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A new service called “Hunch” has been getting some buzz around the blogosphere.  Started by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, this website aims to help the indecisive among us make good decisions on a range of topics.  The project is still in private beta so most of us will need to wait to get a direct look, but reading some reviews so far sparked some thoughts about this service and what it says about our ability to make decisions.

The Good

• Hunch applies a “crowd-sourcing” strategy (like Wikipedia) to the problem of making decisions.  It’s worked fairly well in other spheres, so why not here?
• Many other users giving input to your questions provide a range of knowledge, opinion, and experience on various topics.
• It asks a series of relevant questions to the issue, helping a person think through the process of coming to a good conclusion (this could potentially help a person learn to make good decisions on their own, too)

The Bad

• It defers responsibilty for making decisions to a service, enabling those who are indecisive to delay growing up and making their own choices
• A group of strangers doesn’t know all the factors of the situation you’re in, and their advice will only be effective to the limits of their knowledge of your context
• It takes what should be the role of a community to support, encourage, and advise people and relegates it to a virtual community that may lack those real-life personal ties.
• Hunch relies on the wisdom of the masses (or at least those that choose to respond to your question) to provide a correct decision.  The problem is, the majority opinion isn’t always the right decision.

I definitely think Hunch has potential and will probably be a successful service.  It could be a great help for everyday questions like, “What should I wear today?”, “Which insurance company should I use?”, or “Where should I go for dinner tonight?”  I’m wary, however, of using a service like this to answer some of life’s more significant questions.  In the end, we are responsible for our own decisions and need to take responsibility for them, but a trusted community of friends and mentors can make all the difference, too.

Learn more about Hunch here:

• Techcrunch
• ReadWriteWeb

I normally don’t like Rush Limbaugh very much.  Even on the rare occasion that I agree with something he’s saying, I just find him abrasive and unlikeable, and it’s not too often that I’d find myself making the effort to support his agenda.  However, today is one of those rare days.

Mr. Limbaugh just wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal in which he calls on President Obama to keep the airwaves open and not take any action, whether direct or indirect, to censor others’ opinions.  For once, I agree.  I happen to be a strong proponent of free speech, so while I don’t like a lot of what Mr. Limbaugh has to say, not to mention a lot of the other junk that’s out there on the radio and TV, I completely support their right to say it.

Especially for Christians in this country, it’s easy for us to see or hear things that we don’t like being broadcast, and begin to make calls for laws that ban certain kinds of speech.  This is a natural response, since we don’t want ourselves or our children to have to listen to what we consider offensive.  However, if we begin passing laws banning speech that we find objectionable or offensive, that leads down a slippery slope from which it may be difficult to recover.

Think about this: How long do you think it will take after a law is passed banning something that offends someone for people to start writing laws that ban evangelism?  How about laws that ban condemning sin?  Maybe laws that say churches have to give equal time to speakers from other religions?  It may seem far-fetched, but to citizens of many other nations, these restrictions are already all too real.

The founders of our country had a lot of wisdom in explicitly affirming many of the rights that are available to us, and it would be foolish to try to strike them down because we are offended or don’t agree with what someone else is saying.  I hope that Christians around the country will be able to support free speech, even if they don’t like what they hear, so that our children and their children after them can still share the gospel openly and freely.