[ExI] Proposal for collaboration with Wired Magazine and Canonizer.com

[Brent Allsop]

Extropians,

We’re working on a proposal to take to a popular magazine like perhaps 
Wired, Scientific American, or something.

Googling seems to indicate that Betsy Mason is the current science 
editor for wired. I’m wondering if any of you know her, or anyone else 
at wired?

Below is a draft of a proposed cold call e-mail we were thinking of 
sending I’d be very interested to know what any of you would think, if 
you were at wired, and received a cold call e-mail something like this. 
And what do you think our possibilities of success, or not, would be 
with all this?

Thanks,

Brent Allsop



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To: Betsy Mason (Science Editor, Wired Magazine)
Subject: Collaboration proposal with wired magazine and Canonizer.com


Hello Betsy Mason,

If you have a minute, we have a proposal for a possible co-operative 
venture between Wired and Canonizer.com that we believe could be very 
mutually beneficial.

My name is Brent Allsop, one of the volunteers working on a wiki system 
that solves the communication problems plaguing Wikipedia, and the 
internet as a whole. This is a consensus building open survey system 
enabling large crowds to communicate with everyone concisely and 
quantitatively. It can do things like eliminate edit wars by creating 
wiki camps, and provide a measure of expert consensus on the reliability 
of any controversial information. This method of enabling crowds to work 
to communicate concisely and quantitatively amplifies and educates the 
wisdom of the entire crowd in many significant ways.

Science works best when theoretical scientists make testable 
predictions, as Einstein did, so the experimental scientists can get 
funding and then do the test for and thereby validated or falsify them. 
The problem is, most theoretical fields aren't this cut and dried. If a 
theoretical field is very ideologically charged such that people's 
entire religious view of themselves and their ability to survive well 
into the eternities could be drastically effected; If there are 
thousands of diverse theories; If most people struggle to get a handle 
on even one or more of these theories, let alone the majority of them. 
If there is no way to determine which of the thousands of theories are 
the best, which are fading, having been falsified for most experts, and 
which are new, emerging ones, dramatically approaching and possibly 
surpassing any currently leading ones - making it impossible for anyone 
to avoid wasting critical time on the huge number of primitive or crazy 
theories; If experimental researchers have no objective evidence that 
their proposed experiment is the most important experiment to be done in 
their effort to receive funding; If all the individual experts describe 
their current working hypothesis using their own custom contradictory 
and subtly different in critical ways terminology; there is little 
chance of any good scientific discovers coming out of such fields.

As an experimental proof of concept test of what this amplification of 
the wisdom of the crowd system can do, we started the Consciousness 
Survey Project to see if we could get any kind of a good unbiased survey 
on this theoretical field that arguably suffers from all these problems 
more than any other. Clearly, very smart people have been struggling to 
produce any kind of consensus or anything experimental scientists could 
test for, for centuries, with little to show for their work. Most 
people, including experimental researchers, ridicule the field as mere 
"Philosophies of Men". The exponentially exploding volume of information 
coming out of this field continues to do little but lead everyone, even 
the experts, to believe that most everyone is only critical of their own 
theories, and that nobody can agree on anything.

This consciousness survey project started out with only a few hobbyists, 
computer programmers with no philosophy training, including high school 
students and so on participating and doing the bulk of the wiki work in 
their spare time. Along the way we've picked up some real experts such 
as Steven Lehar, Stuart Hameroff, John Smythies, and a growing number of 
others, confirming and accelerating what we were all learning and 
developing by communicating in this manner. Watching the various 
theories start to emerge, and seeing where early leading groups of 
consensus are forming, has been exciting and surprising. Unlike the 
nobody agrees on anything results coming out of the ivory tower, the 
internet, from Wikipedia, in the name of "neutral POV", and everywhere, 
we're seeing dramatically different results. The early results seem to 
be hinting that there could be a huge amount of expert consensus, after 
all, on a great many critically important things in this field.

Despite all this drama, this canonized data is just that - raw 
scientific survey data that isn't very approachable to the general 
public. All that is missing is some good science reporting of all this 
drama. In sports, you have callers reporting on the exciting drama, as 
it unfolds, one team surpassing another, as the crowd watches and 
cheers. Our thinking is that such front row, understandable to all, 
seats to these competing theories being developed would be far more 
interesting to intelligent people than any other 'reality show'. So what 
the volunteers working on this project are seeking is a partnership with 
a modern, wired, news reporting publication company such as possibly 
Wired, Scientific American, Discover, or whatever. We are dreaming of 
having at least an introductory article describing this open survey 
process, and the surprising consensus results we have achieved so far, 
along with our solicitation of any interested Wired readers to participate.

Many of the participators, having experienced firsthand, this 
amplification of the wisdom of the crowd, are now in the camp that 
believes even a general crowd of readers, most of them not necessarily 
affiliated with the established academia, could quickly surpass what the 
establishment has been able to produce to date. The predicted results 
being an easily digestible set of improving, state of the art, concisely 
stated theories, in a consistent language, along with quantitative 
historical measures of how well accepted each was and is by this growing 
crowd. The leading theories would have accurate descriptions of how to 
test for the predictions being made in such a way that specific 
scientific experiments could be funded to validate them - falsifying all 
competing theories or vice verse.

The prediction is that, after this co-operative experiment between 
Wired, Wired readers, and Canonizer.com, the only remaining task would 
be for the nuts and bolts researchers to do the described tests, and 
validate or falsify them. If this experimental co-operation with a 
science news magazine is in any way successful, this could ultimately 
lead to what could become the most revolutionary scientific achievement 
of all time - the objective discovery of the subjective mind and its 
connection to the underlying brain matter. Obviously, as soon as all the 
experts start to abandon primitive falsified camps, and converge on any 
one theory, it will be the required proof that success has been 
achieved. The early consensus already emerging appears to indicate we 
might already be well on our way. If so, there is no telling where a 
collaboration between such a news organization and Canonizer.com could 
go from there.

The growing crowd of volunteers from around the world, looking to expand 
this survey process, are excitedly looking forward to hearing from you, 
and finding out any thoughts you, or anyone at wired, may have along 
these lines or anything.

Upwards,

Brent Allsop
Founder Canonizer.com