I'm a LW reader, two time CFAR alumnus, and rationalist entrepreneur. Today I want to talk about something insidious: marketing studies. Until recently I considered studies of this nature merely unfortunate, funny even. However, my recent experiences have caused me to realize the situation is much more serious than this....
Recently I have started using Anki in a new and complimentary way. I am curious if any of you find it similarly useful and/or have other anki tips :) The basic idea is that instead of putting down a challenge/response pair for facts, we put down a challenge/response pair for...
Just wanted to jump in here and say that Nancy, Jeremy, and the whole team are both exceptionally rational, and exceptionally capable. In my ~10 years of programming professionally, Apptimize is easily the best working environment I've experienced.
Absolutely worth checking out.
The karma has spoken. I've registered proveitforreal.com. Thank you!
I think a trademarked "proved" image will do nicely for use on labels :)
"Did you kill yourself at any point during the last 24 hours?" is not likely to produce anything useful at all.
I see. Right now the system doesn't have any defined questions. I believe that suitable questions will be found so I'm focusing on the areas I have a solid background in.
If a project is unsafe in a literal way, shipping the product to consumers (or offering it for sale) is of course illegal. However, when considering a sous vide cooker in the past I have always worried about the dangers of potentially eating undercooked food (eg. diarrhea, nausea, and light headedness), which was how I took your meaning previously. "Product is safe... (read more)
The link I gave to the data collection webapp describes the data collection more depth, which I believe is what you are asking about between 6 and 7.
From that url:
Core function:
Potential changes to this story:
I described an overview in a different thread, but that was before a lot of discussion happened.
I'll use this as an opportunity to update the script based on what has been discussed. This is of course still non-final.
Awesome, great link. Example study here.
I think the needs for this project are still substantially different. Genomera trusts the scientists, which is usually a fine thing to do. I've applied for a beta invite, but don't have access. Based on the example study I've linked it seems like they are more focused on assisting in data gathering (which based on my recent experience seems like the easiest thing we are considering).
Okay, sorry I've been away from the thread for a while. I spent the last half day hacking together a rough version of the data collection webapp. This seemed reasonable because I haven't heard any disagreement on that part of the project, and I hope that having some working code will excite us :)
The models are quite good and well tested at this point, but the interface is still a proof of concept. I'll have some more time tomorrow evening, which will hopefully be enough time to finish off the question rendering and SMS sending. I think with those two features added, we will have a reasonable v1.
We will still need to... (read more)
Ahh, okay. That one goes on the scrap heap.
I think if you change the price of something by an order of magnitude you get a fundamental change in what it's used for. The examples that jump to mind are letters -> email, hand copied parchment -> printing press -> blogs, and SpaceX. If you increase the quality at the same time you (at least sometimes) get a mini-revolution.
I think a better example might be online courses. It can be annoying that you can't ask the professor any questions (customize the experience), but they are still vastly better than nothing.
Hmm. I'm confused. Let's look at something slightly more extreme than what we're talking about and see if that helps.
Level 0: Imagine we make a product study as good as possible, then allows anyone to perform the same study with a different product. Some products "shouldn't" be tested that way, but I don't see how a protocol like that will produce garbage (they will merely establish "no effect").
Level 1: We broaden to support more companies, and allow anyone to perform those studies as well.
Level 2: After a sufficient number of companies have had their experiment created, we take the protocols and create a "build your own experiment constructor kit" which allows for... (read more)
I'm a LW reader, two time CFAR alumnus, and rationalist entrepreneur.
Today I want to talk about something insidious: marketing studies.
Until recently I considered studies of this nature merely unfortunate, funny even. However, my recent experiences have caused me to realize the situation is much more serious than this. Product studies are the public's most frequent interaction with science. By tolerating (or worse, expecting) shitty science in commerce, we are undermining the public's perception of science as a whole.
The good news is this appears fixable. I think we can change how startups perform their studies immediately, and use that success to progressively expand.
Product studies have three features that break the assumptions of traditional... (read 464 more words →)
Recently I have started using Anki in a new and complimentary way. I am curious if any of you find it similarly useful and/or have other anki tips :)
The basic idea is that instead of putting down a challenge/response pair for facts, we put down a challenge/response pair for ways of thinking. A train of thought. Ideally, this is something akin to a lumosity.com game except tailored to your area of focus.
A simple example from algebra:
The fact based approach would be to make a card titled "what is the quadratic formula?" with the answer of "x == (-b +- Sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / 2a"
The way I am recommending is to make a card titled "derive... (read more)
Okay, so I like everyone else's comments, but they feel complicated with what I came up with:
Harry convinces himself of #2 enough to say it in parselmouth.
Harry says "I think I understand the prophecy you're trying to avoid, and I believe killing me makes it happen. I would say more, but you'd probably use it to kill me" in parselmouth.
Harry stays silent.