My friend who climbed Everest last month told me about the dangers of Khumbu Icefall. It is a treacherous section from base camp to Camp 1. What makes it dangerous is not just the technical difficulties of negotiating it but the fact that it is on a moving glacier. What that means is that it is constantly changing. So the path that you took today might not be the safe path tomorrow.
The new age algorithms that supposedly help creatives to ‘find a market’ are somewhat like the Khumbu Icefall. You may not lose your life on these algorithms but you will, most certainly, lose a lot of the important time that could be spent on doing something better.
The reasons are similar. The landscape is constantly changing. The algorithm also is changing. What worked for you today will most certainly not work tomorrow. Someone will be a lucky winner on any new algorithm that appears, but it will, most likely, not be you. You will try figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And once you discover what seems like a formula, the algorithm would change.
It is pointless. That time is better spent on doing and creating something worthwhile. You hold the strings there. Someone else holds the strings in the algorithms. You have no idea who and why because you are the puppet whose strings are being pulled.
Warren Buffett famously said that if you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.
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