[bloak]

I saw this quotation in The Economist: "Success is random. Bestsellers are random. So that's why we are the Random House." (Markus Dohle, Penguin Random House)

Reading about Kathleen Sully I wonder again to what extent critical acclaim is as random as commercial success.

[flir]

Many years back Yahoo did an experiment with ranking music. They found that every time they ran it, different songs would bubble to the top as "best". From memory, something about early front-runners getting a lock-in.

Edit: found a link https://unbiasx.com/the-yahoo-musiclab-experiment/

[qingcharles]

You can see the same scenario run out with HN or Reddit comments, where early comments become the "best".

[bryanrasmussen]

>I wonder again to what extent critical acclaim is as random as commercial success.

you can't acclaim what you've never read.

However there are a lot of studies that indicate critical acclaim also seems related to attending the right institutions of higher education, which would indicate a decrease in randomness.

[bryanrasmussen]

I guess that suggests commercial success, which is random, is more fair than critical acclaim - which is rigged.