[ChoGGi]

"Most of her patients are senior citizens or people with serious health or developmental issues, but she has one outlier: a 30-something snowboarder. Usually, Facebook would recommend he friend people his own age, who snowboard and jump out of planes. But Lisa told me that he had started seeing older and infirm people, such as a 70-year-old gentleman with a walker and someone with cerebral palsy."

[ensignavenger]

One outlier hardly establishes a pattern, it is still reasonable that the connection to Lisa had nothing to do with these suggestions, and that there was something else in play.

[throwanem]

An outlier like that destroys the pattern you're arguing must exist.

[ensignavenger]

I'm not arguing that any pattern exists- I am merely arguing that we don't have enough information to demonstrate conclusively that Facebook is recommending these people as friends simply because they are all Lisas patients. Such a pattern may be probable, but there simply isn't enough information to come to a conclusion.

[throwanem]

I don't suppose I feel it necessary to reach absolute incontrovertibility on this matter, given Facebook's longstanding history of doing things very like it, but find mere strong preponderance of likelihood to suffice. But I understand that some may feel otherwise.