Why trust one random person (who may not have even seen the movie you are interested in, share your preferences, or be particular insightful) when you can have the aggregate wisdom of everyone who has seen the movie and cared enough to rate it?

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.

I 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.

They 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.

The 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.

The 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.

I'd applied a specific conditional to my response. You're disregarding it.

That doesn't address the case where the condition is satisfied.

You 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.

Actually it's the opposite of asking a random person a question, which is what aggregated opinion really stems from.

The person behind the counter, for example, has likely seen the movie given the folks I've known who work these jobs. As well, they might tell you something like "the people leaving the movie are always talking animatedly" or some other insight that a random movie-goer likely couldn't assert themselves.

I was just pointing out that people have different preferences and that there are many reasons one might trust a single person behind the ticket counter over whatever information they might derive from their smartphone.

That this is so controversial is amusing to me.

Why trust the waiter over Yelp?

Because yelp is horrible.

You argument is much stronger as "Why trust the waiter over meaningful online reviews?"

That argument is much stronger and I can only attack in niche markets like very high end restaurants.

Oh yes. BaaB - blackmail as a business.

Side question... Is there anything better than Yelp?

Knowing people in real life.

This.

Talk to some locals and you'll quickly learn the atmospheres of various locations, times to go, where to avoid, etc. As long as their preferences are fairly similar to your own the suggestions will always trump what a generic review site will offer. This also sidesteps the problem of paid reviews and the like.

That dive down the road may not be as terrible as it seems. Provided you're looking for a specific type of experience. Avoid the food, stay for the local brew, sweaty 20 somethings and stumbling down alleys with some new friends.

>Worked in the restaurant industry for a few years

Doesn't work very well when the people you know in real life (and whose judgment you trust) can only rarely afford to eat out.

The American Express concierge service.

Friends. I completely avoid yelp.

Because it takes more work to extract useful information from Yelp.

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivilly and ignoring our many requests to stop.