Mark, Ben, @Mark,
Sorry I didn't see this sooner! This reminds me of an idea my brother had, which was that a feed should include some randomness in their ranking algorithm. You should not *only* be presented with things similar to what you've previously liked, because this leads to stagnation. That isn't to say that totally random articles should be thrown in every 10 items; the randomness should be integrated in a sane way, continuous with the rest of the ranking algorithm. But you need to see a variety. He justified this on evolutionary grounds, similar to your argument. It also reminds me of an idea I had about cell-phone autocomplete: if you base autocomplete on your data for texting habits, you get suggestions "for free", but they may be low quality (because the crowd's spelling accuracy in texts is low). It is beneficial to include higher-quality data (such as well-spelled text), and also to hand-craft suggestions (my cell phone's suggestions when I have not typed anything are all good-quality polite beginnings for messages, which I doubt are pulled from statistics). Making suggestions which are well-spelled and polite will increase the general quality of texts. Sometimes it is good to allow the crowd to speak, but sometimes it is good to guide them in the right direction! @Ben, I think you're actually making it more mathematically sophisticated than necessary, by talking about finding clusters in graphs. I proposed an algorithm (as a diaspora feature request, which got closed for being too speculative, understandably) which works more like this: You can upvote or downvote items in your feed as much as you want. (No 1-vote limit like on Reddit.) This alters a matrix of the people you subscribe to, so that we know how many up/down votes you've hit a particular person with. (Items could be ranked by more than just who posted it, but a source-based ranking would be fairly good I think...) Ordering in the feed is similar to the Reddit formula, (upvotes - downvotes)/age. However, the upvotes and downvotes are weighted according to how much you've liked a particular person (so if you "like" the same thing as Ms. X a large number of times, your feed will rank things based mainly on how Ms. X votes.) This could use some refinement, I'm sure, but the point is that I think we can work in a local way (essentially looking at dot products between my preferences and other people's) rather than looking at the network to find clusters. People can form their own clusters if several people mutually like each other's posts. More importantly, a "like" will now directly tune your personal feed (without a global crowd vote like on Reddit). Best, Abram On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 2:59 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Mark Nuzz... > > I thought about the issue you raised (problems w/ Reddit comments and > their dynamics) in this email back in August, and here is my > suggestion... what do you think? > > > http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/avoiding-tyranny-of-majority-in.html > > -- Ben G > > On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 10:23 AM, A. T. Murray <[email protected]> wrote: > > Mark Nuzzolilo wrote on 27 August 2012: > > [...] > >> 1) Reddit is where the masses (at least in my part of > >> the world) go to talk about things. > >> > >> 2) Comments are artificially moved by a computer algorithm. > >> People influence the movement by clicking on buttons to > >> approve or disapprove of something that is said. It's often > >> done without much thought or >care, just a first impulse. > >> > >> 3) The voting tends to favor a strong bias toward certain > >> patterns, which are not directly designed or programmed > >> by Reddit, but are rather an emergent consequence > >> indirectly resulting from the site's >design. > >> > >> 4) The results in the voting determine who has a stronger > >> voice. The stronger the voice, the more people see it. > >> > >> 5) Based on these votes, the site gives people rewards > >> for being popular, and punishes them for being unpopular. > >> People who might have slightly opposing cultural beliefs > >> could become assimilated and become thinking more similar > >> to those who earn the most votes. People who disagree with > >> those who carry the most votes may find themselves without > >> many people to talk to, since people don't use forums anymore, > >> they use Reddit more. Less people to talk to means these > >> people do not get to share their ideas quite as much. [...] > > > > I take a lot of flak (Fliegerabwehrkanone) for my AI ideas, > > but I persist in "Redditing" because of useful sub-Reddits: > > > > http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial > > > > is the sub-Reddit on artificial intelligence. See also: > > > > http://www.reddit.com/r/programming > > > > http://www.reddit.com/r/technology > > > > Mentifex (Arthur) > > -- > > http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > > AGI > > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/212726-11ac2389 > > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > -- > Ben Goertzel, PhD > http://goertzel.org > > "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/7190161-766c6f07 > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Abram Demski http://lo-tho.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
