Looking for logic and finding rhetoric

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In general when looking up something on the internet, I can find it in less than three minutes. Not that I'm a search engine genius or such, but I know how to research. It's how I make my living.

Hit & run...

For a couple of days I've been mulling a blog topic which required what I thought was going to be hit & run research. I fired up Google and typed in my search parameters.

All my hits are for the wrong side of the debate. Well, not the wrong side. My side. This time, I wanted the other side of the debate. I got nada.

I reset my search engine terms. Hit enter. Same results. Rinse & repeat. Insert choice of profanities here.

I have heard, and seen, how search engines are tailoring results now to what a person has searched in the past. In other words, Google directs you to sites it thinks you'll want. Good idea in part, but this also means Google steers you away from sites it doesn't think you will like or sites which you've shown no interest in.

This is disturbing. It means people are searching for stuff and by a wide margin, only finding information which supports what they already know, believe and so on. Sites with opposing information are not listed or appear so far down in the results that it doesn't matter.

One of the fastest routes to cognitive dissonance is to only listen to people you agree with.

From a general political point of view, Cantservatives epitomize this. Again in general terms, Liarberals at least will listen to other points of view, witness the huge audience Rush Limbaugh has (had?) of liberals who raise their blood pressure listening to him.

So I continue my search, looking for the side of the debate which I disagree with. Ten minutes in and I have some some websites, but none which offer rational states. Each one fires up rhetoric. The few sites I find without rhetoric have no substance, no facts and have generic information about the group holding that point of view.

Except two. The two sites I do find attempt to present facts, but the falsehoods, distortions, outright manipulations and emotionally laden rhetoric render their information next to useless for what I want.

You make me ashamed to agree with you...

So, to be fair, I switched and begin a search for the same kind of information for the side of the debate I support.

Yep.

A couple of places say they present real facts, undistorted, unmanipulated and stripped of emotional reaction.

F'dang. Refer to picture at right again.

As I write, I am reminded a human being is not a Vulcan. Humans are ruled by emotion. Logic takes a distant back seat, if there are even seats left on this bus, to temper.

And so, I leave you today with a rather ambiguous post and a detailed post at the same time. As for the topic which inspired this search and resulting rant, you'll just have to keep wondering until I can get some solid and undistorted facts in hand - from both sides.

But in hopes of leaving you happy, enjoy this last picture.

Bacon & egg cupcakes.