I find this idea of an Iterative Kickstarter particularly useful because of my fear of being taken advantage of.
This fear doesn’t come out of nowhere; some work of mine from a student portfolio I created about 7 years ago as a graphic design student was basically stolen and I wasn’t credited or paid for the work I had done. I sent it out as requested, with my resume while applying for design positions. Just last year I was watching tv and saw a sllightly changed version of the spec work I had done in my portfolio. Same type of company, same domain, but a national company used it without giving me any compensation. I consulted an IP lawyer who told me this kind of thing happens all the time, especially to students and in the world of Graphic Design. So I’m sensitive to the possibilities of sharing my work with untrustworthy people, but I would like to maximize the potential of sharing it with people I trust.
I’m looking to connect with people who can offer suggestions, and/or who I can bounce ideas of off and/or who I can potentially collaborate with, because I’m also anxious about sharing my work in public before it seems reasonably fit for ‘publication.’ ( I do see posting on forums as a sort of publication, maybe not as formally recognized as being published in a journal, but it is publicity none the less.)
Seeing as how I’m not currently allied with an organization I can rely on for support, I’m wondering:
“How do I build trust within the LW community so that I could share and develop some of my ideas without the unreasonable fear of other people using my work in a meaningful way without sharing credit with me?”
I’m trying to move from concept to prototype
A lot of my work is pretty conceptual at this point, and in order to move it forward I think it needs statistical and/or mathematical analysis. I’ve made some of my best attempts at this process, which has gotten me some promising results, but my ‘para-mathematical’ analysis ( the off the top of my heard term for the creative use of formulaic principles to find meaning by people with little to no formal scientific training that’s sort of ‘adjacent to math’)could benefit from the input of people who do have those scientific and mathematical skills.
I look at my work as art at this point, which I would love to share as art, but it also has the potential to be more than a pretty, thought provoking image. It deals with very real issues in a way which creates in me at least, the motivation to pursue the ideas involved with a scientific rigor.
Some of my ideas involve the need for datasets that don’t yet exist, and the consideration of the possibility—as well as the utility and meaning—of creating them; what would it mean for modern society if some of these datasets did exist, how would it change the world, and is it worth devoting the time, energy and resources to gather and analyze the data? Discussing it is one thing, but actually working at creating the datasets would be something else.
Too often I think that data scientists, ML and AI researchers and statisticians settle for working with the data sets that exist, which confine their work to predetermined areas and domains of interest. In essence I think this forces them into filter bubbles which dilutes the objectivity of the overall scientific understanding of society and culture, and sets us along a path which is potentially unhealthy for the planet and for the continued existence of all life on the planet). Obviously I think there are many ML and AI researchers who share these same concerns as is evident in many of the posts on this forum.
With these ideas in mind, I’m trying to push my ideas into concepts which can be prototyped and tested.
I try to study what I refer to as the Unintended Consequences of human cultural and technological endeavors.
For instance, one of the major ideas I keep coming back to involves a common phrase applied to the information age:
“Data is the new oil.”
Thinking this way provides a good analogy to help people understand how data can provide fuel for the engine of society, and for all the positive progress that can be made in this regard. But It also has serious negative connotations.
Since plastics are produced from oil, we could consider “what is the new ’mass of plastic bags floating in the ocean?” or the new “micro plastics polluting our environment?” What is the new “choice at the grocery store between paper bags or plastic bags?” or the new “city dump clogged with millions of tons of the decades worth of discarded plastic wrappers from food packaging, or the discarded electronics of a consumer culture?” or even more directly, what is the new “Exxon Valdez oil spill?”
Polluted Data and Data Pollution
Society is already dealing with many of these issues, as thinking of Data as the new Oil has many, many implications for many parts of society. One of which that should concern us all is the idea that even just one of the many recent data breaches is analogous to something like the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The uncontrolled, unintended leaking of important resources into a ecosystem is a huge cause of concern. If each of the data breaches individually, are analogous to a single massive oil spill, when we consider how many data breaches there have been over the last 2 decades, that’s a huge environmental disaster.
When the environmental costs of massive oil spills last for decades if not centuries, In much the same way, I believe the societal costs of Data breaches will potentially last for at least as long, if not for the rest of the time humanity exists.
Pointing out these types of relationships of meaning, to analyze and assess how they matter, and to conceptualize designs for their solution, is important and I believe that I have some unique insight into how ML and AI could be used.
Recognizing my Limits
I have concepts and ideas, but I don’t have the skills to realize a prototype. This is why I want input and collaboration. Hopefully I can use use my ‘artistic’ sense of intuition to help the scientific community get outside of a filter bubble I believe they are partly inside of, and I can finally put to use the research and critical thinking skills I’ve worked all my life to develop in a way that creates a sense of community for me, and maybe even making a living doing it as some point.
I know that some of the ideas I’ve come up with more than likely already exist in the pantheon of the sciences, but I’m pretty sure some of them are new. It would be nice to work out which was which, and to be able to then focus on the ideas which are new, instead of continually reinventing the wheel.
In my posts and comments I’ve tried to leave indications of the types of work and thinking I’ve done, without providing full disclosure. I don’t want to give it all away, without getting something worthwhile in return.
So I’m looking to collaborate with people on something, but I don’t know exactly what yet. In the long run I think I would like to be the intermediary between tool makers and the tool users, helping both to create the tool and to use it for further research if things turn out well. But how I get there from here is the challenge.
If I were able to run a non-profit, it would consist of statisticians and programmers working to help analyze specific parts of the culture which I believe are under-served by the technology sector. These under-represented facets of society, skew the data and statistics, leave impurities in the oil if you will, that the government and corporate worlds rely on for making decisions which affect nearly every aspect of human life and the natural world. But without funding, I can’t hire people to help, so I’m trying to work around the edges of the problem.
Pushing Limits
Some of my beliefs could be considered controversial, and might result in the formation of unpopular opinions. But the thing about culture is, many unpopular opinions at the time become common sense decades later.
The War on Drugs in the US is a prime example of the costs of making miscalculations in legislation that aren’t backed up by science. The societal costs of this once popular War—in terms of money, resources, lives, and overall human suffering—is staggering in the light of the recent seeming 180 in the issue of Marijuana in the states. Legalization at the state level in many states of Marijuana, seems ‘common sense’ now, but in the previous decades it was ‘common sense’ to hide your use because of how severely drug related crimes were being prosecuted. Mass incarceration and the Opioid Crisis are only 2 examples of the suffering caused by faulty legislation based on junk science. Could we have avoided this disastrous War with better, more rational thinking a couple decades back?
I’m continuing to absorb the posts I find interesting and accessible, and going back to the Sequences a little at a time as i try to examine what I read against my own thinking. But ultimately I hope to get help moving forward with my work in a more productive manner, as I do view my work as being pretty rational.
A Request for Help
I find this idea of an Iterative Kickstarter particularly useful because of my fear of being taken advantage of.
This fear doesn’t come out of nowhere; some work of mine from a student portfolio I created about 7 years ago as a graphic design student was basically stolen and I wasn’t credited or paid for the work I had done. I sent it out as requested, with my resume while applying for design positions. Just last year I was watching tv and saw a sllightly changed version of the spec work I had done in my portfolio. Same type of company, same domain, but a national company used it without giving me any compensation. I consulted an IP lawyer who told me this kind of thing happens all the time, especially to students and in the world of Graphic Design. So I’m sensitive to the possibilities of sharing my work with untrustworthy people, but I would like to maximize the potential of sharing it with people I trust.
I’m looking to connect with people who can offer suggestions, and/or who I can bounce ideas of off and/or who I can potentially collaborate with, because I’m also anxious about sharing my work in public before it seems reasonably fit for ‘publication.’ ( I do see posting on forums as a sort of publication, maybe not as formally recognized as being published in a journal, but it is publicity none the less.)
Seeing as how I’m not currently allied with an organization I can rely on for support, I’m wondering:
“How do I build trust within the LW community so that I could share and develop some of my ideas without the unreasonable fear of other people using my work in a meaningful way without sharing credit with me?”
I’m trying to move from concept to prototype
A lot of my work is pretty conceptual at this point, and in order to move it forward I think it needs statistical and/or mathematical analysis. I’ve made some of my best attempts at this process, which has gotten me some promising results, but my ‘para-mathematical’ analysis ( the off the top of my heard term for the creative use of formulaic principles to find meaning by people with little to no formal scientific training that’s sort of ‘adjacent to math’) could benefit from the input of people who do have those scientific and mathematical skills.
I look at my work as art at this point, which I would love to share as art, but it also has the potential to be more than a pretty, thought provoking image. It deals with very real issues in a way which creates in me at least, the motivation to pursue the ideas involved with a scientific rigor.
Some of my ideas involve the need for datasets that don’t yet exist, and the consideration of the possibility—as well as the utility and meaning—of creating them; what would it mean for modern society if some of these datasets did exist, how would it change the world, and is it worth devoting the time, energy and resources to gather and analyze the data? Discussing it is one thing, but actually working at creating the datasets would be something else.
Too often I think that data scientists, ML and AI researchers and statisticians settle for working with the data sets that exist, which confine their work to predetermined areas and domains of interest. In essence I think this forces them into filter bubbles which dilutes the objectivity of the overall scientific understanding of society and culture, and sets us along a path which is potentially unhealthy for the planet and for the continued existence of all life on the planet). Obviously I think there are many ML and AI researchers who share these same concerns as is evident in many of the posts on this forum.
With these ideas in mind, I’m trying to push my ideas into concepts which can be prototyped and tested.
I try to study what I refer to as the Unintended Consequences of human cultural and technological endeavors.
For instance, one of the major ideas I keep coming back to involves a common phrase applied to the information age:
“Data is the new oil.”
Thinking this way provides a good analogy to help people understand how data can provide fuel for the engine of society, and for all the positive progress that can be made in this regard. But It also has serious negative connotations.
Since plastics are produced from oil, we could consider “what is the new ’mass of plastic bags floating in the ocean?” or the new “micro plastics polluting our environment?” What is the new “choice at the grocery store between paper bags or plastic bags?” or the new “city dump clogged with millions of tons of the decades worth of discarded plastic wrappers from food packaging, or the discarded electronics of a consumer culture?” or even more directly, what is the new “Exxon Valdez oil spill?”
Polluted Data and Data Pollution
Society is already dealing with many of these issues, as thinking of Data as the new Oil has many, many implications for many parts of society. One of which that should concern us all is the idea that even just one of the many recent data breaches is analogous to something like the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The uncontrolled, unintended leaking of important resources into a ecosystem is a huge cause of concern. If each of the data breaches individually, are analogous to a single massive oil spill, when we consider how many data breaches there have been over the last 2 decades, that’s a huge environmental disaster.
When the environmental costs of massive oil spills last for decades if not centuries, In much the same way, I believe the societal costs of Data breaches will potentially last for at least as long, if not for the rest of the time humanity exists.
Pointing out these types of relationships of meaning, to analyze and assess how they matter, and to conceptualize designs for their solution, is important and I believe that I have some unique insight into how ML and AI could be used.
Recognizing my Limits
I have concepts and ideas, but I don’t have the skills to realize a prototype. This is why I want input and collaboration. Hopefully I can use use my ‘artistic’ sense of intuition to help the scientific community get outside of a filter bubble I believe they are partly inside of, and I can finally put to use the research and critical thinking skills I’ve worked all my life to develop in a way that creates a sense of community for me, and maybe even making a living doing it as some point.
I know that some of the ideas I’ve come up with more than likely already exist in the pantheon of the sciences, but I’m pretty sure some of them are new. It would be nice to work out which was which, and to be able to then focus on the ideas which are new, instead of continually reinventing the wheel.
In my posts and comments I’ve tried to leave indications of the types of work and thinking I’ve done, without providing full disclosure. I don’t want to give it all away, without getting something worthwhile in return.
So I’m looking to collaborate with people on something, but I don’t know exactly what yet. In the long run I think I would like to be the intermediary between tool makers and the tool users, helping both to create the tool and to use it for further research if things turn out well. But how I get there from here is the challenge.
If I were able to run a non-profit, it would consist of statisticians and programmers working to help analyze specific parts of the culture which I believe are under-served by the technology sector. These under-represented facets of society, skew the data and statistics, leave impurities in the oil if you will, that the government and corporate worlds rely on for making decisions which affect nearly every aspect of human life and the natural world. But without funding, I can’t hire people to help, so I’m trying to work around the edges of the problem.
Pushing Limits
Some of my beliefs could be considered controversial, and might result in the formation of unpopular opinions. But the thing about culture is, many unpopular opinions at the time become common sense decades later.
The War on Drugs in the US is a prime example of the costs of making miscalculations in legislation that aren’t backed up by science. The societal costs of this once popular War—in terms of money, resources, lives, and overall human suffering—is staggering in the light of the recent seeming 180 in the issue of Marijuana in the states. Legalization at the state level in many states of Marijuana, seems ‘common sense’ now, but in the previous decades it was ‘common sense’ to hide your use because of how severely drug related crimes were being prosecuted. Mass incarceration and the Opioid Crisis are only 2 examples of the suffering caused by faulty legislation based on junk science. Could we have avoided this disastrous War with better, more rational thinking a couple decades back?
I’m continuing to absorb the posts I find interesting and accessible, and going back to the Sequences a little at a time as i try to examine what I read against my own thinking. But ultimately I hope to get help moving forward with my work in a more productive manner, as I do view my work as being pretty rational.