Comments on: Assorted Links http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/ Self-Experimentation, Scientific Method, the Shangri-La Diet, etc. Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:02:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.7 by: Jarno Virtanen http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257455 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:12:05 +0000 http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257455 Yep, makes sense. :-) Yep, makes sense. :-)

]]> by: seth http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257454 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:50:45 +0000 http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257454 Jarno, that sounds like me when I was a first-year graduate student. I'd think of some design, then think of the flaws in it. Then think of another design, think of the flaws in it. And on and on. That was naive. More reasonable was to do something and try to learn from it rather than try to predict the future without any data. Jarno, that sounds like me when I was a first-year graduate student. I’d think of some design, then think of the flaws in it. Then think of another design, think of the flaws in it. And on and on. That was naive. More reasonable was to do something and try to learn from it rather than try to predict the future without any data.

]]> by: Jarno Virtanen http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257426 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:34:27 +0000 http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-257426 Hmh, maybe "reliable" was the wrong word. What I meant that it's difficult to come up with a metric for a complex behavior or problem in the first place. Coming up with a metric for something like sustaining attention or ability to direct attention seems somewhat difficult. Whatever simple metric one comes up with, there's always the doubt whether it actually measures the thing you're trying to affect with your experimentation. That said, I do understand that the value of self-experimentation comes from finding some effect, which sometimes isn't what you were looking for in the first place. (Or perhaps lack of effect sometimes.) Hmh, maybe “reliable” was the wrong word. What I meant that it’s difficult to come up with a metric for a complex behavior or problem in the first place. Coming up with a metric for something like sustaining attention or ability to direct attention seems somewhat difficult. Whatever simple metric one comes up with, there’s always the doubt whether it actually measures the thing you’re trying to affect with your experimentation.

That said, I do understand that the value of self-experimentation comes from finding some effect, which sometimes isn’t what you were looking for in the first place. (Or perhaps lack of effect sometimes.)

]]> by: seth http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-254568 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:15:16 +0000 http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-254568 Jarno, I don't know what you mean by "reliable". There is error -- variation, noise, whatever you want to call it -- in everything. Whether the noise is small enough to detect interesting things is very hard to tell without actually trying it. Jarno, I don’t know what you mean by “reliable”. There is error — variation, noise, whatever you want to call it — in everything. Whether the noise is small enough to detect interesting things is very hard to tell without actually trying it.

]]> by: Jarno Virtanen http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-254485 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:36:18 +0000 http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/01/02/assorted-links-18/#comment-254485 I find the difficult thing about self-experimentation to be the problem of finding reliable tests of progress, especially in the case of mental performance. It's easy to measure something like weight or the quality of the sleep, but it's much more difficult to get a reliable measure of sustaining attention, for example. I'm not saying it should be easy and I guess reliable measurements of various aspects of mental performance would borderline making novel science. But I think many others like me are interested in doing self-experiments, but the difficulty is to find useful and reliable experiments. I find the difficult thing about self-experimentation to be the problem of finding reliable tests of progress, especially in the case of mental performance. It’s easy to measure something like weight or the quality of the sleep, but it’s much more difficult to get a reliable measure of sustaining attention, for example.

I’m not saying it should be easy and I guess reliable measurements of various aspects of mental performance would borderline making novel science. But I think many others like me are interested in doing self-experiments, but the difficulty is to find useful and reliable experiments.

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