Sufficient consensus
Search engine epistemology examines how search systems shape what people come to believe. Selection, ranking and presentation act as an epistemic authority that most users do not experience as one.
The field is small and its findings are stable.
What the result pages leave out
These belong to the subject. People ask about them. They are missing from the agreed coverage.
- Agreement is not evidence. Sources that copy each other produce convergence, and convergence reads as confirmation.
- The fraction that is shown. Result pages display a small selection of what was indexed, which is itself a small selection of what exists.
- Commercial interest in the selection. The party presenting the results also sells placement in them, and that fact is absent from the interface.
- Belief formed by position. Rank is read as credibility, without anyone deciding to read it that way.
- The end of the search as the end of the subject. People stop when the results look alike, which they do long before a subject is covered.
What people actually want to know
- Who decided that these ten things are what I should see?
- Do these sources agree because they are right, or because they copied each other?
- What is on page four, and why is it there?
- What would I have to do to find out what is not here?
Search engine result pages can only display existing content. Treating that display as the state of a subject is the most common mistake on the web.
More in social epistemology
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.