I am considering a series of posts in which I list proposals for experiments that I cannot afford to do and plan out the entire study, including the budget, so that if someone so gracious wishes to support such a project, they can donate or crowdfund to see its’ fruition. This is partly due to the fact that I am enrolled in a bunch of classes that are assigning research proposals without the limitations of being practical, due to the ongoing pandemic crisis. My first experiment proposal in this series is almost complete and should be up in early July.
The relentless typer at work below, featuring empty Soylent bottles on the floor.
You could imagine that some rich people could philanthropically ‘shop’ for research proposals from many people’s research proposals in the future. Each experiment is already written as a literature review and the wealthy individual observes the price tag and makes a choice. These experiments could be modular, for example having ‘add-on’ options such as fMRI scanning or EEG, depending on the desired budget. This would allow the experiment to be done either cheaper or higher quality, depending on how much people care about the subject.
This first experiment I’ve built implicates the Zoom video conferencing platform as an element of the methods section so that the experiment is exceedingly accessible. This kind of accessibility could set the way for the future of accessible and budget science, especially as people familiarize with academic video conferencing at this time.
There are a lot of advantages to this strategy of experimentation. It allows a wider reach of participants. We can assign local temporary lab assistants. Perhaps one day there will exist an application much like Uber or Instacart but for video conferencing human experimentation. Local academic labs can be used temporarily to perform experiments. If we are collaborative enough, this may extend access to better technology to less technological universities.
A kind of academic Marxism.
A democratic Marxism in which we can vote through these platforms to see which experiments we grant access to technologies and which experiments are cued. Imagine going to this app and voting with a Reddit-like upvote/downvote system to determine which studies live or die. This might get more people engaged as well. It connects the students’ culture to the sciences’ culture.
The application can determine one’s vote count based on their academic status, so that we do not entirely abandon academic authority. Perhaps the head of the labs can also choose to reject studies sometimes under certain conditions.
A techno- meritocratic democratic Marxist academia.
(yes, it is a joke)
This app may also allow for peer review to take place, perhaps with anyone’s input. Comments could be tiered so that higher status individuals are seen first, but lower status individuals aren’t fully censored.
People could work as temp lab assistants in order to raise their own status as a lab worker. We could make an entire system of indicators that notes what kind of background a person has had. You could imagine that people could grind their lab skills to level up. A gamification of sorts.
Social media could be embedded to this system. It could connect all the universities and labs so that people are more socially networked.
We should also hyperlink DOIs forever from now on and mostly abandon or automate citations because I just put together 80 citations for the new paper and it was horrific! Let’s fix this. Also, citing with (Myself 2020) is pretty obstructing if you cite a lot. There should be some kind of update to MicrosoftWord or PDF files so that we can just hover over a claim to see it’s citation without visual obstruction in the paper. This should be standard in the future.
To see a spoiler to this new project, here is one particularly fascinating observation of visual agnosia:
Future Experiments
As we grow as a community, I am curious to start attempting experiments that can be done using Zoom. Currently I’m sifting through pictures on the web to create a library of aversive stimuli, the kind of stuff that makes you squirm in reaction just by viewing. I won’t go into detail about what this will be used for yet. If you can think of ways to use aversive stimuli in experiments, comment below and maybe we can generate more experiment ideas.
An example of the an aversive image.
If you know of interesting or uncommon aversive imagery, please send away!
For now, I will be off! Hopefully this more casual post was an entertaining intermission to the science exploration unfolding on the blog. I will leave you with a recipe (and a new auditory invention below wot) I’ve been loving lately, you should try it out. A little bit of a pleasant stimuli to shake off the nasty teeth burn.
Oh yeah! If you haven’t yet, check out my newest auditory invention:
The Phoenix Effect
Let it soothe your soul into euphoric, wavy, trippin bliss!
Special thanks to the six patrons: Melissa Bradley, Morgan Catha, Niklas Kokkola, Abhishaike Mahajan, Riley Fitzpatrick, and Charles Wright! Abhi is also the artist who created the cover image for Most Relevant. Please support him on instagram, he is an amazing artist! I’d also like to thank Annie Vu, Chris Byrd, and Kettner Griswold for your kindness and making these projects and the podcast possible through your donations.
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