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

Canonical: https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/
Author: Johannes Faupel

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](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/images/maps/filter-bubble-social-epistemology.svg?v=1790368037)
*Social epistemology: How the parts depend on each other.*

## Try this first
<https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/#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

- Ask two people to search the same question on their own phones.
- Compare the first three results.
- Think: what differs, and what could explain it?
How the same question produces different truths.

Test

- Search a question in your field and open the source you trust least.
- Put it aside for a moment.
- Think: what exactly makes you doubt it?
The signals by which credibility is given.

Test

- Search a claim you believe, then search its opposite.
- Put both aside.
- 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
<https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/#topics-in-this-field>

[Search engine epistemology](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/search-engine-epistemology/): Ten results that agree are ten results that were selected by the same criteria.

[Algorithmic bias](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/algorithmic-bias/): Neutral procedure applied to unequal material produces unequal output.

[Filter bubbles](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/filter-bubbles/): The result confirms the assumption that produced the query.

[Information quality](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/information-quality/): Fluent and confident are easier to produce than accurate.

[Epistemic trust](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/epistemic-trust/): Trust is the mechanism.

[Echo chambers](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/echo-chambers/): Adding facts to it changes nothing, because the facts arrive through a discredited channel.

[Distributed epistemology](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/distributed-epistemology/): The part that is written down is the part that had a reason to be written down.

[Epistemic injustice](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/epistemic-injustice/): A 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
<https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/social-epistemology/#the-other-fields>

- [Digital marketing](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/digital-marketing/)
- [Information retrieval](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/information-retrieval/)
- [Human-computer interaction](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/human-computer-interaction/)
- [Computational linguistics](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/computational-linguistics/)

## 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](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/knowledgegraph/).

[See this field inside the whole site →](https://www.searchresultoptimization.com/knowledgegraph/)