Search Result Optimization. Stand out to surprise customers.Search

A full page of results feels like knowledge. It is a selection nobody signed.

Eight topics about what search does to what people believe, and what that means for anyone who publishes.

On this page

What it is
Social epistemology studies how knowledge travels through people, institutions and now systems.
The problem until now
You could not tell why two people who search the same words end up believing different things.
What you can do from here
You can see how a result page hands out credibility, and what a page must show to be believed.
Social epistemology: what is published is ranked into what is shown, what is shown shapes what is believed
Social epistemology: How the parts depend on each other.
Contents 3

Try this first

Three tests, about ten minutes. They show how a result page hands out credibility.

Tests on this page you have run: 0 of 3. The count stays in this browser only.

Test: Social epistemology

  1. Ask two people to search the same question on their own phones.
  2. Compare the first three results.
  3. Think: what differs, and what could explain it?

How the same question produces different truths.

Test

  1. Search a question in your field and open the source you trust least.
  2. Put it aside for a moment.
  3. Think: what exactly makes you doubt it?

The signals by which credibility is given.

Test

  1. Search a claim you believe, then search its opposite.
  2. Put both aside.
  3. Think: which side got the better sources?

What your own searches confirm for you.

The personalization of the internet leads to hasty decisions. That sentence is the reason this project exists.

Topics in this field

Search engine epistemologyTen results that agree are ten results that were selected by the same criteria.Algorithmic biasNeutral procedure applied to unequal material produces unequal output.Filter bubblesThe result confirms the assumption that produced the query.Information qualityFluent and confident are easier to produce than accurate.Epistemic trustTrust is the mechanism.Echo chambersAdding facts to it changes nothing, because the facts arrive through a discredited channel.Distributed epistemologyThe part that is written down is the part that had a reason to be written down.Epistemic injusticeA search result inherits that and turns it into an ordering.

These pages treat the result page as what it is: an instrument that shapes belief at scale, operated by organizations with their own reasons.

The other fields

Everything in this field, on one screen

Each point is a page of social epistemology. Drag, zoom, and click a point to open that page. The whole site is drawn on the knowledge graph.

Social epistemology

See this field inside the whole site →