I would prefer results containing words "shirt", "stripes" and "without". I don't want search engines to freely interpret my query and guess what I probably wanted to see while burying exact results in hundreds of pages of useless garbage.
When I’m looking up information, like an article, especially technical information, then yes I want the search engine to do as little interpreting as possible. That’s because any interpretation rules it uses won’t always be relevant so I’d rather have more control.
But for Amazon? I don’t see how someone can see the average user typing “shirts without stripes” and getting almost nothing but shirts with stripes, and going “yup, works as expected”.
How is interpreting "shirts without stripes" as "I wish to see shirts that don't have any stripes" guessing?
I would venture to say that most people (meaning your use case is in the minority) who type "shirts without stripes" want to see results showing shirts without stripes not results "containing words "shirt", "stripes" and "without".
I think what is happening here is that you know how search engines work and so you are conditioned to expect them to do what they're doing.
Because I was looking for pages about the band called "Shirts without Stripes". Because I wanted pages with shirts that have stripes but where the page featured the word "without", because their shirts are without something else. Because I want to see striped shirts from the company called "Without". I don't want the machine to guess what I mean. It can never know.