• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • Maybe the same as with drugs in sports: Self-experimentation can be an expedient shortcut, and scientists are often very competitive people. If results obtained through self-experimentation are rewarded, many scientists would be tempted to do it. Contrary to doping in sport, however, in science you need to at least do something different each time for it to be publication-worthy. That institutes a big skill floor and considerable risk, so I think a self-experimentation epidemic is unlikely. Generally I still think self-experimentation is good, precisely because it’s such a shortcut.













  • Unfortunately not. For me the main problem is discoverability. There’s no recommendation algorithm except for boosts. I’m not suggesting Mastodon integrate some kind of machine learning or other advanced stuff, but number of likes from followed accounts and a threshold would be nice for a start. As it is, Mastodon is just bad for entertainment purposes. Maybe it works for other purposes, but for entertainment I’d rather have the algorithm-fuelled quote-tweet dunking on Twitter.