesomely hugely enormous compared to the probability that the infinite, probabilistic Universe is in fact determined and known at the subatomic level by a perfectly organized, uncreated, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent superbeing that created it all by pure magic from nothing.

Oh, wait -- that's a contradiction, isn't it! If the Universe is infinite and probabilistic, then it can't be infinite and deterministic and hence known by an omniscient, omnipotent being, because there is nothing less probabilistic than something that is completely determined by an all powerful, all-knowing being. So your premises directly contradict your conclusion, in addition to demonstrating nothing more than the simple fact that you have absolutely no clue about probability distributions on continuous spaces.

Ego aside, you might want to contemplate learning something about probability and reason itself before you argue in favor of something empirically, logically, and statistically indefensible. God (as a concept) is all three.

rgb

Genesis does what paleontologydon't

[tepples]

DuckDuckGo gave its top result to a fruitcake link saying "Genesis can explain everything...."

Phil Collins or Sega?

Re:Why is this dribble on the front page?

[SoftwareArtist]

If you have an infinite barrel of marbles, you can't make a statement such as "10% of them are green".

You absolutely can. Let me give a simple example: the positive integers. That is, unquestionably, an infinite set. And it also is quite clear that precisely 10% of them are divisible by 10.

Mathematically, here's how we would describe it. Consider the set of integers from 1 to N. Let x(N) be the fraction of members in that set that are divisible by 10. It's quite easy to show that as N->infinity, x(N)->1/10.