tl;dr when one asks a question involving people, and you want the most fitted data, then you need to consider grouping/segmentation of the population into clusters of preference.
What is the best spaghetti sauce?
It's a flawed question, as it contains an invalid assumption.
Thus what Curtis seems to be describing is a (great/awesome/very good) etc set of knives, but not 'the best'.
Very good = a maximization of universal requirements
Best = maximization of universal && local requirements (population segmentation preferences, spacial and temporal context etc)
Example:
Those forks may be best for Curtis at his dinner. They are certainly not best for me, on my camping trip. Or best for a tribe in Africa with different shaped mouths and habits etc. Or best for someone eating Chinese takeout. etc
> Those forks may be best for Curtis at his dinner.
Yeah, I think that's the point, since he's the author. Or are we still writing middle school essays where we have to explicitly put "I think" in front of every subjective sentence?
you're right, the broader point is "buy what is the best [for you]". i assumed the "for you" is implicit, given the obvious subjective nature of what it is we're talking about.
are you suggesting he's trying to imply that there is a canonical "the best" of everything?
I guess the original poster you're responding to wasn't talking about that since he didn't mention it in his followup to you, but I assumed that was what he was talking about when I first read his post and it didn't seem so weird to me.
I mean... lip plating seems weird to me, but the idea that some people in some tribes in Africa have different shaped mouths didn't seem weird.
Not necessarily different shaped mouths, but there are different ways of eating and different ways of using a fork depending on your sex, hand size, culture, daily caloric intake etc.
You can't make "the best fork" unless you also want to enforce your way of eating upon people who are going to use your fork. You can, however, try to make the best fork for the largest group of people and get people to become loyal to your brand. After they become loyal to you, you will feel more and more power to enforce your ways of doing things and as a result your products will get "even better" in their eyes. This is what most companies are trying. But only Apple is exceptionally good at this. Hence, I think this whole article serves the purpose of subconsciously justifying the author's brand loyalty to Apple.
> Example: Those forks may be best for Curtis at his dinner. They are certainly not best for me, on my camping trip. Or best for a tribe in Africa with different shaped mouths and habits etc. Or best for someone eating Chinese takeout. etc
Did you really read that article and understood it as Curtis saying the set of flatware he bought is the best in the world?
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...
tl;dr when one asks a question involving people, and you want the most fitted data, then you need to consider grouping/segmentation of the population into clusters of preference.
What is the best spaghetti sauce?
It's a flawed question, as it contains an invalid assumption.
Thus what Curtis seems to be describing is a (great/awesome/very good) etc set of knives, but not 'the best'.
Very good = a maximization of universal requirements
Best = maximization of universal && local requirements (population segmentation preferences, spacial and temporal context etc)
Example: Those forks may be best for Curtis at his dinner. They are certainly not best for me, on my camping trip. Or best for a tribe in Africa with different shaped mouths and habits etc. Or best for someone eating Chinese takeout. etc