I'm a self-taught developer and I looove learning things on my own, and I'm a huge advocate for self-taught people whether not they even work in the IT industry.
I envision a world where anyone can truly learn & be anything and the only thing stopping them should be their will, nothing else. It shouldn't matter whether they have the necessary formal education or not.
This platform is my take on the ideal platform for independent self-taught STEM researchers.
A platform where you can publish your research, peer-review others' and talk about any research on the platform itself or any external scientific journal while getting paid for your research.
Are you an adult who just thought of a way to watermark songs?
Write here and maybe in a computer science journal too!
Are you a kid who just found out about static electricity?
Write here!
Or are you just casually trying different ANN architectures for your ML Model?
Write here!
It doesn't matter if your research is operating at the state-of-the-art level or that of a young curious kid, as long as you follow the method of science for observing, experimenting and drawing conclusions, you can write here!
The bleeding edge of science nowadays may seem pretty far away from general understanding, but that shouldn't stop us from making efforts to understand it right?!
So what!? I can talk about my research on YouTube & Twitter too, why do I need this platform?
Yup, you can definitely do that!
But there's a problem there, let's talk about other platforms now shall we?
It's all about the incentives!
The current state of media platforms is that they are highly emotionally incentivised by design. The post/video that has exceptionally high emotional reactivity and is the most attention-grabbing, wins the promotion contest and gets promoted to a larger audience. Spiralling into a positive feedback loop. becoming "viral".
Creators actively chase these incentives to maximise their reach and have no choice other than to follow platforms' content interests if they want to reach a larger audience.
Platforms design creator incentives such that the creator who posts frequently and attracts the largest audience is shown the most.
Short-form content (e.g. reels) is the winner in this scenario. If done right, it can be addictively engaging and is relatively easier to make than say an average 15-minute video.
Comprehensive & deeply detailed content is NOT the staple of this generation of media platforms.
The Problem
Dopamine
Because of the design of such type of content, the consumers/users end up with higher than usual levels of dopamine momentarily causing a loss of mental focus on other tasks that are any less engaging.
Long-term exposure to such high levels of dopamine may result in longer periods in which the mind is restless, anxious & actively looking for some stimulation.
Absence of Informative & Deeply-Detailed Content
Let's take an example of YouTube...
The most popular general public science channel Kurzgesagt doesn't even make the top 100 list on YouTube.
And Kurzgesagt doesn't even go into details as it has to keep things engaging & general-public compatible.
Release
I'm aiming for a fully-featured product launch in ~3 months.
For now, I've launched a waitlist, please consider joining the waitlist if this spikes your interest: amateurscientists.in.
If you'd like to contribute towards the development or have a casual discussion on this topic, My inbox is always open: amateurscientists.in@gmail.com
Until next time, folks!
Top comments (5)
That's interesting!
I understood and partially agree with the problem, but what is the solution?
still need to drill down the specifics but here this goes...
everything will revolve around "Amateur Research Papers" or ARPs so to speak,
there would be options to do "commentary content".
i would categorize "commentary content" as short twitter-like posts, reels or blogs,
calling them commentary as, that's what they usually are, commenting/expressing one's opinion or feeling towards something, and that something HAS TO BE research-related, that's the main idea.
every commentary content, might have references to other commentary content, but it will have a link to the original research paper(s) whether its on this site i.e an ARP or a professional research paper on arxiv or something,
that way, any form of content on this site, that is brief & might be unclear has a clear context of origin, where that thing originated from and a network of related commentary content around it.
there are other nitty-gritty details but this is the general idea.
It is too broad, and you are trusting in the user to post something research related.
Usually, scientific content creators have to shape things to fit in the platform that they are publishing (YT, TikTok, IG, etc...). And those platforms want views and money, not quality of content.
Creating a social media with a different weight algorithm (as is this one), can be a solution for that, but will the users migrate to it?
I'm still missing a solution idea:
users migrating to it is gonna be the main problem, at best the platform can provide easy content import features, maybe even auto-import after authenticating into their youtubes, twitters & custom blogs...
and yes, it seems broad, because honestly, i haven't settled on a concrete & focused solution idea yet, I'm still watching how this idea develops in my mind while building but, if i have to give an answer, i'd say to do the following:
provide a way for people who are willing to learn & have an interest in research to start from zero, learn, grow & eventually earn as an independent researcher & also collaborate with other similar minds.
great idea +1