The Problem With Google (or Perhaps Any Internet Research)
In 2017, I came up with an idea that, to my knowledge to this day, no one has yet explored. I wanted to create a one-stop guide, a kind of practical Wikipedia of sorts, for just about anything you can think of. This actually stemmed from my experience in the college application process, which, in retrospect—and I would assume this is true for most people–was much more so about how to figure out what the hell to do with my life after high school. See, the education-industrial complex’s attempt at teaching children and young adults does a pretty horrible job at giving us any form of practical knowledge in life, let alone wisdom. Asking for wisdom is demanding far too much from a system that’s designed to produce mediocrity and indoctrinate conformity and compliance.
So, it is to no one’s surprise that most people, like myself, found that the technical aspects of the college application process—financial aid, optimal essay-writing and standardized test strategies, building your résumé, navigating the common app—were dauntingly confusing and took far more than common sense to figure out any of these things.
But what's worse is that we did this all with no direction, no guidance, and no wisdom. The default mode of thought is I have to go to college, preferably at a "prestigious" one, and I have to pick a major that's at least remotely financially viable and stable as a career option. No one asks the hard questions and very real risks of choosing poorly and committing yourself to something for years, if not decades, purely out of social obligation:
Do we understand that we have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to lose if we end up not using our degrees? You can set your life / family back for years financially, and you lose the luxury of having the freedom to decide what you want to do in the future if you're broke and in debt.
Do we understand what work is actually like for certain professions? How can we determine if we would be well-suited to a certain job? Do we know what types of work are most needed in our world today?
Do we understand the implications for our lives and the entire purpose of university if we choose professions purely out of greed or financial stability?
Do we understand what makes us happy? Can we envision for ourselves a life that would be worth living and how to achieve that life?
I was always perplexed as to why no one ever gave us a comprehensive guide that not only explained all the nitty-gritty technical aspects of what we were supposed to do, but also gave us the more important, bigger-picture perspective wisdom and life advice by experts in the field. It is incredibly hard, perhaps impossible, to find a single resource online that does this. First off, many of first- or second-page Google results suffer from many of the same problems:
Too short-sighted and lacking perspective. They will always presume you want to take a certain path to achieve a certain goal. They tell you what to do, not why. This is perhaps the most problematic aspect and pitfall for most people doing their own research online.
The optimal method of doing anything is the product of synthesizing various forms of information from a variety of sources. Smart people know how to naturally synthesize all this information; by reading a lot of articles, watching YouTube videos, talking to different people on the subject, and filtering out the nonsense; they can piece together parts of the puzzle to form a larger picture. However, most people are terrible at piecing together the puzzle, or even knowing that there are other pieces to begin with. Moreover, even for the smart people, this is an incredibly time-consuming and laborious process that requires a great deal of commitment and perseverance towards something that most haven't even figured out why they're even doing it in the first place.
Many articles are commercialized, superficial, and designed to be oversimplified to generate clicks and cater to short attention spans. Claiming there is a five-step process to something as complex and nuanced as college applications—ultimately deciding what to do with your life—is, in the grand scheme of things, dishonest and misleading.
Insufficient or extraneous information for user-specific needs. Essentially, basically no articles or guides are transparent about who their target audience is. In this case, many universities have varying application processes, requirements, restrictions, and admission philosophy. If you live in different countries or are trying to apply to universities in different countries, it is unlikely that an article written primarily for US college applications will be of any use to you, yet it will clutter your search feed. If you are of a lower socioeconomic class, the best advice might vary greatly.
What if I could create a system that simultaneously compiles and synthesizes all this information, as well as tailors both the amount and types of information to the specific user and his/her goals?
It turns out, though, that the college application process is far from being the sole topic that is in need of clarity. For example, I've never skied before. If I wanted to get into skiing, let's say, I would likely have a lot of questions:
What's so good about skiing? What do people have to say, amateurs and pros alike, about the activity?
How much would it likely cost me to get into skiing?
What gear should I buy to start out? Is it even worth investing in expensive, higher-quality equipment? Do I even need to buy anything, depending on the skiing locations I go to?
Are there even places to ski near me?
How long would it take me to learn the basics?
Are there significant risks to my health or well-being when it comes to skiing?
Do you need a coach for the activity to be safe or enjoyable?
Moreover, if I'm an intermediate or advanced skier, how can I filter out all the information that I already know?
And the likelihood of you finding a single source that answers all these questions in a fair and comprehensive way is next to zero. As a result, even an intelligent person is likely to spend hours trying to do so, sifting through dozens of sources before attaining a reasonable comprehension of the subject matter at hand.
