I think it’s important to treat solutions and argument differently, because they are not the same thing. If they were mutually exchangable, for example turning an argument into a real solution, then it would make sense to use a universal formula for both, but they are not equivalent.
It would be different if the platform was only for arguments and sub-arguments or only for solutions and sub-solutions, but it mixes solutions with arguments and treating them both as if they were basically the same is not really appropriate from my point of view.
Hm, yeah I think you are right. I was thinking of them generally as “ideas”. But they are different, true. Ok so we can keep them separate as you said. Your comment on solutions as sub-solutions though did give me the idea that over the tree of arguments there could be a tree of solutions, and above it, maybe a tree of problems/goals.
This is stranding away from the decision making platform, but it does link it nicely with the idea of Jera of organizing Projects and Goals. This makes me think that the structure of the goals in Jera is actually more of an unhierarchical network instead of a tree. If that was applied to arguments, I guess we would be talking about Maximo’s idea. In this system, you could make an argument for/against more than one arguments/solutions.
That’s certainly an interesting idea. But you need to consider that one problem can have many potential solutions, but also that one solution might solve multiple solutions simultaneously. So, a simple hierarchy isn’t appropriate when you both have problems and solutions. The real structure would be a rather complicated network of relations: Problem-subproblem relations, solution-subsolution relations and problem-solution relations.
Yes, that’s why the Jera structure isn’t simply a hierarchical tree, but allows for hierarchical and unhierarchical connections, and even for the hierarchical ones it doesn’t form a tree because a child may have more than one parent (which doesn’t happen in trees), which may correspond to a solution for more than one problem.
It seems that there are basically two different approaches here:
Is to make a really big platform with a huge network of relations between problems, solutions, and arguments. This would be enlightening in its own right. Also, this could be combined with some kind of voting system or not.
Focusing on the decision making part: There’s only the decision/argument tree and votes are separate for decisions and arguments. This is still relatively simply, so it doesn’t confront the user with a huge network of interrelations.
Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. It might make sense to create a project for each one. Or just to pick the one with the most promising potential. I think the decision forest idea seems more immediately promising and useful. The large network project would be rather some long-term project.
I’ve recently started working on concept for a collaborative problem solving platform. There is a landing page at www.BUMPconductor.com. First goal is to create an open database of big unsolved meaningful problems worth solving (BUMPs). Am calling this database ‘‘OpenBump’’.
Am at a very early stage with all of this - but would be good to have a chat to see if we could collaborate in someway.
Excellent Guillermo. We seem to headed in the same direction - I see a great opportunity here. I sincerely hope we can find a way for us all to pull together.
As a bit of background, besides the BumpConductor concept have also begun working on a complementary system called ‘‘The Internet-of-Thinkers’’. Besides the software and overall architecture side of things have spent quite some time thinking about these concepts from a commercial/product point of view - though I must stress that my motivation for these initiatives isn’t financial. Obviously we need financial fuel to help make our dreams reality (at least until we can change things).
Also been contacting other parties who are also either working or talking about similar initiatives. Have met with a few people so far and have other meetings planned - including one tomorrow morning here in Amsterdam.
Generally I’ve been ‘connecting the dots’ and I think I can see how this can done.
We can absolutely make this happen if we can create a mission driven team, organize ourselves, get some fuel, and start to deliver something of value.
Regarding your spec - Have had a quick look on github and will take time tomorrow afternoon to give it a good read through. Am wondering if any of you have an experience with agile delivery techniques and capturing requirements using ‘user stories’?
Hello, I found this group as it was linked from the Zero State Facebook group.
In 2012, I designed an algorithm to determine the rating system for exactly the kind of system described here. Basically, problems presented were tagged by the userbase, and multiple tags would be used, and the tags would even be weighted. So eventually the system could see a problem which is 80 percent of topic A, 15 percent topic B, 5 percent topic C. Each user would also have a perceived skill level, which is a combination of a “global skill level” and the skill level of the various topics that they have, in relation to the tags.
I still have a spreadsheet which describes the algorithm. It’s never been built/implemented, so it would need some further research and testing. But the basic foundations are there.
I discussed the idea and the algorithm with Ben Goertzel, and his response seemed rather enthusiastic and he suggested turning it into an open source discussion platform of some sort.
I don’t believe the rating system would have to be tied to the problem and solution system. A library could be built which has the abstract building blocks to determine the ratings and so on. Then a service which is more specialized towards problem solving and finding solutions, could be built on top of it. And other services similar to Reddit or other tagging systems could be built on top of the library as well.
I’m interested in chatting about this sometime with whomever is interested. I don’t have time to do any coding right now as I work a very busy day job as a software engineer. But I could work alongside a developer that wishes to do this.
Awesome! Thanks for telling us how you found us! Welcome to the Fractal Future Forum, where interesting people meet and find out that there something thinking along very similar or complementary lines.
Wow, that beautifully ties into the crowd tagging and tag rating system that I’ve proposed to Democratic Intelligence and the Future Portal project. It’s cool to hear that you already have a fully developed algorithm that does that beautifully.
You could upload the spreadsheet to a post of yours, if you feel generous and courageous. Otherwise, there’s also the possibility to send it to select users of this forum via private messages. I am quite interested in the algorithm, certainly. It seems to be such a useful building block for complex crowd-based platforms.
I really like that you are aiming so high and contact geniuses like Ben Goertzel who actually validate your idea I should be doing more of this, but I seem to be a little bit too shy.
Ah, I can totally empathize with your situation. There are a lot of people with great ideas here. Many also have some good coding experience. Many also do not have much spare time. This suggests to me that we should reach out to hobby coders who want to try out their coding skills by implementing cool ideas. If you know such people, please invite them in! Your system is not the only one that needs to be implemented.
I am looking to collaborate on this, but sharing the intimate technical details will come at a later phase of the project. Finding out who the right people are, if any, comes before that. For every 10 people who have stated that they are interested, I see about 1 person who is serious about it.
The engineering portion of the project is definitely not for hobbyist coders and would have a better chance with two serious engineers with the motivation and commitment to see the project through.
But anyone who has serious interest in such a system should join in on the discussion to help think about and decide what the system should actually do, what the target audience would be, whether it would be a commercial project, and so on.
Why? People might pick up your idea and implement it in their own projects. Wouldn’t you want that to happen?
That sounds like an unusually high ratio! You should be happy about that! Usually, this ratio is more like 100:1.
You are defining high demands. In this case, and given how I see your system, I see different paths to proceed:
Create a start-up that focuses on building something with your system.
Open source what you have and hope that the open source community picks up on it and implements the bits and pieces that are useful into various different projects. This may indeed the better way to go, since your algorithm feels more like a general purpose tool for collaborative software than a stand-alone product. In that sense, it’s quite comparable to my reputation system Quantified Prestige.
I considered creating a startup. But I don’t think there is a realistic market for such a thing. That’s not to say that it isn’t useful, but I don’t see any viable way to market it.
Open source is fine, but creating an open source project is not the same as giving away an algorithm for someone else to use in their own project. If I get around to building a proof of concept, it can go on Github where the originator of the system can be verified and credit can be given. If someone wants to dedicate their spare time on this project, and only this project, and if we work well together, then we can get it done even faster.
Regarding the requirement for experienced developers. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years, and have interviewed a lot of candidates for jobs and worked with all shapes and sizes of developers. You just don’t get ahead in ambitious projects by having your core team consist of people that you have to babysit. I spend most of my day job lately cleaning up bad code left over from a developer whom my former boss allowed free reign on the project. Five bad developers can be worse than one good one, often even producing a net negative utility.
A core team of relatively experienced developers should co-found an ambitious open source project. If it’s a simpler project, you only need one person with plenty of spare time. Once a good team cohesion is established, with the members having a good understanding of the goals of the project and the code base, then the volunteer developers can start contributing, and those contributions can be integrated into the repository in a sane and supervised manner. Having a swarm of newbie developers as “the team”, on the other hand, brings all sorts of problems that you don’t want.
I would rather wait until it can be done right than risk doing it wrong and not having a second chance.
Isn’t the choice here between having it done wrongly and not having it done at all? I’m not sure which one is worse. All your points are valid, no doubt, but how often do you see successful projects that started from pretty code as opposed to projects that started with awful code that barely works but proves the underlying idea enough for investment in cleaning the code base up?
On the other hand I’m not a developer, I’m a sysadmin and therefore my PoV may not be relevant
Are you building a proof of concept on your own already, or are you hoping to find someone to start the project together?
Where on Earth do you imagine finding such a person? Such people don’t grow on trees (unfortunately)! And what’s your plan for persuading them to focus on your project?
How many of those projects have had a budget of 0?
Where do you imagine experienced developers with plenty of spare time to exist?
I don’t want to sound negative, but you have pretty high demands. Your ideas and algorithms are certainly good, but even if you had the best idea in the world, you would have trouble finding people to work on it, unless you make doing that very attractive.
So, what I’m going to say is to be realistic and start with what you have: You and some very imperfect supporters, if any. This will then make you mad and then you create your project on your own just to demonstrate to me that it can be done easily just with a single person.
These are some good points, and every project is different with a set of different circumstances, and a different set of cards being dealt to whomever is aiming to start the projects. So there certainly isn’t a one size fits all approach. This is just what I find works best for me. Maybe there is a middle ground that addresses the problems presented by both sides.
You’re right that it’s pretty damn hard to find the types of people I mention, that’s why I say you only really need one or maybe two such people of that type. Though if you’re already an industry developer, chances are you have other friends that also are in the same position and therefore you’re more likely to find help from them. Even then, it is hard to find people that have the spare time. Releasing the project on Github allows you to passively wait until interested parties around the globe find it via searching, and that gets you much better odds than word of mouth.
I think the best thing to do would be for me to start a project, get what I can done, and then release some code on Github. What I definitely do not want to do is just post an algorithm everywhere. I’m not worried about an idea being stolen, since if I cared enough about that, I would actually be trying to make money with it.
I’m more concerned about someone attempting to use the algorithm in its partially unfinished state, and then lacking the technical background to make the appropriate modifications to the algorithm as needed. It would be effectively a waste of their time. That is why I feel I need to be involved with any project that uses the algorithm, and the best way to ensure that is if I wait until I have the time to develop the project before releasing any data of any sort.
I’m not sure if I understand you right here. Cases:
You release an unfinished state of your algorithm and get involved into projects that try to use it. You help them to adapt the algorithm to their needs.
You release a finished version of your algorithm. Wouldn’t your involvement in projects that use it be optional in this case? Or would your algorithm need complicated adjustments even when it’s “completely finished”?
I know it’s been awhile, but would you have any interest in seeing the algorithm? I’ve had a renewed interest in the topic. I’m no longer attached to the algorithm, but rather I’m now interested in developing or using software to simulate economic models in general.
Sure. I’d like to see that algorthm. It’s not very likely that I’ll use it for anything, but I may consider incorporating it into Quantified Prestige or some other system.
It seems to be such a useful building block for complex crowd-based platforms.
