Experimental History

Any recommendations for writers or bloggers who write plainly/unpretentiously, but have really interesting ideas? First thought was maybe John Salvatier [1] or Adam Mastroianni [2]. [1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-… [2] https://www.experimental-history.com/

https://www.experimental-history.com/ I found Adam Mastroianni's blog through a HN post titled "How to debog Yourself". Unlike another pop-sci articles, this one had actual depth and enjoyed reading it. Since then, I've read and digested most of his posts and comments. He usually writes about human behavior, not really offering the solutions, but the reasons. He is the one author I've screenshot-ed most in 2024. I'd recommend starting with this post: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-throug…

I recently discovered this blog via Adam Mastroianni's essay contest. (my submission on "offensive horticulture" did not even make honorable mention haha) Experimental History, the host of the contest, is a doing amazing work on democratizing science! Check it out [0] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/blog-extravaganza-the-winners [1] https://www.experimental-history.com

Oh, oh, one of the best things I've ever read on this topic is: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new-smo… I should submit this to HN, in fact. It doesn't seem to have ever been submitted.

Recently posted here on HN and well worth a look: Underrated ways to change the world, part II https://www.experimental-history.com/p/underrated-ways-to-change-the-w… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873494 Part I is at https://www.experimental-history.com/p/underrated-ways-to-change-the-w…

Adam Mastroianni talks about this a lot. His best example is at: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-better

I really, really hate how many of my problems are toothbrushing problems. I know I just need to get over it and start brushing, but... ugh. Anyway, can't recommend Adam's writing enough. Subscribed after his second post and have never regretted it. If you liked this, you should also read "You can't reach the brain through the ears", an excellent piece about failing to communicate. https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-throug…

https://maxwelldulin.com/Resources - short summaries of highly technical security posts (4/wk) https://portswigger.net/research - web security research from the geniuses at portswigger (1/wk) https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/ - project zero's research (1/mo) https://hn.invades.space/hn_gems_rss.xml - top links extracted from comments on top hn posts (85/wk) https://kevinlynagh.com/ - posts regularly contain a great selection of links (1/mo) http://www.paulgraham.com/ - classics (1/mo) https://www.bellingcat.com/ - open source research (1/mo) https://pudding.cool/ - art using web technology (1/wk) https://www.experimental-history.com/ - psychology (1/wk)

There are a lot of good arguments [0] that peer review doesn't work, and leads to worse outcomes than just publishing openly and letting the marketplace of ideas decide which papers are actually worthwhile. Think about it. A small group of gatekeepers decides what research is worthwhile and what is not. How well does that kind of gatekeeping work in other areas? For example, Einstein only had one paper peer reviewed (which was rejected) and things turned out well for him. What if his papers had gone through a committee? [0] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie…

> Everything feels hollow now. I'm slightly younger than you are but I remember how video games and sitting in front of my computer made me feel like this. You asked how to be willing to be alone but I will pivot my answer here that maybe you don't have to be alone? If you don't want to be alone here are the steps I would take nowadays. I would recommend finding a improv class. This helps you to get used to laugh to yourself and make a fool of yourself. Also the people attending improv classes are more open in general. When you are more comfortable with these feelings then it becomes easier to open up a conversation with strangers. First times it feels awkward but you can frame the narrative that this is just you learning social skills and your body adapting to the new situation. When you do this enough it becomes easier to find new people into your life. You might feel creepy and they might feel that you're creepy but it becomes easier when you practice. Be open about your learning: "Sorry if I'm bothering you. I'm trying to learn how to speak to others. How is your day going?" If the chit-chat goes well ask them for coffee or a lunch or if they want to join you for a walk with your dog. Strangers often ask if they can pet my dog when walking in the public with her. Put your focus into them rather than your feelings. Ask how their day has been. Ask how do they spend their time. Ask follow up questions: "Oh you like knitting? It reminds me of my Grandma. Are your…

But peer review (circa 1965-2010[1]) is just the prior iteration of the problem[2]; the wave of crap[4] produced by publish or perish (crica 1950-present[4]). Rejecting papers by outsiders is irrelevant; the problem is we want to determine which papers are good/interesting/worth considering out of the fire hose of bilge, and, though we were already arguably failing at this, the problem just got harder. (I say arguably, because there is always the old "try it yourself and see if it actually works" trick, but nobody seems to be fond of this; it smacks of "do your own research" and we're lazy monkeys at heart, who would much rather copy off of someone else's homework.) [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=peer+review&year_sta… [2] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie… [3] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed… [4] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=publish+or+perish&ye…

If you're really asking what the point of humor is, I don't think there's any answer you'll find satisfying. I'll take a stab at it though. In this case, it functions as a hook; it's there to give you a slight chuckle before diving into a long and relatively dry informative article. It's some clear sarcasm makes you evaluate the supposed assertion made - that people who push for IRB evaluations are meanie-heads - and challenges any preconceived notions you might have of it being a simple "this is good" or "this is bad" thing either way because of course it's not that simple. This invites the question to the reader: if it's not as simple as that, then how is it actually? Of course, if the tone doesn't land and you read it as a factual statement - and, importantly, it's so distasteful that you immediately bail and don't read the rest of the article to see what it's actually about, and just assume it's a petulant tirade against IRBs - none of that works. If you're at all interested, I would recommend reading some Adam Mastroianni / Experimental History posts, as it has a very similar feel but plays to the strengths of the tone a bit better (IMO). This one [0] actually touches on the use of humor in scientific papers, and I think makes a pretty good case for why clinical language isn't necessarily a good thing. [0] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie…

Anecdotally.. - Working from home for long stretches.. feels more like "living at work" for me. Hybrid is good. Some boundaries in my life are healthy. - Most people hate their commute. I ride my bike to work and it's the best bit of my day. - I'm in a three person startup.. a ton of the software engineering and business problems I work on get hashed out talking over lunch and coffee—or in 2 minute hallway chats. - I think there's something in it: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2011/04/28/lunch/ - It helps that my office environment is quiet and I get lots of uninterrupted time. My main argument to support work-from-home is because I think building top-notch software is a strong-link problem. https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-proble… A strong link problem is where "overall quality depends on how good the best stuff is". In this environment you really want to attract and hang on to your top performers! So it makes sense to do what you need to do to keep them happy. But also, in my experience, the best performing teams I've ever worked in.. we ate lunch together nearly every day.

I don’t think 50% or greater is a good standard for defining what we would consider to be a major problem with scientific fraud. I’m sure you’re well aware that “major” can refer to relative impact depending on the context of the issue being discussed. In the case of scientific publishing, I would argue that even 5% fraud rate would be grounds for labeling this as a major problem. That said, this issue has received a lot of attention in recent years. Some articles try to put a positive spin on it but the stark truth of where we are today is that there are no standards enforced requiring data publishing (“available on request” doesn’t cut it) and reproducibility. This, combined with the amount of money in this industry and the impact that it has on public policy is an acceptable situation. Some good coverage: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie… (Lots of links to follow on this above post) https://retractionwatch.com/ https://www.science.org/content/article/what-massive-database-retracte… (This one puts a positive spin on the editorial process but the fact remains that there is a massive flood of fraudulent papers being published. Going back to standards of open data plus verified reproducibility would go a long way to mitigate this problem.

Another take: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-los… > So what was the scientific fallout of Stapel's demise? What theories had to be rewritten? What revisions did we have to make to our understanding of the human mind? > Basically none, as far as I can tell. The universities where Stapel worked released a long report cataloging all of his misdeeds, and the part called “Impact of the fraud” (section 3.7 if you're following along at home) details all sorts of reputational harm: students, schools, co-authors, journals, and even psychology itself all suffer from their association with Stapel. It says nothing about the scientific impact—the theories that have to be rolled back, the models that have to be retired, the subfields that are at square one again. And looking over Stapel's retracted work, it's because there are no theories, models, or subfields that changed much at all. The 10,000+ citations of his work now point nowhere, and it makes no difference. > As a young psychologist, this chills me to my bones. Apparently is possible to reach the stratosphere of scientific achievement, to publish over and over again in “high impact” journals, to rack up tens of thousands of citations, and for none of it to matter. Every marker of success, the things that are supposed to tell you that you're on the right track, that you're making a real contribution to science—they might mean nothing at all. So, uh, what exactly am I doing? It's kinda like…

Incentives are for Losers: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/incentives-are-for-losers

I have always found this article on the matter quite revealing: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie…

You may have delivered value in peer review, but on the whole, peer review delivers negative value. https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie… The arXiv vs journal debate seems a lot like 'should the work get done, or should the work get certified' that you see all over 'institutions', and if the certification does not actually catch frauds, it's not making the foundations stronger, which is usually the only justification for the latter side.

The OP is exactly right, in my view: the current charade of paywalled-journal "peer review" is broken beyond repair. See also from the same author: * https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-revie… * https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-dance-of-the-naked-emperors * https://www.experimental-history.com/p/lets-build-a-fleet-and-change-t…

Ever since this post from two weeks ago [0], my wife and I have been referring to any LLM as “bag of words.” So you don’t say “Gemini said” or “I asked ChatGPT,” you say “the bag of words told me…” I’ve found it very grounding, despite heavily using the bags of words. [0] https://www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-words-have-mercy-on-us

Relevant https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-decline-of-deviance

This is from 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32409811 - https://www.experimental-history.com/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier

It does not work that way. The model does not "know". Here is a very nice explanation of what you are actually dealing with (hint: it's not a toddler-level intelligence): https://www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-words-have-mercy-on-us instead of seeing AI as a sort of silicon homunculus, we should see it as a bag of words.

Reminds me of this [1] article. If us humans, after all these years we've been around, can't relay our thoughts exactly as we perceive them in our heads, what makes us think that we can make a model that does it better than us? [1]: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-throug…

Looking at what you wrote about not seeing benefits of anything that doesn't directly contribute to your job fitness - please read this: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eatin… It isn't a waste of time, I promise.

Maybe he's trying to "give" as per https://www.experimental-history.com/p/good-conversations-have-lots-of…

Science as a strong-link problem references this piece, https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-proble… discussed here last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35712694

That post links to another, “Surely you can be serious,” that does a good job defining being serious, pitfalls to avoid, and steps you can take: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/surely-you-can-be-serious

Interesting paper: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-illusion-of-moral-decline Ask "Are people getting less moral/kind/respectful/honest?". Almost everybody will very confidently reply "yes". The most correct answer is "I don't know", although there is good evidence for "no".