The Trouble with Recommendation Engines - Recommending the Mediocre

My friend would ask us, with a smile after a meal, "How did you like the meal? Good or Best? Our "Best" does not mean anything and she knew it.

Yet, the ritual continued after every meal, we had at their house. It was more like a conversation piece, rather than feedback.

When Netflix asked me, how much I liked the movie, I thought what a waste of my time. I ain't no Siskel Ebert. For me, if something is good, I am certainly going to shout about it in, either Twitter or Facebook. If I didn't like it, I am going to ignore it and perhaps abandon the movie midstream.

The great majority of my life experience belongs to the mediocre category. Mediocre doesn't equate to bad. I don't expect to have an awesome meal every day. Mediocrity helps us rejoice the awesome.I like to endure mediocrity with Silence.

But, if you asked me, "How was it?" after a mediocre meal, you are now pushing me to an extreme. I might start picking on the flaws. Some people might take the other path and say, "it was good".

Now if you give this verdict, to the machine. It is going to make some crazy inferences, no matter how smart the 'million dollar' algorithm is. There is nothing dumber than asking a viewer, after a movie, "On a scale of 1 to 10,..." type questions. It simply breeds more mediocrity.

Information makes me Happy

One of my buddies suffered from Spondylitis at a very young age. He endured high-intensity pain for a while, religiously following the treatment plan, that his physician outlined. After few years, he changed physicians and the outcome was the same.

Then, he did something different. He began meticulously researching in the internet, interviewing physicians, from different parts of the country and came up with his own treatment plan.

After few years, his spondylitis vanished. While, most of us, use the Internet to superficially learn terms that would annoy our Physician, my buddy was clearly an outlier.




The Case of Search Engines as Gateways to THE Library is well-established. Then, one might wonder how Search Engines would fade away and give way to Relevance Engines.

With the advent of Social Networks, another dominant usage of the Internet is emerging, ... as a tool to make us happy.

Do you want a tool that provides you the the 6things that you like or Search endlessly for interesting content all day long?