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
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026That is to say, "regression to the mean" (the tendency of varied things to become more standardized) cannot be avoided with the standard personalization algorithm. 33/ 1513
