Re:School vs. Wikipedia
by alvah on Friday October 07, 2022 @09:35PM
(#33129018)
My daughter's homework included the question "without an atmosphere would there be gravity?". At the time Google's featured snippet for this phrase claimed without an atmosphere we'd all float off into space. Worse, my wife (a primary school teacher) believed this to be true "because Google says".
Regardless of Google's stated desire to organise all the world's information, they appear to be further from this goal than they were in the "10 blue links" era.
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Google is a tool
like a knife. If you don't know how to use it, you can cut yourself.
In a world, there children can't avoid knifes, children should be thought how to use them safely.
Google returning nonsense results can be exploited as a teachable moment. That is why non-practical questions such as the one about gravity and atmosphere are useful, they encourage developing more widely applicable skills (healthy skepticism) while stakes are low.