By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026Run this for a few rounds and the evenly distributed catalog of choices "collapses onto one dominant option." This is intrinsic in the choices we make in designing recommendation algorithms, tilting them towards the likelihood of a successful recommendation. 30/ 1483
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026A recommender that wants to succeed every time will make the safest possible recommendations, "so an algorithm that is uncertain about you, and it is always at least a little uncertain, hedges toward the average." 31/ 1502
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026Then she busts out a beautiful, *perfect* little statistics aphorism: "Personalisation under a standard loss function is regression to the collective mean with extra steps." 32/ 19217