Thinking back, I only started searching for “rationality” after I’d already come across LW and was trying to figure out how I felt about hanging around with people who showed such an intense focus on that word.
It’s non-obvious, to say it mildly, that the type of person who would be an asset here are people who go around Googling “rationality” in the first place.
Being the first hit for “religion evidence” or “nutrition evidence” or similar searches could well be a more desirable optimization.
I checked on google.com and google.co.uk, both with me logged in and logged out, and it was the second hit each time. Also using ‘private browsing’ to make sure no cookies were still trying to personalize the results. Still, different national flavors of Google will probably give slightly different results—more so if it’s personalizing the search results for you.
Actually, I just signed out and it’s STILL second result. It used to be third result when signed in, seventh result when signed out. (It’s the first result when I’m signed in)
Fifth result for me.
Rational people should be wary of unreflective reliance on either Google result rankings or Google result counts. :)
On the internet, most people use search engines to find things. If you’re trying to grow a community, Google matters.
Thinking back, I only started searching for “rationality” after I’d already come across LW and was trying to figure out how I felt about hanging around with people who showed such an intense focus on that word.
It’s non-obvious, to say it mildly, that the type of person who would be an asset here are people who go around Googling “rationality” in the first place.
Being the first hit for “religion evidence” or “nutrition evidence” or similar searches could well be a more desirable optimization.
I checked on google.com and google.co.uk, both with me logged in and logged out, and it was the second hit each time. Also using ‘private browsing’ to make sure no cookies were still trying to personalize the results. Still, different national flavors of Google will probably give slightly different results—more so if it’s personalizing the search results for you.
Actually, I just signed out and it’s STILL second result. It used to be third result when signed in, seventh result when signed out. (It’s the first result when I’m signed in)