Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

racked.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 81 posts

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#71

Post by mc32 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70
mc32 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods While I agree with the first part, identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits. I would suggest that while better, even people who look back to a pre-consumerist lifestyle, are engaging in lifestyle (and thus identity) unless it's a completely unattached choice (again reclusive hermit). I…

identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits Ah, but the reclusive hermit is a response to the society - an active rejection - such that the hermit is one of the lifestyles most consumed with society's affects! Similarly the "hipster" has a finely refined vane on popular culture. Calling a hermit/hipster disconnected from society It's like calling an antihistamine disconnected from pollen.

To me the hermit is different because the hermit is not looking for approval at all --the hermit is only looking to be by themselves and be of themselves.

They don't care if they are admired, rejected, remembered or forgotten.

Sadly even when they just want to be forgotten, Journalists looking for a story to tell hunt them down, sometimes[1]. Some people just want to be outside of it all.

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/homeles...

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#72

Post by mattkrause »

ggg9990 wrote: post #37
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like" You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?

Not really, since libraries are not laid out randomly, and few electronic display experiences allow the kind of massively parallel visual scanning that humans are good at.

One of the great pleasures of working at a research university is walking through the stacks and seeing shelf after shelf of books on the odd and interesting topics—-and they’re all free for the taking.

I’d easily put this in the top three reasons I stay in this job.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#73

Post by goatlover »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70
mc32 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods While I agree with the first part, identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits. I would suggest that while better, even people who look back to a pre-consumerist lifestyle, are engaging in lifestyle (and thus identity) unless it's a completely unattached choice (again reclusive hermit). I…

identity is tied to society, unless we are to become reclusive hermits Ah, but the reclusive hermit is a response to the society - an active rejection - such that the hermit is one of the lifestyles most consumed with society's affects! Similarly the "hipster" has a finely refined vane on popular culture. Calling a hermit/hipster disconnected from society It's like calling an antihistamine disconnected from pollen.

If you leave society altogether, you’re not part of it any longer.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#74

Post by onion2k »

explodingcamera wrote: post #21

These algorithems don't destroy our taste, they shape it. If it woundnt be for IMDb recommendations, I'd be wasting a lot more time watching bad movies.

If it woundnt be for IMDb recommendations, I'd be wasting a lot more time watching bad movies.

You'd spend more time watching movies that registered IMDb users didn't rate highly. That's only "bad movies" if you enjoy films for the same reasons that registered IMDb users give them high scores on IMDb. There are plenty of films that don't score highly on there that millions of people who are a bit less invested in the film industry absolutely love. Maybe you would too.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#75

Post by thirdsun »

greggarious wrote: post #11

I'm a film buff and I think so. A lot of people don't seem to go out of their way to obtain films aside from looking at Netflix recommendations. Back when I used OkCupid I could tell when something older went on because it immediately got listed under "favorite movies" by a certain type of hipster ;) (I distinctly remember how overnight everyone looooovveeed Amelie when it went up) Sadly it's a lot harder to find new…

I'm rarely satisfied with recommendation engines, but I actually got good results with https://movielens.org/ - maybe worth a try for you.

Also, Mubi is a great resource for films, curated by themes, topics and users. Unfortunately their streamign/licensing model of showing a small selection of films for a limited time isn't very useful to me. Nevertheless the content is great: https://mubi.com

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#76

Post by thirdsun »

neap24 wrote: post #55

It is pretty difficult for Netflix or Amazon to have recommendations that appeal to me because their datasets are limited to their specific domains. In reality, my tastes and interests pull from such a wide range of fields. One year, I decided to only watch movies filmed in, or about, the state where I live. One year I caught up on famous horror movies I hadn't seen. None of these ideas was "suggested" to me directly…

Yes, I see this issue with Netflix very often. Watching Narcos doesn't mean I'm interested in every mediocre drug-related documentary. Instead I'm looking for high quality, detailed, in-depth productions covering a wide array of very different themes, topics, locations and periods.

Algorithms don't seem to be able to solve this problem yet. Certainly not those used at Netflix.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#77

Post by npsimons »

pnathan wrote: post #26

> No one is original anymore, not even you. Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk. I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via-consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by c…

> Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods.

I wouldn't be so gentle; I definitely think we are harmed by finding identity in material goods. It's destructive.

As for originality, I would modify the goal: don't try to be original. Instead, aim to stretch your mind to think things it hasn't thought before. If you get so far that you do think something original, great! If you don't, at least you've expanded your horizons.

> While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable.

And I'm glad to see we've come to roughly the same conclusion, even if that makes us "not original." ;-)

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#78

Post by npsimons »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #31
pnathan wrote: post #26

> No one is original anymore, not even you. Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk. I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via-consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by c…

> they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like" You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?

> You mean like the "Random" links on Wikipedia and Reddit?

I consider clicking the random link on Reddit analogous to firing a gun into a bookstore, or randomly flipping channels on a TV: no discernment whatsoever, and very shallow, very often completely worthless results. 99% of the time I click random on Reddit, it comes up with complete garbage, IMHO, to the point I don't use it anymore. Meanwhile, the best subreddits I've come across have been "curated" by recommendations.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#79

Post by pnathan »

cirgue wrote: post #67
pnathan wrote: post #26

> No one is original anymore, not even you. Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk. I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via-consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by c…

> The internet removes serendipity It also removes the social context around the production of taste. Taste, in addition to being a set of personal preferences, is also a conscious and unconscious way of both signaling social status and creating empathy between people. This is largely absent in algorithm-facilitated media consumption. Facebook/spotify/whatever else is an intercessor between you and your group of frie…

That's a great angle, actually. I'm not sure that I am sad about the status games being elided, but you're unquestionably right that taste is a product of social context and that - social context - is something incredibly important to being human. To remove it, is to take an important cog out of the system.

Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms

#80

Post by pnathan »

gowld wrote: post #65
pnathan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no. libraries are curated, organized, and structured to allow browsing. random does nothing of the above. meaning is a polyspectral space, and libraries are a lower-dimensional reduction of that to allow perusal through multiple bands of meaning. while the result may be arbitrary, it's within the bounds of the arc in the meaning-space. In addition, the curation of books means that arrant nonsense is culled (hello r/o…

Libraries are also tiny though. Subreddits also have curated lists of related subreddits in sidebar. /r/popular and /r/all give you a sample of posts from various subreddits (curated by users), which then link to related subs. Each sub itself is a browsable and sortable collection of related content.

Yes, definitely. I would consider a subreddit to be something like a daily magazine, and the curated lists to be something like a collection of them.

Libraries.... are not precisely tiny. Depends on the library. And a shocking amount of internet statements have a shockingly small entropy.....

Post reply on HN