Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jaxytee 4788 days ago
I'm 100% sure I don't want this. Exploration and discovery as a whole is one of the most rewarding experiences we have as humans. I don't want that outsourced to some machine/ algorithm. I addition to that, we deal with so much cognitive dissonance within our brains on a day to day, minute to minute, millisecond to millisecond basis, I'm not convinced Google (even with their massive cache of data on us) could even predict what we "want" anyhow. Think of youtube and it's "recommended for you" video suggestion. Just because I listen to Lil Boosie every now and then dosen't mean I want to hear all the shitty southern rap songs it's choosing for me.
1 comments

I'm not in love with the personally tailored search experience as it stands.

I'm totally OK with searching "#{my_city} taxi" instead of "taxi" if it means when I search "abortion" I get a sampling of search results that has the greatest co-citation... instead of something that myopically focuses on Google's perception of my preferences.

At the least, I'd like to be able to switch off the personalization. But anyway... Beating a dead horse here in this community, I'm sure.

If only there were a way to predict that users searching for "taxi" tend to want local results, and users searching for "abortion" don't. You know, like that other search engine does, called, um, Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=abortion

https://www.google.com/search?q=taxi

Or if you were willing to type more than 2 words into the search box before blaming Google for failing to read your mind, while you simultaneously tell Google to stop trying to read your mind.

I believe he's trying to say that he doesn't want results tailored to him at all. For example, if I were republican, I'd tend to get anti-abortion material when searching.

He seems to be saying that he'd be okay with typing in his city name to get local results in exchange for not having any personalization. In other words, it's beyond local vs non-local.