Defender's PhD
Pursuing independent research in "culture science". My current focus is developing experimental techniques, documenting them, and carrying out experiments to corroborate or falsify theories. See: list of people I believe are in this field.
My background is in computer science & math. I worked in tech for 6 years (geospatial software).
You can follow my writing on Substack.
š Research statement
The behavior of groups of humans can be predicted with great precision. Private entities that have a lot of data about people can already do this. We should study this in the open so we can protect ourselves, and also because we'll have much better data, and much better models. This will help us align our incentives with those with power, or confirm it's not possible, and instead find & cooperate with the groups who are aligned with us.
solve cooperation, use it to solve everything else - @IvanVendrov
My top priority is figuring out how to study, predict, and engineer our culture safely. I'm doing this work 100% in the open for this reason.
š Directions I'm currently working on
š§āš« Advisors
- Slime Mold Time Mold, (active researchers on the internet, of "potato diet" fame)
- Park Doing, PhD (retired, Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell, author of "Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Biology, Physics, and Change in Science")
š° Funding
Currently self funded.
If you know of any funding opportunities for my work please let me know.
š§ Long term vision
If I can do a good job learning, writing as I go, getting feedback from researchers on the internet, and eventually publishing something novel & useful, I can get an endorsement from people with academic credentials. My reward would be status, that I can use to further my career as a researcher, or hold a position in a corporation furthering this work.
I want to contribute to a world where all tribes on earth have access to tools to study themselves, safely in private if needed, and to signal what they want to signal publicly about themselves. We would see culture as open source, art is forked & remixed, not frozen by copyright.
Our culture is open source & needs ongoing maintenance.
(1) humans need tribes (2) tribes need walls (3) "the other side is evil" is an effective way of reinforcing those walls, but it's not true (4) finding a way to reinforce walls that IS true is better for everyone https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1858204201211334690