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Because, frankly, I don't give a shit about aggregate "wisdom". (It's aggregate opinions, no wisdom to be found there). Many movies are polarizing. In aggregat
by groby_b 10y ago
Because, frankly, I don't give a shit about aggregate "wisdom". (It's aggregate opinions, no wisdom to be found there).
Many movies are polarizing. In aggregate, they're OK. Talking to a single person whose opinion I trust is much more helpful than getting an average from 1,000s. Look at Yelp ratings - everything is pretty good by now, and the recommendations are mostly meaningless. They don't fit my needs, if my needs go beyond "I need edible food in a certain price category".
It turns out experts trump the crowd when it comes to opinions, because the opinion of a crowd is almost always indifferent.
- sqeaky 10y agoI disagree with you on almost every, but so much of it is soft and nebulous so lets you are correct for most of your comment. I just want to pick on tiny part: > Talking to a single person whose opinion I trust Why should we trust the person at the ticket counter? They have no special knowledge or insight. It seems likely to me they will have below average insight otherwise they wouldn't be working an easy to automate job.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThe point is expertise. If a consideration in employing someone at the ticket counter is that they have well-founded opinions or suggestions to offer on films, then, by way of their expert status, you've cause to believe them. Otherwise, this collapses to a general critique of the upstream assertion: that "low-value" positions, such as box-office worker, see no labour value add, whilst simultaneously a certain set of positions, say, white-linens restaurant waiter and/or somnlier, do. I don't see both arguments being valid simultaneously.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoThe person behind the counter in a movie theater is usually a high school aged teen. Their opinions as to what constitutes a good movie are almost certainly wildly at variance with my own. That said, Yelp-type reviews aren't much better. About the best you can do is find a professional movie or restaurant reviewer whose opinions match yours and go with that.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'd applied a specific conditional to my response. You're disregarding it. That doesn't address the case where the condition is satisfied.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoYou mean this? "If a consideration in employing someone at the ticket counter is that they have well-founded opinions or suggestions to offer on films, then, by way of their expert status, you've cause to believe them." I'm disregarding it because it's observably not true. People are employed at theatre ticket offices because they are teens who are willing to work nights and weekends for minimum wage, not because they're film experts. Expecting a ticket booth employee to be Roger Ebert is about as reasonable as expecting a Radio Shack employee to be a qualified electrical engineer.
- groby_b 9y agoThey have seen a ton of movies. (One of the few perks of that job). They certainly have opinions on them. And while they might not align with my opinions, I can calibrate for that. But "expertise" or no, they hold information I don't have - how did they experience the movie. They likely have seen it. I haven't. Talking to them increases the amount of information available to me. I can't calibrate for the averaged-together soup of opinions on online forums. Because everything is average, nothing matters.