[davisclark]

In that case, aren't you, in effect, choosing for me the set of choices available to me for selection, based upon a preconceived notion of "quality"?

The Underground Man goes on to say, “I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well.”

Would two times two makes five be included in a set of high-quality choices?

[saalweachter]

And Rush said, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.".

There is no alternative to curation. If you display all the possible options, there is still the order -- humans, being humans, will not thoroughly read and equally consider even a list of a thousand options, so the order will affect their choice. Choosing to display the results in random order, or in alphabetical order, or in chronological order, is still a decision which affects the choice of the user.

Curation cannot be avoided, as long as we are men.

I am reminded of Stanislaw Lem's Demon of the Second Kind.

[pcmaffey]

Such curation does not exclude alternative choices. The mind works by narrowing the field of possibilities down to a manageable bandwith. We make tools to help us do this. But the choice is always still our own. And we can choose anything we can imagine.