I applaud the experiment, and the writeup! Do you have a place where you’ll publish metrics (people contacted, interest level, etc. before starting, and self-reported or objective measures of your stated objectives every week)?
That’s not been formally set, but yes—that’s the biggest ask we get from outsiders interested, and it’s clearly one of the “obvious things” that we ought to do, so it’s been part of the plan for a while now. We just have to hammer out the details once the group is set.
Depending on interest, we may publish those updates here on LW, or make them available through my blog or FB, or some other option we haven’t thought of yet.
From the skeptical side, I would strongly suggest committing to a publicly visible schedule for updates, reports on transitions (e.g. out of bootcamp), and a final report. The outside world would be well served by knowing how this turns out, and having a schedule which is evidently independent of considerations such as “is this currently going well” would do a great deal to reassure us that we will know in time.
I do note that, while I’d like to collect data and make that data available to other humans trying to do cool stuff in the world, I’m not particularly concerned with assuaging all skeptics/reassuring people who, from the outside, think that it’s bad. This post is sort of my one big push to do that, after which I planned to shrug and just let people make the judgments they’re gonna make.
A schedule is still a solid structure just along the “do this properly” axis, though.
That’s absolutely fair. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not about publishable results either way. Like, yes, I’d like to ship useful information to the outside world, but that’s a distant second priority to making good things happen on the ground.
What I do commit to is not making the choice to publish based on whether things are good or bad. I commit to publishing if and only if a) I have spare time and cycles, and b) there’s something useful for others to hear.
The only way there would be nothing useful to learn is if there was a complete failure due to circumstances outside of the influence of anyone involved, such as an earthquake that halted the plan. Even then a quick note to that effect would be of use.
I applaud the experiment, and the writeup! Do you have a place where you’ll publish metrics (people contacted, interest level, etc. before starting, and self-reported or objective measures of your stated objectives every week)?
That’s not been formally set, but yes—that’s the biggest ask we get from outsiders interested, and it’s clearly one of the “obvious things” that we ought to do, so it’s been part of the plan for a while now. We just have to hammer out the details once the group is set.
Depending on interest, we may publish those updates here on LW, or make them available through my blog or FB, or some other option we haven’t thought of yet.
From the skeptical side, I would strongly suggest committing to a publicly visible schedule for updates, reports on transitions (e.g. out of bootcamp), and a final report. The outside world would be well served by knowing how this turns out, and having a schedule which is evidently independent of considerations such as “is this currently going well” would do a great deal to reassure us that we will know in time.
I do note that, while I’d like to collect data and make that data available to other humans trying to do cool stuff in the world, I’m not particularly concerned with assuaging all skeptics/reassuring people who, from the outside, think that it’s bad. This post is sort of my one big push to do that, after which I planned to shrug and just let people make the judgments they’re gonna make.
A schedule is still a solid structure just along the “do this properly” axis, though.
If you don’t commit to publishing negative results, I commit to refusing to trust any positive results you publish.
That’s absolutely fair. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not about publishable results either way. Like, yes, I’d like to ship useful information to the outside world, but that’s a distant second priority to making good things happen on the ground.
What I do commit to is not making the choice to publish based on whether things are good or bad. I commit to publishing if and only if a) I have spare time and cycles, and b) there’s something useful for others to hear.
The only way there would be nothing useful to learn is if there was a complete failure due to circumstances outside of the influence of anyone involved, such as an earthquake that halted the plan. Even then a quick note to that effect would be of use.