The Business of Storytelling in the Age of the Algorithm | Hacker News Reader

The Business of Storytelling in the Age of the Algorithm

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Somewhat off-topic, but what is the lay definition of "algorithm" these days? From the articles I'm reading I think it's something different to (or at least much more specific than) the technical/CS definition.

People talking about algorithms in newspapers in the abstract are never worried about the class of things that includes ways to tell if a number is even, or which poker hand wins at the showdown. The term as they use it obviously includes recommender systems (maybe only in concrete implementation, though?), but I suspect it might also include navigation in Google Maps. It probably includes chess-playing "AI", but I don't think it includes methods to check that a chess move is legal.

The pop culture definition of algorithm is basically any process by which a computer makes a decision without human intervention.

I've seen guys in a poker room use it as a fancy way of saying their "decision making strategy".

This isn't necessarily a misuse of the word.

That's an entirely valid use of the term. "Algorithm" comes from "al-Khwarizmi", a Persian mathematician from 700-800s. "Euclid's algorithm" is from 300 BC.

In its original conception, "algorithm" just referred to any series of steps one could follow mechanically to reach a solution to a problem. Delegating those mechanical steps to a computer (another word that used to refer to a person!) came much later.

“A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem solving operations”

A recipe is an algorithm.

Right, most of the time, when people criticize algorithms these days they’re really critiquing algorithms that have a fundamental role in social processes that is—algorithms that begin to influence or shape opinion, taste, or judgement. Selection algorithms. Algorithms that decide “what I like” not how to achieve such and such a goal or to solve a particular problem. Most people don’t have anything g against this latter class of algorithms.

In other words, folks aren’t annoyed by algorithms per se, they are annoyed by the application of algorithms to social problems, as such application tends to lack the nuance and sophistication of old school human centric processes.

I feel like the usual suspect for “algorithm” is the code that decides exactly how to shuffle your non-chronological social media timeline around, or the code that decides what to queue up to autoplay when the video you’re watching ends.

That's an interesting point -- to a computer scientist a chronological order is exactly as "algorithmic" as any other order, but I think it might not be to a layman. Possibly the neatest demonstration of the difference.

(I guess asking a computer scientist for a program to do a task without an using an algorithm might be like asking a food scientist to make a product without chemicals...)

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