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Fair point. But at least it will be objective. Applied to everyone with the same algorithm. And yes, the algorithm can get improved.


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It's not supposed to be a libel-generating algorithm, if it improves then that would kind of solve the problem, right?

It certainly would help then, if the algorithm was scrutable.

Well, if that's true one should change the algorithm :)

And this world needs better algorithms. It depends on what you put first: yourself or others.

That's an interesting approach that I do think can improve some things, but I think the underlying problem is that incentives need to be changed. It's not only metrics, but just giving honest opinions: what use-cases do you really think your algorithm is suited for, not looking at it in the most optimistic possible light? If academia weren't as ultra-competitive as it's become in the past two decades or so, I think there would be more chances of getting honest and useful answers to such questions in papers. One still finds them sometimes in papers of people who don't have to play "the game" anymore: papers by senior full-professor types are often quite interesting because of how they can say what they really think.

The algorithm has definitely improved – or at least has been able to collect more information to provide better results.

Of course, we know enough about these algorithms to know that they are based on action, not what you claim. Pretending that you find something annoying, but dedicating your attention to it is going to tell the algorithm to give you more of the same.

If you don't want to learn the truth about yourself, I can see why you'd want to steer clear.


it does that already... algorithm gets smarted over time... initially its mostly wisdom of crowd and could be a lot hit and miss....

It may very well be that the algorithm is completely objective, but not necessarily "fair". This is the problem with profiling algorithms.

Well, ideally people will look at this and say there are clear tradeoffs, but I suspect many will just blame the algorithm.

Yes, the algorithm may be correct, but garbage in, garbage out still applies, bcause of biases.

Just the algorithm being publicly available won’t help much, unless all the data that is input to the algorithm is also publicly available.

I agree with this. The algorithm doesn't need to be exactly correct, always. It only needs to work well on the whole, given data on many visitors.

The alternative is the unknown human biases of random judges. At least an algorithm can be audited and changed.

Maybe, but in this context on this site I think it's safe to assume a lot of people are going to look at this with "ah! another subjective judgment that can be marked Objectively Correct by using an algorithm."

Hopefully the new algorithm is not a Piece of Shit.

aren't the algorithms only amplifying the average tendencies ?

Not unfair, exactly; but not at all certain to pick the best algorithm instead of the luckiest.

It'd be cool if the algorithm is being tweaked dynamically and it is progressively getting harder and harder for people to get 8/8.

That easily explains why they got only 4x improvement... better algorithms would give like 100x but would no longer be authentic.
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