gwern comments on Open Thread, April 1-15, 2013

gwern 3 Apr 2013 20:34 UTC
38 points
For kicks, and reminded by all my recent searching for digging up long-forgotten launch and shut down dates for Google properties, I’ve compiled a partial list of times I’ve posted searches & results on LW:
Can’t help but get the impression that even people here aren’t very good at Googling. Maybe they should be taking Google’s little search classes; knowing how to search seems like the sort of skill that would pay off constantly over a lifetime.
What links here?
- Douglas_Knight 4 Apr 2013 2:08 UTC
  8 points
  Parent
  
  Can’t help but get the impression that even people here aren’t very good at Googling. Maybe they should be taking Google’s little search class; knowing how to search seems like the sort of skill that would payoff constantly over a lifetime.
  
  It appears to me that in half of these examples people hadn’t tried to google at all. It doesn’t seem particularly likely to me that the class would develop such a habit. Not that I have a better idea.
  - gwern 4 Apr 2013 3:43 UTC
    22 points
    Parent
    My belief is that the more familiar and skilled you are with a tool, the more willing you are to reach for it. Someone who has been programming for decades will be far more willing to write a short one-off program to solve a problem than someone who is unfamiliar and unsure about programs (even if they suspect that they could get a canned script copied from StackExchange running in a few minutes). So the unwillingness to try googling at all is at least partially a lack of googling skill and familiarity.
    What links here?
    Googling is the first step. Consider adding scholarly searches to your arsenal. by Tenoke (7 May 2013 13:30 UTC; 30 points)
- gwern 16 Dec 2013 4:26 UTC
  5 points
  Parent
  Since April 2013:
- lukeprog 7 May 2013 3:36 UTC
  2 points
  Parent
  This is epic.
- gwern 14 Sep 2014 21:25 UTC
  0 points
  Parent
  Since December 2013: