Daring Fireball tipped me off to an interesting new site, Hunch.
Hunch is a site to help you make decisions. Naturally the first question I tried out with it was one of Gruber’s suggestions: Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?
It became pretty clear to me as I answered the dispassionate, objective questions, what the answer was going to be. And I was right:
However, the reality is that I own an iPhone, and have scarcely even considered looking at a Pre, even for the sake of simple curiosity. So while the questions Hunch asked seemed dispassionate and objective, and let’s for the moment assume that they are, the experience leads me to a few questions of my own:
- Who wrote the questions? And how did they verify the accuracy of their answers?
- What criteria led them to choose the questions they did? Were there any other suitable questions that were omitted? Do the questions asked reasonably cover the scope of factors that may go into the decision?
- How are the questions weighted? Assuming they are not weighted at all, should they be? And should the weight of the questions be left to the user, rather than the author?
These are just a few of the many questions not answered by the Hunch experience.
I’m not at all suggesting that the site is a bad idea, or that it’s necessarily poorly implemented. This is just some food for thought on the merits of taking someone else’s advice when making a personal decision. It also reminds us to be wary of fully placing our trust in the All-Powerful Oz Internet. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.