Experimental History

Indeed, a publishing everything and sometimes retracting it system would work better than our actual system of peer review, which has little to recommend it, isn’t very historical, and mainly leads to unreadable papers. https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-r…

For those of you who are considering the same, the following articles make good arguments - Rolf Dobelli - Towards a healthy news diet [https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf] - Adam Mastroianni - Reading the news is the new smoking [https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new…

I have a friend who is a Barker, who I am always annoyed at because I am a Meek type and I more often than not cannot finish making my points to her. I do not feel that she listens to me. Why do I still like her? This article, to me, pairs very well with the other top post on HN right now [1]. Thanks to that article I learned that we feel more connected towards someone the quicker they reply to us [2]. There's no conclusive evidence for my theory here that being an interrupter can also trigger the "connectability" heuristic, but it's certainly worth considering. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversations-have-lot… [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116915119

pretty hard when about 80% of new films these days are a sequel, remake, or tie into an existing universe[1]. Yes, just watch old films you say, but they're not on the front page of netflix and disney+, where the average person goes for entertainment recommendations. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-o…

https://theconversation.com/hate-the-peer-review-process-einstein-did-… This article mentions Einstein being offended that his paper was submitted to peer review by Physical Review, and submitting it elsewhere instead: "We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorised you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the – in any case erroneous – comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere." I just recently ended up there via this blog: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-r… which argues, not unconvincingly IMO, that peer review is a failed experiment which tries to stop bad science at the price of also stopping brilliant, unconventional science, where instead we would profit more from letting the scientific public do the sorting instead of hand-picked specialists. The author phrases it as science being as strong as its strongest links, not as weak as the weakest one, and we should do everything to get the brilliant crazy ideas.

In practice, peer review isn't even that. Most referees are not double-checking your statistical analysis. What they focus on is whether the research is interesting and has it appropriately considered relevant literature. Even that is not always done carefully. Here is an argument that peer review is basically a failed experiment: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-r…

I came across this recently and your post made me wonder what you'd think of it: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-r… I won't butcher the piece with a poor summary but it's a critical look at the peer review process.

Identify elements of good/bad communication patterns: https://consilienceproject.org/endgames-of-bad-communication/ Non-violent communication is a very structured approach to guiding people through perceived difficult behaviour: https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/2019/03/06/Want-to-improve-your-r… Gain a little understanding about the give and take of communication: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversations-have-lot… If possible, try to spend more time with people who espouse these desired characteristics and less time with those who don't. Finally, conversation should be...fun...if possible. If you hack your way to being 100% in control of things all the time, then how much fun is that going to be for others?

Here's some good advice on what not to do, which you might be doing: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-e… Your problem is not that your "mental state is affecting your ability to learn effectively" as if you were a robot created only to work and learn. Look at yourself with some dignity and compassion.

balance, in all things keep your mind on your self and it's surroundings, and let your self be one with both pleasure and struggle. let not the words of others compel you to eat too many frogs [1] [1]: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-e…

In his article [1] he mentions the Internet as part of a possible explanation in terms of it being easier for amateurs to create and distribute material. But I think the Internet also plays a huge part in the consolidation of fandom. Before the internet, the majority of us could really only share our opinions with those physically nearby, so there were less connections per each node. Enter the internet, now each node has 1000000x more connections, naturally pooling together the ranges of an opinion's influence. The spheres of influence expand while the overall number of spheres shrinks. Just a thought, anyway. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-o…