For most use cases, web search engines are fine. But I am wondering if there are alternative ways to finding information. There is also the enshittification of google and tbh most(free) search engines just give google search result
Obviously, the straight answer is just asking other people, in person or online, in general forums or specialised communities
Libraries are good source too but for those of is that don’t have access to physical libraries, there free online public libraries(I will post the links for those that I found below)
Books in general, a lot of them have reference to outside materials.
So, I been experimenting with an AI chat bot(Le chat), partially as life coach of sorts and partially as a fine tuned web search engine. To cut to the chase, its bad. when its not just listing google top results it list tools that are long gone or just makes shit up. I was hoping it to be a fine tuned search engine, cuz with google, if what you want is not in the top 10 websites, your on your own.
So yeah, that all I can think of. Those are all the routes I can think of for finding information and probably all there is but maybe I missed some other routes.
That’s pretty much it. I don’t think there are other ways.
Sorry for the tangent, but your post reminded me of Herodotus and his book “Histories”. If anyone reading this don’t know who that is, he’s called “The Father of History” for being the first (known) historian writing down events and history.
If you read his book, it’s full of “he said that, she mentioned this, I heard about, etc”. It’s an interesting experience compared to reading modern books, because modern books reference each other and won’t bother you with where they got that info in the text itself, they’ll just give you the sources at the bottom of the page or at the end of the book. Herodotus didn’t have that, he had to rely on what people said.
This resulted in some interesting accounts. For example, he talks about enormous “ants” that were about the size of foxes, lived in the hills, and carried away piles of sand that contained gold dust, which the locals collected and turned into wealth.
There’s some theories that he was likely talking about marmots, but we’ll never know for certainty. It may have been him just misinterpreting accounts, or maybe it was just someone who pulled his leg and he believed them.
Where I’m getting at, every book/article/etc we have is actually just writing down what someone else said/wrote with new insights. It’s easy to forget that nowadays with modern books and articles, “Histories” is a reminder of that fact.