Recently a question was asked in this stack. In brief the question was about wrong generalisation by Google search engine. As @Neil has put it, it is probably due to:
There is obviously a deep set reason for this, as it has appeared from non-prejudiced statistical analysis of billions of words of text from all sorts of sources.
The problem I find with this question is:
- We do not know how Google's search engine generalises so it is really tough to give a sure shot answer.
- The OP does not provide whether biases might have crept in through other credible sources.
My question is how do we exactly do we answer these question keeping in mind:
- We have incomplete understanding of how the process works.
- The OP is a beginner who is unlikely to have any idea that statistical bias has nothing to do with racism.
- The OP already has a sort of rooted idea based on past experiences that the OP is being subject to prejudice, which might not be the case (quite ironic since the OPs generally tend to have strong opinions against generalisation).
So what should be the general approach to answer such questions?
NOTE: I am not talking about this specific OP, but I have seen such questions on other sites also (generally provided with wrong answer which further degrades the cause of racism). Although @Neil's answer is excellent I have said in my very first point why I thought the question was problematic.