Our working hypothesis is:

Google is evil (and becoming more so).

NOTE: We are not saying Google is evil.

As we said, this is a hypothesis, which Google defines as: “A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.”

So, if you want to make sure Google isn’t evil (or if it is, it doesn’t become more so) then someone (not us) should not look for supporting evidence that it is good but rather even the smallest limited evidence that it is evil.

Then someone (not us) might want to see if the evidence supports the hypothesis. If there is enough evidence then someone (not us) might elevate the hypothesis to a thesis, which Google defines as: a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved.

If someone (not us) wants to do something about the thesis that Google is evil and becoming more so, then they might want to make an indictment, which Google defines as: a formal charge or accusation of a serious crime.

Then  someone (not us) might want to prosecute the indictment, where prosecute is defined by Google as: continue with (a course of action) with a view to its completion.

In short, if the hypothesis ‘Google is evil (and becoming more so)’ is to be proven false then you must look for evidence that it is evil and then not find any. This requires vigilance and work, not faith. Google can be good today and become evil tomorrow while we aren’t looking. Or, perhaps they are so amazingly evil that they are keeping the evidence from you.

PLEASE READ THE REST OF THIS STORY IF IT IS THE FIRST TIME YOU’RE VISING THIS SITE.

Once you (not us) finds evidence that you can’t refute then you’ll have to form a thesis, and if it holds water make an indictment and prosecute to its conclusion, defined as Google not being evil (or at least stops getting more so).

We don’t want to do any of that work and we’re not going to. We want to continue to believe Google is good. In short, we want to crowd source the effort it will take if any of us are to continue to use Google on faith that it is not evil.

Of course, if  Google is evil then we are in trouble because, at a minimum, Google can change what Google says are the true meaning of the words we use, in which case we’ll look like fools and everyone who might be able to get something done will go back to collecting evidence that our supreme leader du jour is a liar (as if there isn’t enough already). That will be used to further jam the culture. 

But Google, would never do that, would they? (Perhaps that is another hypothesis worth assuming until proven otherwise.)

So here is the deal.

If you have any evidence that Google is evil then tell us by submitting it to us. We will evaluate it and then post it if it is interesting. We will do nothing to verify authenticity or the source. You could play a game with us and totally fabricate something that looks like evidence and we might be fooled into publishing it. You should then take as a working hypothesis that everything you see here is a joke.

Google, this applies to you too. If you don’t like what you see here then prove it isn’t true and get people to believe it. We won’t help you with that, you have vastly bigger resources than we do.

Besides, if something you are doing is evil, and you know it, you don’t need to uncover evidence. You’ll probably want to hide the evidence, but we’re hoping you’d rather stop doing the evil thing. If you want to be good instead of stop being evil, you might put your self at risk of blow-back and go public with the evil thing you are doing, prosecute the perpetrators, and thank the citizens who took the effort to discover your evilness. They will appreciate and be encouraged to do more of it. The rest of us will thank you too.

Also, remember that most evil is done by neutral people who think they are good . They “think” they are being good, but they are merely being nice and they aren’t thinking at all. Use D&D Alignment definitions of good, neutral and evil here.

While you are at it, Google “banality of evil” and then reflect on the fact that because Google’s algos are neither human nor capable of thinking (or so Google claims and we hope). What’s more, they are designed to be neutral, not good, and that makes them incredibly ridiculously super-banal, which would be funny if they lacked power.

Also, if you look around your industry, I bet you’ll discover the carbon-based life forms with the money and power speak as if they are neutral-neutral when they act like they imagine they are chaotic-good and that is a recipe for banal-chaotic-evil. (If this doesn’t make sense, ask some who plays D&D and they will clue you in.)

We do not accept comments on our posts; they are too hard to administer.

Only if you have real evidence that Google is evil, please send a short message telling us about it. If it all fits as clear text into your message than do it. If it is big then give the URL where it can be found. Note: all links will be stripped from what we post; readers can cut and paste text into their browser. We are doing that to keep people from fabricating phony messages to game Google with inbound links to their website.

Even if you have a wonderfully convincing case that can be made with existing evidence, we don’t care. Submit to some media with an audience. You’ll get wider coverage. We might decide to shut down intentionally or because we’ve been attacked, so this is not the place for any of that.

You can use the annotation tool at hypothes.is to annotate anything on this website. You can even annotate other people’s annotations. We can’t stop you. In fact nobody can stop you from using their tool to annotate anything here or pretty much anything anywhere else. You can annotate PDFs and by the time you read this their video annotation might be released. Multiple people can collaborate on annotating a single document. Try it and then knock yourself out.

Even if we are “dissappeared,” I believe there is a way that both the archive of this website and the annotations can be retrieved using archive.org and hypothes.is, but you’ll have to figure it out for yourself.

That’s the whole point of their public annotation, to put a conversation layer over the web so we can crowd-source the problem of figuring out what’s fact and what’s BS. Google doesn’t do that so were going to have to.

 

BTW, you can test another hypothesis we have, namely: We need Google not to be evil. Ask 100 random people what hypothesis, thesis, indict and prosecute mean and see if anyone comes close to our definitions without using Google. We couldn’t do it. Can you?

He who controls the dictionary controls the meaning of words and thereby our thoughts.

When you are done with that, start searching for evidence that Google is NOT evil without using Google. Bet you can’t do it.

He who controls your thoughts and what you think is evidence controls everything.

Eventually, even if the last remaining unique skill of carbon based life forms is that they know how to think, they will have no place in the grand scheme of things (as defined by Google).