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DefenderOfBasic / communal-science

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Vision #4

Open DefenderOfBasic opened 2 months ago

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

A community where:

⭐ even if your study isn't picked as "the featured study", the platform should give you a way to run your study as just a link/give it your friends

in some ways, this is very similar to Amazon mechanical turk, but free & volunteer and data is open

https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1797772562786922902

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

the goal, really, is for all of us to enjoy the delights of science

huttj commented 2 months ago

I like what you're trying to start! I've tried to do a similar thing in the past, on a different topic, back in the day: https://github.com/SeattleJSHackers/seattlejshackers

People didn't really want to do all that work for our meetup, though. They just wanted to show up, eat the food, and chat. Some attended lectures/whiteboarding sessions, though. 🤷🏻‍♂️

What is your personal goal here?

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

thanks @huttj !!

What is your personal goal here?

I think there's a few goals:

  1. I have questions, and I want to answer them. I often want to run a kind of "ad hoc study/survey" to collect data from my friends/network. (like one question I have is: what youtube ads to people get? I was going to run a mechanical turk survey/task to find this out, but it would be cool to just do it myself/send the link to the survey to friends)

basically it's kind of a spiritual sequel to this project: https://stolaf.dev/7-second-surveys/

  1. I want a thing that is participatory. I think it's one thing to read about someone else's study and the results. I think it's very different to do it yourself, even if you're just trying to reproduce the same results
  2. it would be cool if this could be a platform for actual, novel research (largely limited to pyschology / sociology / any study that can be done with people sitting at their computer filling out data)

initially it would just be people filling out forms, but it could evolve to experiments where you pair 2-3 people in a room (like a turing test thing, or whatever, consensually testing social dynamics)

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

part of it is this attitude people have, this skepticism around science/research/the truth. Here's a thread of people going "Aella's not really interested in the truth, her studies are biased because of her followers!"

https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1794345148333400393

and basically, what I want is, instead of people complaining/arguing, for them to go off and re-run the study and get their own results. Find out for yourself.

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

part of this is heavily inspired by the book "Who are we now?" where he tries to answer very big questions about society and culture, and does it with such rigor. A lot of it is based on surveys that he's sent out through mechanical turk. He does a really good job explaining why he set up the surveys in that way, and what the data tells us. What we are confident in and what is not answered by the data

https://whoarewenow.net/chapter-01/#handedlr

(I think you'd really like this book @huttj )

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

this is NOT what this project does, but this is I think the same vibe/mission. Giving people a way to find out for themselves what's true. (I almost envision a version of this where you have a profile, and you go through a journey to reproduce all important scientific studies in your community/network. Doesn't matter that others already did it, you want to do it yourself)

I just feel like everyone's lives would be improved by having a computational playground you feel comfortable in.

something where, if someone asks an interesting question, you can cook up a simulation/computation to explore that question/idea https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1810108317114540529

DefenderOfBasic commented 2 months ago

This captures my motivation I think:

the best way to increase confidence in the scientific method is not to explain to people why it's good

it's to let them try it on things they know the answer to.

https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1813553325868216761

DefenderOfBasic commented 1 month ago

⭐ related: I had this idea inspired by the explorable explanations community, they once had a "Now I get it" game jam where you collab with a researcher and explain their work

(in my ideal world this jam would include like, a list of papers whose authors have committed to answering questions about it, in a public forum, so they don't have to answer the same question over and over if multiple people are asking)

(I think this builds a stronger sense of, what are those researchers doing anyway, how do we know what we know, how confident are about these results. and I think the layperson starts to see for the first time that some results are rock solid and some results are guesses with incomplete data that we're still trying to validate. they start to build a sense of discernment towards science which I think is great for everyone)

DefenderOfBasic commented 1 month ago

more inspiration: https://x.com/alz_zyd_/status/1815504485806117236

Kris Gulati:

"Science is the best thing that has happened to humans, but we can do it much better." Economist interested in science and innovation.