I’ll let this excellent rebuttal by John Timmer at Ars Technica do most of the work in explaining why Anderson’s argument is so flawed it should never had been printed. (Ah hah! More evidence against Andrew Keen’s argument for the return of the old-school editor! Anderson’s crap would never have passed muster on Wikipedia.)

For me, the most important rebuttal is about falsification and repair. Without theories that we can test, how can we know we’re wrong? What will being wrong look like? Without reasoned explanations for why things happen, how will we know what to do when things break? The reason that scientists are so wary of correlations is because they offer no explanatory power - they’re misleading as often as not. If we act on them, completely ignorant of the underlying mechanism, we don’t learn anything at all. Anderson’s most staggeringly ignorant move is to suggest that theories and models are somehow unnecessary simply because they’re often wrong. Wha? I guess the benefit of never having a model or a theory is that if you make no assumptions or predictions no one can ever disprove you.

I’d be willing to dismiss Anderson entirely if, presented differently, he wouldn’t have otherwise tackled an interesting topic. As Timmer says, certainly the availability of massive data is changing the way we do science. But the end of theory? C’mon, Chris, that’s ridiculous, and a transparent attempt to appeal to the data-heads that read Wired. This point of view is SO common, at least around San Francisco. I’m amazed that otherwise smart people would adopt such an ignorant, arrogant point of view. Fighting this kind of thinking is depressing. It reminds me of something Anthony Bourdain said about his most hated chef nemesis, Rachel Ray. (I noted this in a previous post.)

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook… She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?

A lazy, soulless, superficial, inexplicably popular idea. It’s days are numbered, though. I predict that inside of 5 years, Google is going to hit the wall on its data-center driven problem solving. They’ll call for more cowbell, find there’s none to be had, and return to the land of the living where the rest of us live.

But then, step back. A reputation system is a substitute for personal experience. It provides you with the information you need to make a determination about someone (something?) else without having had to go to all the trouble of getting to know them. Traditionally, that determination has been about interpersonal trust. eBay’s reputation systems is the best example. I don’t know anyone who’s selling blidgets on eBay, so I don’t know how likely they are to cheat me. eBay has found a formal way to represent the likelihood that I’m dealing with a seller who will meet my expectations.

So, the reputation design patterns aren’t like that. They’re not about trust, at least not directly. But, they are signifiers that help me know someone better. Just like my score on eBay represents something about my behavior, so do achievement badges, rankings, etc. They encapsulate information about the type or volume of my participation in different ways. And this information, in turn, may help me figure out something more about trust. Certainly, in an indirect way at least, these things act as elements of a reputation because they substitute for my personal experience with someone else’s contributions over time. If I’d been there to see what they did myself, I wouldn’t need the badge or the level information.

Still, if we take this view, is my age reputation information? My address? After all, that information saves you the trouble of having to be around to count the years, or having to travel to my town to check where i live. (I’m going off the deep end now!)

More importantly, why does any of this matter? Who cares whether it counts as a reputation. Well, there’s a bit of truth in that - maybe reputation is in the eye of the beholder, at least in practice. But only sort of. When it comes to design patterns, I think the important thing is to realize what badges or points are good for. So, certainly my badges and levels help others figure out how to assess my contributions when they don’t know any better. But they also work as incentives that make me feel valued, like my contributions count, like I’m making progress, and like people think of me as an expert. They give me a goal or a quota to shoot for, or a status marker that tempers my insecurity.

I think Yahoo! gets this. But the patterns kind of mix up the part that’s for you (the reputation) and the part that’s for me (the incentive). If the point is to understand your users deeply, design incentive mechanisms with them in mind, then breaking those two apart is essential, and there’s a lot of good work to be done there. Anyway, as I said, I’m somewhat conflicted. Comments welcome (as always)!

My biggest beef is with the most ‘meta’ pattern that they call the ‘Competitive Spectrum‘. I understand the desire to simplify, but in my view, these 5 things are not really on the same spectrum at all. I think the ‘combative’ type is off in a corner of its own - a corner that really doesn’t exist much on the web. As for the other four, I can’t make out what the axis is that they vary on - overall level of competition doesn’t make sense to me. Yahoo! seems to realize the confusion themselves, as they include a variety of caveats in their description of the spectrum.

I really agree with Bryce Glass (one of the patterns’ creators), who points out that these patterns are pretty ubiquitous now, and so simply pointing them out isn’t enough. It’s how they’re used - or more specifically how intelligently they’re used - that will make them powerful. I think Yahoo! still has some work to do to provide best practices for implementing these patterns intelligently. Obviously, given my interests, I’d like to see them look at some of the underlying social psychological processes, and use them to make some informed recommendations. Also, I think designers really need an accessible way to understand the ‘corruption effect of extrinsic motivation’ (or, as economists call it, ‘crowding out’). I would argue that in many contexts when incentives like the ones Yahoo! lays out don’t work as expected, the corruption effect is a big reason why. But, all in all, its a great start. (Note that my opinion is in no way influenced by the fact that I’m an intern at Yahoo! this summer… heh)

(Thanks to Ben for the tip!)

But now it’s time to go. Throughout this race you’ve proven yourself willing and able to do and to say whatever it takes to move forward. You’ve reinvented yourself so many times that it’s hard to know who you are anymore. I understand, that’s politics. But the point is that we don’t want that politics anymore, and more than that we don’t need it. We have an alternative, in Barak Obama, who has told the same substantive story, who has made the same case, who has fought on the issues since the beginning of his campaign. More importantly, by every algebra but yours, he has won more states, more pledged delegates, more popular votes than you have. He’s won. So it’s time for you to step aside.

Yesterday’s DNC Rules Committee meeting was really your last chance to make any gains at all, I understand. (Though, as you know, even if all of the delegates had been seated at full strength, you would still be far behind in pledged delegates.) Thankfully, your attempts to influence the committee failed.

In my view the correct political decision but the wrong moral decision was made. Michigan and Florida need to have a voice, and we need them in the general election, so this was the right choice to that end. However, no reasonable person (without something to gain by it) could claim that the elections in those states were fair or unbiased. It’s not the voters’ fault, it’s the Rules Committee’s fault for invoking a bad punishment to begin with. But we can’t turn back time. As it is, you’ve come out ahead! You’ve gained delegates from unfairly contested elections - can’t argue with that!

So, now to the purpose of this letter. (The purpose other than filling up my blog.) Let’s see what happens in the last three primaries today and on Tuesday. Then, please, let that be that. You’ll have lost. Find a way to bow out gracefully, accept the accolades that are rightfully yours, and throw yourself full-tilt into the fight to get Obama into the White House. Please don’t take it to the Credentials Committee, please don’t let this drag on. Remember the serenity prayer, and go back to the Senate with new purpose.

All the best.

Get DropBox. Do it now. This is software that just works, and I can’t believe it took someone this long to come up with it.

Here’s the deal. I install DropBox on my laptop, on my desktop, on my work computer. Each computer gets a folder called ‘My DropBox’ that acts like any other folder in my file system. Now here it is, and it’s easy to understand: the folder is the same on every computer, all the time, effortlessly. I put a file in the folder on my laptop, it’s instantly sync’d with the other two machines liked to my account. I change it on another computer, and the changes are sync’d back too. And it backs up the files to a remote server. And it keeps a revision history so I can go back anytime. And it’s all encrypted with a key that I can choose (if I want to).

Holy hell. These features should have been in Windows 95. There’s lots of other solutions to the problem of cross-computer file sync, like Groove, SVN, etc. None are as seamless and painless as DropBox.

They’re in Beta, but sign up now. I have a few invites I can give away if you’re desperate.

This is a random topic, but I was reading through the comments on ESPN.com, and I’m torn about this so I thought I’d share. Here’s the thing: apparently reasonable people (and scientific experts) disagree about whether Oscar gains an advantage over able-bodied runners with his prosthetics, and therefore whether he should be allowed to run. An MIT professor says no, a German professor says yes. Who’s right? Who knows.

But here’s what bothers me, and why I think I’m leaning towards thinking he shouldn’t be allowed to run. While every other runner is stuck with muscles, Oscar gets to choose his equipment. Now, to be fair, I’m sure if he had a choice Oscar would choose muscles over carbon fiber. But, as it is he gets the benefits of materials science and engineering. He gets to decide which legs he puts on. If we had conclusive evidence that his chosen equipment mimicked legs perfectly, or provided no advantage whatsoever, then fine. But we don’t have that. And I’m not sure we ever will. My hack scientific view on biomechanics is that the Cheetahs operate on fundamentally different principles, and what might be an advantage for one body type would not be for another.

I realize this is controversial. I don’t think what I’m saying is discriminatory, or at least I don’t mean for it to be. I just think this is a dangerous precendent for sport. Thoughts?

I’m excited because this is the work that set me down the research path that I’m currently on, and that will lead to my dissertation research (and beyond). It’s based on research I did while I was working on Mycroft, which then became a relatively short-lived startup company called inChorus.

Don’t get me wrong. I have loved coursework (and still do). I’ve learned (and forgotten) more than I can say. But lately I’ve started to get a little weary. I’m so, so excited about the research I’m doing - or not doing, I should say, because the courses take up so much of my time.

But today, as I said, is a very special day. Last night I attended the last course that I will ever have to take. Oh, I’m sure I’ll take a class here and there before and after I finish my degree. But I won’t have to, and that matters.

Very soon, I hope to be blogging more, to have the time to pursue all the thoughts and ideas I’ve been pushing back for lack of time lately. It’s all very exciting.

Hilary accuses Barak of plagiarism:

The other shoe drops:

And again:

Silly.
(via Daily Kos. Thanks, Sundhar!)

We’ll continue to see analytics like this, of course, but I think recent news should make us all more skeptical. Advertising is a business that has been run on analytics from the beginning, and unsurprisingly, they got it very, very wrong from the beginning. The knowledge that a small percentage of individuals do most of the clicking (and very little of the buying) should shake the industry up, but it won’t. So sad!