I’ve been reading about ‘subjective reviews’ for a while and admit I was initially like, WTF? But I’ve recently come around. Let me explain.
A while back, my wife and I got pizza from a new pizza place. After we were 2 slices in I said, “Wow! I like this pizza better than Sal’s!”
To which my wife responded, “I don’t.”
Eureka! It was like being struck by lightning. It turns out I was just talking about my subjective taste, not some universal truth about how good this new pizza was compared to our regular pizza.
Based on this experience, we went about performing blind testing on different pizza to find the best in our area. The methodology employed included delivery only so as not to be influenced by the decor of the pizza parlor or the people who work there, we never asked about the cost of the pie and had the delivery person leave the pizza on the front stoop. We covered the box with a towel so as not to be swayed by its appearance—bad pizza in a fancy box is one of the oldest tricks in the book. We then went about performing rapid A/B tests, making sure the slices were temperature matched.
It was only after performing these controlled blind tests that we can now say, with scientific certainty and authority, that Frank’s is the best pizza in our area. The thing most people don’t think about or don’t realize is you can’t make pizza without using science, which means that only science can tell us how successful, or not, the implementation of the pie is. And Frank’s isn’t the most expensive pizza in our area, so we’re saving money unlike all those suckers who pay more for an inferior product.
If you haven’t put in the work we’ve done, the best you can ever say is, “I just ate a subjectively great piece of pizza.”
We’re so excited about the success of our pizza experiment that we plan to use similar methodology to pick our next pet.