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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

I have mentioned this a number of times here on HN, but each time I'm told by other users that it just appears that way because the topic is fresh in my mind... I don't think that's the case.

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This is called observational bias.

Imo the truth is much scarier: advertises know us better than we known ourselves. There's also the idea that we are so alike, advertises can generalize to great success.

This is especially blatant when you don't fit into any category advertisers understand. Most of them think I'm either a hip urban youth or a well-off exurban housewife. I don't think they know what to do with someone who has associations, friendships, and interests that cross countless geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.

> This is called observational bias.

I think you mean confirmation bias. Observer bias is similar, but relates to being non-blinded during a scientific study.

Confirmation bias means that you want to look for examples of proofing something, instead of seeking counterexamples. That's not it, either.

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or Frequency illusion could be what we were seeking?

I think the truth is actually that we are MUCH less unique than we would like to believe, and that some combination of age + gender + location probably predicts like 80% of our interests.

Curious if any reader here has a data point on that - the # of data points required to predict some larger fraction of your profile.

The logic is that you talk about dozens of things around your phone per day yet you never see an ad targeted at you, you only notice it on the rare occasion it does happen. So either Apple is deciding to only target you with ads very rarely or it’s a rare coincidence.

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