Furthermore, the quality distribution of jammie dodgers is arguably fat-tailed.[1] If by many examples you’ve trained your intuition about what “good cookies” look like, you’re most likely still sampling near the median part of the distribution. The very best might be very different. What you naively perceive as “lumpy”—a trait you rarely see in “good cookies” so you instead grab another one—might in fact be part of the unusual character that takes it into the very best category.[2] After all, you should expect the extreme outliers to be different in some unusual way compared to the merely good outliers you’ve trained your intuitions on. I always eat the ones that don’t fit in.
Sensitivity over specificity for non-poisonous cookie-distributions! Not only because, as you say, flaws are easier to notice than hitherto-unknowable outlier winning-traits, but also because flaws are less consequential in lower-bounded distributions.
Furthermore, the quality distribution of jammie dodgers is arguably fat-tailed.[1] If by many examples you’ve trained your intuition about what “good cookies” look like, you’re most likely still sampling near the median part of the distribution. The very best might be very different. What you naively perceive as “lumpy”—a trait you rarely see in “good cookies” so you instead grab another one—might in fact be part of the unusual character that takes it into the very best category.[2] After all, you should expect the extreme outliers to be different in some unusual way compared to the merely good outliers you’ve trained your intuitions on. I always eat the ones that don’t fit in.
Although more realistically the distribution has several peaks due to recipe variation and baker idiosyncrasies.
Sensitivity over specificity for non-poisonous cookie-distributions! Not only because, as you say, flaws are easier to notice than hitherto-unknowable outlier winning-traits, but also because flaws are less consequential in lower-bounded distributions.