those most-faved observations clearly have a very broad appeal. but how deep is their appeal? personally i’d definitely click the heart button, or thumbs up button, or like button, or whatever button it is for these pics. why not? doing so wouldn’t cost me anything. but i doubt that i’d be willing to sacrifice more than a few cents for any of them.
when we use votes to rank things, what rises to the top is the most superficial, rather than the most substantial. the only way to elevate the most substantial things is to use sacrifice as the metric.
the people who are truly passionate about any topic are always going to be in the very small minority. so they will always lose with tyranny of the majority. but when votes are replaced with sacrifice, this essentially filters out all the people who don’t care strongly one way or the other. the only people left remaining are those who care strongly enough to make a substantial sacrifice.
typically, caring deeply often depends on being well-informed. when you’re truly interested in a topic you want to learn all you can about it… books, articles, papers and so on. you literally nerd out. but again, real nerds are a very small minority. they always lose the popularity contests. with sacrifice though, they have a very real chance of winning.
all the main websites are popularity contests. there should be at least one website where the nerds come out on top.
sacrifice generally depends on perception of relative scarcity. in a desert, if you’re dying of thirst, you’d be willing to make a big sacrifice for some water. the opposite is true if you’re drowning in a lake.
in a zoo or at a botanic garden, where people go, what they choose to see, depends on their perception of relative scarcity.
penicillin i’d imagine is relatively abundant, but perhaps not equally so around the world. disparity in prices encourages beneficial shifts in distribution. if there’s a penicillin surplus in one country, and a penicillin shortage in another country, there should be a big disparity in prices to encourage a more beneficial distribution of penicillin.
most of the observations on inaturalist are going to be of the most common plants and animals. since these organisms are so common, we shouldn’t expect people to make very big sacrifices for them. instead, we should expect people to make the biggest sacrifices for the organisms that they perceive to be relatively scarce. for me personally, i wish that laelia albida was more common, which depends on more people knowing about it, so i’d sacrifice for it accordingly.
As I understand the gist of the thread so far, you want to shift iNaturalist from being subject to the tyranny of the majority to being subject to the tyranny of epiphyte78 – as in, the site should completely redo its way of doing things to please you.
It seems to me that a better approach would be to go ahead and do what you proposed:
Rather than expect us to take your word for it, prove it. If your approach really does destroy iNat, you will have proven that it is evolutionarily fitter. If it doesn’t, you will have proven that it is an evolutionary dead-end.
Societal value = aggregate sacrifice people are willing to make, measured by donations
Sacrifice is a function of personal interest within the context of perceived scarcity
The relevant strain of penicillin is not particularly common but is, to my understanding, pretty widely distributed. It’s also not as charismatic as the orchid you mention. There’s probably little reason for people to sacrifice for penicillin compared to, say, L. albida, regardless of the explicitly large contribution penicillin’s made to society. Is that correct?
So in other words, what is “interesting” or “valuable” will be determined by those who have the most money to promote their particular concerns, meaning that existing global social inequalities and biases will be perpetuated on iNat even more than they already are.
No thanks.
I happen to like the fact that I can search for what I want on iNat without an algorithm or other people deciding what I should see.
maybe it will help to slightly dig into your specific example. prior to 1928, everyone in the world incorrectly valued penicillium rubens. everyone greatly underestimated its usefulness. and then came along an uber nerd, who also happened to be a veteran, by the name of alexander fleming. he did quite a bit of digging and in 1928 he discovered something really big and important that the rest of the world had overlooked… penicillium rubens was actually quite useful.
so in 1928, there were 2 billion people in the world, and they all greatly underestimated the usefulness of penicillium rubens, except for one single individual… alexander fleming. he was the only person in the world correctly informed about this one particular organism. everyone else was incorrectly informed.
x = only one person is correctly informed about something’s usefulness
for me x is so significant and meaningful that it deserves a name. i’m gonna call it the “fleming point”.
ok, now we’re at the crux of the matter. it’s important to appreciate that, at its essence, the fleming point for fleming is no different than a forager bee who was the very 1st bee to discover a massive new patch of flowers. in both cases, what’s the next step? recruitment. many hands make light work.
recruitment is a function of communication, and one of the most important forms of communication is sacrifice. the bee who makes a big discovery conveys its significant usefulness by sacrificing many of her precious calories. fleming obviously is not a bee, he’s a human, so he wouldn’t have sacrificed his calories. instead, he would have sacrificed his money.
voluntary self-sacrifice for the greater good: should we make it easier or harder for people to do? this is the big question.
if there were billboards back then, should it have been easier or harder for fleming to pay for a big billboard to facilitate sharing his information with the rest of the world? perhaps a newspaper would have been a more likely option. i can’t imagine anyone objecting to fleming having the option to spend a considerable amount of money for a big chunk of prominent space in a newspaper. in theory, everyone should want it to have been as easy as possible for fleming to spend his money to share his information.
yet here we are. if inaturalist had been around back then, nobody would have wanted fleming to have the option to spend money to promote penicillium rubens on inaturalist, except for me, if i’d been around back then.
a reasonable person could say something like, inaturalist is where we objectively observe and id organisms, so it isn’t suitable or appropriate for subjectively determining their usefulness to society as a whole.
but a reasonable person could also say something like, rainforests shouldn’t be bulldozed because they contain many organisms that are very useful to society as a whole.
it’s reasonable to conclude that an organism’s usefulness to society does truly matter, but inaturalist is just not the place to measure it. in the meantime, the people with the bulldozers just have to take our word for it that rainforests are packed with useful organisms. the problem is, clearly they aren’t taking our word for it.
so far i haven’t really heard any convincing arguments that it would be somehow harmful for inaturalist to also function as a place where we have the option to put our money where our mouth is.
right now i have the option to click on the star button for an observation. does this option harm me? nope. right now i can see how many other people have clicked on the star button. does this information harm me? nope. right now i have the option to sort observations by popularity. does this option harm me? nope. right now i can see how organisms are subjectively ranked by votes. does this information harm me? nope.
there’d be absolutely no harm in inaturalist giving people the option to self-sacrifice for the organisms they care about the most. however, there would be plenty of benefit for those organisms, and for inaturalist as a whole.
this year, like every year, there are numerous people all over the world digging deep and nerding out in numerous areas of study. as a result, there are going to be many fleming points. in each and every case it should be easier, rather than harder, for these correctly informed individuals to self-sacrifice for the greater good of correcting society’s ignorance.
inaturalist is .org rather than .gov which means that we’re only here discussing the usefulness of money as a measure of usefulness because enough people have voluntarily self-sacrificed to spend their own money on inaturalist. evidently these donors to inaturalist believe it’s useful enough to be worth their sacrifice.
option 1: your beef is with inaturalist donors.
let’s try and narrow it down…
x = donors spend the perfect amount on inaturalist
y = donors spend too many dollars on inaturalist
z = donors spend too few dollars on inaturalist
i’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be concerned about x. so is it y or z? it’s hard for me to imagine you being concerned about donors spending too many dollars on inaturalist, since clearly you believe that inaturalist is useful, given that here you are, using inaturalist.
therefore, z. your beef is that donors aren’t spending enough of their own money on inaturalist. therefore, go ahead and try to persuade them, using your correct information, that they are underestimating the usefulness of inaturalist.
option 2: your beef is with other donors.
perhaps your beef is with people who donate to wikipedia instead of to inaturalist? again, go ahead and try to persuade them, using your correct information, that they are underestimating the usefulness of inaturalist.
perhaps it’s cool and hip to believe that markets solely serve to perpetuate global and social inequalities. but this belief is not based on anything solid. unless i’m mistaken. please think things through and let us know which donors, exactly, your beef is with.
This is a fun idea and now I’m thinking about possible ways it could go wrong. Let’s say iNaturalist acts on this and changes visibility of organisms based on the distribution of donation-tokens.
The visibility where on the platform? Barely anyone looks at the sort-by-popularity results. Nobody is putting more effort into researching taxa just because they appear on the log-in screen. How would iNat’s influence increase to the extent that people are making research decisions based on the distribution of these tokens?
There have been numerous instances where companies have done marketing campaigns by trying to get votes from the public about decisions on products, and often these turn out badly because someone was successfully able to recruit a lot of trolls to participate. Let’s say iNat attains the level of influence necessary here, and then someone with excess money donates a lot and dedicates it to a certain insect named after a certain unpopular politician. Stranger things have happened (and cynically I feel like this kind of donor is about as common as a sincere donor who cares about some obscure insect that actually needs research) - I’m curious what the response would be.
No, I was not referring to donations to iNat in general, but to your proposal that donors to iNat should be able to dictate which observations on iNat should be given priority, presumably in some sort of Facebook-like algorithm that would rank content based on the number of “tokens” that have been assigned:
You are neglecting the fact that “sacrifice” always depends on means, not just how strongly one cares about something. If someone who earns $100/hour donates $500, this is going to be a pretty small sacrifice for them. If someone who earns $10/hour donates $50, this is likely a pretty substantial sacrifice for them.
Therefore, under your system the people who would have the most influence on what gets attention on iNat will be those who can afford to spend (“sacrifice”) the most. One person with lots of money could essentially ensure that the only observations that get seen are the ones they care about. This might be something that would benefit everyone, but it is more likely that it would reflect their personal interests (say, a local endangered species). Whereas someone, say, in a poorer country in the tropics where biodiversity is in far more danger but also far less studied, would not be able to donate enough to get observations in their region seen at all.
just like it’s bee-nature to pay attention to when other bees willingly make big sacrifices of calories, it’s human-nature to pay attention to when other humans willingly make big sacrifices of money. of course this goes way back to before the invention of money. if some members of a tribe were willing to sacrifice 100 furs for one tuber, for sure everyone and their grandma is going to be on the lookout for that tuber. before you can have a treasure hunt, you 1st need to define “treasure”, and the only effective way to do this is through sacrifice.
if inat gave us the option to use our donations to define “treasure” then it would be human nature to pay attention to the biggest sacrifices.
will some of the biggest sacrifices be wrong? not in the boaty mcboatface sense. lots of people are happy to troll when there’s no cost involved. clearly this wouldn’t be the case with donations. nothing would more effectively filter out the trolls.
but in the sense that we’re all imperfectly informed, then yeah, plenty of the biggest sacrifices will be wrong. however, while we’re all imperfectly informed, we’re not all equally uninformed.
in terms of an easter egg hunt, perhaps a toddler finds a big old white piece of dog poop and incorrectly identifies it as an easter egg. nope, it’s not an easter egg. nope, it’s not treasure. nope, it’s not useful. nobody wants it. try again.
in terms of a gold rush, perhaps someone inexperienced finds fool’s gold and mistakes it for real gold. nope. it’s not real gold. nope, it’s not treasure. nope, it’s not useful. nobody is going to make a big sacrifice for what you found. try again.
inaturalist is like a big easter egg hunt or treasure hunt where the only feedback is in the form of a star. if there was the option to provide actually useful feedback, in the form of sacrifice, then it’s hard to imagine how many more times useful and beneficial the hunt would actually be.
do you remember what grade you were in school when a teacher put a star on your work? at one point the stars get replaced with grades, and test scores. then you finally finish school and the feedback on your work is no longer a grade or a score, it’s money. invent something useless, you won’t get any money. invent something useful, and you’ll get money. this is the only real meaningful feedback on your work.
yet here we are, grown adults (most of us?) doing real work of observations and ids, but the feedback is… stars.
I mean, I was trying to take things step by step for clarity’s sake. But sure, I can write another essay-length response that goes in various tangential directions simultaneously…
Let me reframe the Fleming example a bit to show one of my issues with your suggested system. Let’s imagine that your version of iNat existed in the 1920’s. Would the “Fleming point” even have occurred?
I envision a situation in which it would be very difficult to make new discoveries that enlighten us on previously unrealized value. “Why are you looking at Penicillium rubens when ___ clearly has more societal value?” Or, to take an example from you earlier in this thread, “how dare you look at sand crabs? Can’t you see the person drowning over there?”
Nevermind that sand crabs might hold the secret to preventing drowning in the first place (absurd I know, but I think you can see the logic I’m employing past the silliness of the example).
Sound familiar? How about this one: “How dare you work on palms when there’s Ficus to focus on!” Nevermind that we don’t actually know what outcome either avenue will have for society as a whole. “Sacrifice” might be useful for giving a glimpse into our current priorities but they don’t really tell us anything about the validity of those priorities.
Next, let’s take the actual example you put forth:
Let’s say this occurs despite the potential roadblock I mention in the previous section. The discovery was, after all, an accident (although it relied on Fleming working with a particular strain of bacteria, and the basic problem remains wherein others could have pushed him away from that work towards things of more “societal value”).
Anyways, I’m with you. One person realizes the significance, and needs to get others onboard to actually realize the potential direct contributions it could make to society. But then I disagree with your premise here:
Yes, recruitment is the key in both situations and requires communication. Now, for bees, that communication inherently requires sacrifice in the form of calories. Yet, as you point out, we’re not bees. So the requirement–communication–remains the same. However, just because communication requires sacrifice for bees does not mean it must require comparable sacrifice for people, or that more sacrifice leads to better communication.
Your examples of paying for things like billboards aren’t inherently bad ones. But is paying money for such things the best method of communicating value? I would argue that the primary need is communication, not sacrifice in the form of spending money. The latter may be a means to the the former’s end, but it’s not a 1-to-1 relationship.
You don’t need something that informs a bunch of people who have little to no control over the situation–you need targeted communication. Directly contact the people with influence and plead your case. For Fleming, that might be sending a letter or trying to book a meeting with companies developing medicine. In today’s world we have a plethora of cheap ways to communicate (just send an email).
I’m going to predict your response to the previous section:
But what if they ignore the communication? Surely being able to say that something is worth X amount would better persuade those who need it?
It’s not a bad point, and a common frustration. I’ve certainly felt it myself But this gets MUCH messier than most of the thread thus far has recognized. I wonder if I can split this into sub-points…
1. Communication among informed people
Like your palm example, wherein one informed person pleads their case to another and the other isn’t convinced to the extent that the former is. Both of these people are knowledgeable–they both see and understand value in a reasonable way, yet still disagree.
You could say that maybe the info hasn’t been properly communicated, but I don’t think sacrifice would fix that any better than simply writing a better argument.
Maybe they both perfectly understand the info but differ in their conclusions. Again, I don’t see sacrifice in the form of donations solving what is essentially a difference in world views.
2. Trying to communicate to those directly threatening things
Like the rose bowl/shrimp example or the burning of the Amazon. Again, I would say the first thing should be trying to plead your case–craft an argument for why the project/action shouldn’t happen. Admittedly, pretty likely to be ignored (happens all the time) and we’re probably dealing with financially-incentivized people. So, in theory, being able to put a large enough monetary value on the organisms threatened could sway their opinion.
The hurdles are to (a) somehow show that there is a societal value larger than the value of the project proposed and (b) translate that value into benefit relevant to the people we’re trying to persuade.
The problem with (a) is that there are so many threatening projects and they’re broadly WAY better resourced than the informed people. Trying to actually gather enough sacrifice from the well-informed for the relevant organisms seems hopeless in all but a scant few cases (and, vitally, those cases are probably easier to just directly argue in the first place).
The problem I see with (b) is even worse, IMO. We’re comparing apples and oranges. I’m going to simplify the numbers here for clarity: let’s say the rose bowl was going to bring the company a profit of $90 and $100 had been “sacrificed” for it on iNat. We show the company and say, “look–this shrimp has more societal value than your proposed development!” Their response? “Sure, but we don’t receive any of that money if we don’t build the rose bowl. If we build the rose bowl society loses $100 of value but we gain $90. Sorry society.”
The Amazon situation–or any dealing with individual people’s actions rather than large projects–can be even trickier. If someone wants to burn down part of the Amazon to create cattle pasture, it’s unlikely they’re doing so because they hate the environment. They’re probably simply trying to gain a better source of income. So what, they should stay in poverty because a bunch of well-off people in North America, or Europe, or somewhere else says that society as a whole values the forest more than them? Of course money is vital for dealing with these situations, but not in a way that your proposed system would help address. What actually needs to happen is far more difficult and complex–massive social change and innovation in the availability of non-environmentally damaging livelihoods.
3. Communicating to the general public
Quick clarification: I consider myself to be one of the uninformed in this section. Sure I probably know more than the average member of the public on environmental matters, but I’m no expert in anything.
I fail to see how rankings by donations are more effective than education. One of the most vital things about education is providing a “why”–why does this work, why is this important, why should we care. Donations may indicate a level of buy-in, but they’re not particularly convincing to someone genuinely ignorant on the matter. If someone doesn’t understand technology, and they’re trying to decide which cell phone to buy, would we really just say, “this one costs twice as much so it’s twice as good”? Or would we explain the features each offers and let them choose the one that fits their needs?
By the way, I expect there might be a counter-argument to this that this is entirely the system you recommend. Yet you also have suggested that whatever wins in the rankings should then get the most support–ignore arguments to the contrary because the sacrifice has spoken! If the former is true, I fail to see how the donations add much substance to the communication situation. If the latter is true, then you are undermining the very communication that you argue would be vital to Fleming recruiting others to his cause because surely they should be focusing on things already known to have the highest societal value instead (per my first section in this loooong reply).
[emphasis added]
I think this gets at something interesting (beyond highlighting the importance of basic communication, which I think we should and could do better even without using donations as a metric).
A fascinating feature of this platform is that, despite the plethora of experts who use it and the data it collects, it’s primarily more of a social media app that simply aims to connect people with nature. Even a lot of the experts I know on this site use it on a personal level as more of a hobby than a professional tool. In terms of actual number of users, I don’t think we’ll disagree if I claim that the majority could be classified as amateur/hobby users. Heck, I’d argue that I fall into this category myself.
So let’s frame this in a different way–musicians. What if we had a platform where anyone who plays music could join and play together? There would be some professionals providing useful pointers to new learners, getting inspired by random melodies others created, maybe even asking if they could use a recorded track from someone else on their new album. Same patterns we see on iNat.
then we implement your system. Suddenly, we have an idea of what types of music and which individual songs have the highest “societal value”. Should all the people just playing music for fun suddenly be pressured into only playing the most valued music?
Sure, we could say “You do you–if it’s just a hobby do whatever you want.” But would that really release the pressure? Would it really keep individuals from feeling like they were expected to donate to keep their favorite music relevant, or that they had the freedom to spend time playing around and creating new songs? Would it not have the potential to chase away all but the most dedicated musicians from the platform?
Note that I’m not saying that such a platform wouldn’t have its merits. This goes into something that ItsMeLucy brought up earlier:
I think this also hits towards:
There’s a line to be drawn when discussing changes. iNat will inevitably change over the years. However, if those changes are in the pursuit of the same broad goal/intent, that’s one thing. If they are changes to iNat’s core identity, however, then we’re no longer talking about iNat–we’re talking about a different platform.
On the note of donors
I think both your options are missing the point here. Spiphany seems to be to be arguing that your system effectively changes the point of donating altogether by changing the incentives.
Take an example of a library. What’s the difference between the following two cases?
I donate money to my local library because I like the service they provide.
I donate money to my local library and earmark those donations to promote certain books claim the best shelf space and/or recommend that certain books aren’t worth putting on the shelves in the first place.
The first, of course, represents the current situation. If I donate to iNat, I do so because I like the service they provide. It really makes no comment on the quality of observations individuals upload because they’re users of the service, not the service itself. One aspect of that service is a particular type of equality, in that individuals have a lot of freedom to decide how they engage with the service within the confines of the options offered.
The second seems like what you’re recommending. To have donations attempt to not only support the system, but influence how others are using it.
This is where concerns over resource availability and equity come from–the strongest influence will come from whoever can “sacrifice” the most, regardless of (a) how informed the most well-funded people are, (b) how much the things those people value explicitly contribute to society as a whole, and (c) who is affected by the overall outcome.
On the balance on interests:
I largely grew up in Southern California–Orange County specifically. The average person in this county has more money than the average person in, say, the Amazon basin. Oh–and there are also lots more individual users from here since (a) iNat is still easiest to use for native English speakers, (b) iNat started in the USA and thus has a stronger base here, and (c) life here makes both internet access and leisure time much more accessible.
First, why should the users here be able to dictate the “societal value” of other places/environments, especially given that most of us will never travel to or directly experience these places and/or their value firsthand?
Second, what would be in place to avoid our sense of local value from simply steamrolling other places that might have more direct importance on a local and/or global scale?
So it is. But the question of the validity of those sacrifices, and whether we should actually be paying attention to something else, is an entirely different question. For the bees it’s a matter of lie-and-death: they urgently need to gather food for themselves and the offspring of the hive. For humans, the things we sacrifice money for vary widely in their actual utility.
Heck, I should probably cancel my Netflix subscription and send that monthly amount to some conservation organization instead. I honestly don’t even watch Netflix that often. But the ways I spend my money–like the ways I spend my time, decide my favorite observations, and focus my observation and identification efforts–really are not always the best indication of my priorities or what I value.
If we limited it to only my biggest purchases–true sacrifice that I have to heavily consider budgeting for–then the idea of my sacrifices being informative about me is probably pretty accurate. But do any of you know how much money counts as a big sacrifice for me? Where is that threshold?
Ok… then only give the toddlers a star when they find an egg. Maybe they’ll learn how to identify eggs, maybe not. If someone really cares about eggs they will figure out how to find the real eggs among the rest. We can always try to convince someone that they should really care about eggs.
But in your system, the “toddlers” may be uninformed but that doesn’t mean that they lack the ability to sacrifice–what happens when all the rich toddlers start putting their donations to the white dog poop they think are eggs and the people able to actually identify an egg properly don’t have the funding required to pull the attention to the eggs that deserve it?
I’m yet to hear a solid argument for how/why only the most informed people will provide the quantity of sacrifice needed to create a useful ranking.
Yeah, because we’re choosing to. I wasn’t hired by iNat–I never submitted my application hahaha.
If you feel that your proposal really has more societal value than iNat’s way of doing things, then make the commensurate sacrifices – “start a site basically just like inat, but it’s a market,” just as you suggested. And with that, I’m bowing out of this thread, because it’s tedious.
I know that this has already been responded to but I wanted to give my 2 cents.
I entirely disagree that a organisms usefulness to society matters. In my opinion that is a very anthropocentric view of the living world. If anything an organisms usefulness should be judged in relation to it’s ecology, but humans can never be the fair judge of that( what about parasites, etc.) and thus all organisms should be seen as equals. Some maybe under more pressure from a changing world or be more valuable to humans but that does not change their importance, those are both variables that wouldn’t exist in the same way without humans.
In short, I don’t believe that humans have the right to determine a organisms usefulness to society and even if an organism is more useful to society that isn’t correlated with their importance.
Although there is more to say, I will not expand further on this for now.
Why do you need any standardized feedback beyond that?
If someone has feedback they can leave a comment on the observation or write a dm through iNat or connect outside of the platform. I have had all three happen to observations of mine that someone found interesting and wanted to give attention to.
Those who care about things will reach out to others. This doesn’t need to be publicly tracked.
Additionally, faves mean different things to different people, you can find many examples of how different people use the star throughout the forum. I feel as if you have a set thought on it’s purpose.
One of the ways I use it is to keep track of observations that I would like to visit in the future so I can find the location/region when it is the right season for it, or as a reference for a species new to me that I want to look into more at a later date.
out of all the people who’ve replied to this thread, you consistently put the most time, effort and thought into your replies. so i should feel pressured or obligated to prioritize replying to you? maybe? by going above and beyond you’re stealing my attention from people who have less time (or…) to spare? therefore, in order to achieve a more equitable distribution of my attention we should put a limit to how much time and brainpower people are allowed to put into their replies? such a limit would seem, a bit, overbearing or some better word.
uttarakhand, a state in india, has uploaded more videos of ficus timlada than two entire countries combined. admittedly perhaps i failed to figure out the correct words to search for. and for all i know ficus timlada is far more abundant in uttarakhand than in nepal and pakistan.
in any case, my point is, even if it was somehow possible to limit the amount of time and energy the people of uttarakhand spend promoting ficus timlada, would this really be a good thing to do? perhaps a while back youtube was only in english. clearly this would have made it harder for the uttarakhand people to upload videos of ficus timlada. and then at one point youtube let users choose their langauge, and this included hindi, which naturally made it easier for the uttarakhand people to upload videos of ficus timlada.
it should be easier for people to promote the things they love. this feels like a rule worth naming. let’s call it the uttarakhand rule.
should money be an exception to the uttarakhand rule? we shouldn’t limit the amount of time that the uttarakhand people spend promoting ficus timlada, but we should limit the amount of money they spend promoting it? it should be harder for the uttarakhand people to spend their money to promote ficus timlada?
florida people could certainly spend a ton of money promoting their native ficus aurea. but would they really want to? even if they did want to, seems like a rather flimsy reason to make it harder for the uttarakhand people to spend their money to promote ficus timlada.
you’re going to visit florida. why not 1st filter inaturalist for florida and sort by value. ficus aurea is at the top of the list? would you feel any pressure to look for aurea and upload pics of it here? actually, on the palmtalk forum they do show interest in finding the northernmost ficus aurea in florida. no idea how deep their interest is though.
next you’re going to uttarakhand. might as well 1st filter inaturalist for uttarakhand and sort by value. ficus timlada is at the top of the list? would it matter if ficus aurea was valued 10x more highly?
on the one hand, we can think of the ficus timlada lovers competing with the ficus aurea lovers for attention. but on the other hand, we can think of the ficus timlada lovers competing with the syzygium cumini lovers, within uttarakhand. syzygium cumini is another variety of fruit that is also greatly appreciated in the himalayas.
personally i’m guessing that you’d like the fruit of ficus timlada more than you’d like the fruit of syzygium cumini, but i could be wrong. maybe you don’t care about fruit at all and would scroll past them without any sense of pressure and instead look for the most highly valued animal in uttarakhand. what would it be? i can’t even guess.
nope nope. you earmark your money to your local library because it’s more useful to you than your local botanic garden or zoo. or maybe you earmark more money to your local botanic garden and zoo. whatever the case, i’m pretty sure you don’t equally divide your money between all your local options.
your decision to donate to your local library rather than to the countless alternatives… botanic garden, zoo, soup kitchen, wikipedia, inaturalist, and so on… changes how society’s limited resources are used.
previously i said that tomorrow everyone in the world could decide to become vegetarian and this would have a drastic and rapid consequence regarding how society’s limited resources are used. but this would also be the case, to a much smaller degree, if tomorrow inaturalist donors all decided to donate to other causes instead. that would be it for inaturalist, just like that would be it for countless livestock farmers.
inaturalist in its entirety is in the hands of donors. so when you say, for whatever reason, that donors can’t be entrusted to determine the fate of any given part of inaturalist, well, it’s a paradox. and/or it’s a non-sequitur, because the conclusion certainly doesn’t follow from the premise.
if i own my body in its entirety, but can’t decide what happens to one of my kidneys, well, it’s a paradox.
if i can pull the plug on my fridge, but can’t decide what happens to the milk in the fridge, well, it’s a paradox.
in my report on ficus timlada i said that if you dig deep enough in any area, you’re bound to find valuable treasures that others have overlooked. naturally the treasures aren’t equally valuable. who knows, maybe if fleming had dug deeply elsewhere, like malaria, he would have found a treasure that was even more valuable. or maybe if he had dug into rocket science most of humanity would be living on mars. or maybe if he had dug into computer science i could be typing this just by thinking. it seems strange to assume that where he just happened to dig is where the most valuable treasure in the world was.
the most valuable treasures can be found in the areas where the market indicates. so it’s a problem that so many markets are missing.
Costly signaling theory is also pretty useful. I suppose the peacock’s tail is the standard view. What seems undoubtedly true is that humans, like peahens, attach significance to a piece of communication in some way proportionally to the cost of generating or transmitting it. Instinctively, you will open the FedEx package on your desk before you open the letter. One of the problems of email is there’s no cost attached to sending it, so we don’t have a useful heuristic for deciding what to read first. That strikes me as interesting. - Rory Sutherland, Things to Hang on Your Mental Mug Tree
difference in world views? “d” can’t see how valuable ficus timlada is to all the people in the himalayas. nobody can. not even the people in the himalayas. the only way for anyone to see this would be if everyone in the world could donate for ficus timlada on inaturalist. this is the only way to make a truly informed decision which tree to bark up.
inaturalist is a bunch of people barking up a lot of different trees, without actually knowing the social value of the trees they are barking up. it’s beyond ridiculous or absurd. would this ‘tree of the knowledge of social value’ pressure anyone to switch trees? did knowledge of gold being discovered in california pressure anyone to rush there to search for gold? yeah? again, “pressure” seems like an iffy word. but maybe it works, like peer pressure. but for the greater good.
the issue isn’t whether the rose bowl is built, the issue is where. i’m sure that there was a 2nd best location that would have become the 1st best if they had been able to see how valuable southern california’s only species of freshwater shrimp had been to the world.
ever heard of the orchid conservation alliance? i’m guessing you haven’t, which is part of the issue. they buy rainforest primarily based on orchid richness. well yeah. and perhaps there’s a frog conservation alliance that buys rainforest primarily based on dart frog richness. and even if there’s an organization that looks at overall biodiversity, for sure it doesn’t correctly guess its value to the entire world.
this would be an entirely different story if inaturalist gave us the option to rank organisms by their value. in this case we could easily and correctly prioritize which land to buy and protect. the current piecemeal approach with a few subject matter experts in charge of prioritizing which land gets saved is tragically ineffective.
if someone gave me a test on why gold is so useful, i’m pretty sure that i’d fail. even though i really don’t understand all the different ways that gold is used, this ignorance wouldn’t hinder me from happily picking up a gold nugget if i was so lucky to run across one. there’s no way that any single individual can possibly know or comprehend all the different ways that everything can be used. the trick is making sure that nobody fails to pick up a gold nugget that they see.
the other day i saw a ruby crowned kinglet for the 1st time in my life. had no idea what it was. tried to take a pic but failed miserably. googled for bird with redhead or something and found it. guess it’s pretty common. but right now there exists a local (at least occasionally) bird that bird nerds would cry themselves to sleep if i failed to take a pic of it. but i have no idea which bird this is. and i’m not going to dig to try to find the most likely candidate. if however, i could search inaturalist for birds, filter by area, and sort by value, then for sure i would do so. because it would literally only take a second. and then i’d learn the one bird that bird nerds would most want me to take a pic of. i wouldn’t have to know the why in order to behave in a way that is most beneficial to the bird nerds.
global maximum benefit depends on everyone behaving maximally beneficial to each other.
bark up this tree because it has the golden bird in it? the bird nerds are for sure going to have their debates, that i really wouldn’t want to dig into, since i’m not a bird nerd. all i want is the final verdict, which is the bird at the top of the list sorted by value. i’m going to be busy having my debates with the ficus freaks. we have to decide with our sacrifices which is the #1 ficus tree we want the bird nerds to bark up.
the thing about digital goods is that they can never be sold for exorbitant amounts. this is simply because they are easy to copy. while this might sound like a good thing, it really isn’t. we can’t see the real gold records or songs. all we can see are the fake gold records and songs, the ones that have been bought for a few bucks each by millions of people. these are the musical equivalent of mcdonalds.
but let’s say that inaturalist becomes a market, then nobody would be “buying” the observations or ids. people could spend as much as they wanted. so no exorbitant prices, but we would see exorbitant values, relatively speaking. people would see the most valuable ficus and birds and frogs, of course they’d wonder about the most valuable classical music, electronic music, country music and so on. so a similar market would be created for music. again, no exorbitant prices, but we would see exorbitant values, relatively speaking. and then we’d all see the real gold records and songs. and then we’d all see the real gold books, articles and papers. and then we’d all see the real gold movies and shows.
it would be the biggest gold rush ever. peer pressure? if someone hands you an accurate treasure map, would you feel any pressure?
organizations either correctly adapt to changes in demand, or they go extinct. the challenge is actually seeing the demand. this wouldn’t be an issue if inat was a market.
i think the main issue is the relativity. maybe you’re willing to make a bigger sacrifice for reptiles than for plants. looking at your profile, at a glance, i should be able to quickly grasp your natural priorities. but i won’t be able to compare your natural priorities to your unnatural ones, unless on your profile you link to your page on the musical equivalent of inaturalist where i can see your musical priorities. in this case i could compare your total expenditures… woah, you spend 5x more money on your musical priorities than your natural priorities. i’m not judging or anything but don’t expect a friend request from me anytime soon. jk, kinda. not sure if that would count as peer pressure.
yeah, jeff bezos could join inaturalist and have his way with the rankings. but that would sure buy a lot of billboards for inaturalist. to the extent they were fake news, i’m confident that the correction would be relatively rapid, which would educate bezos and everyone else.
the uttarakhand people with their big love for ficus timlada, how many of them have ever tasted mangosteen? probably not many, just like i sincerely doubt that bezos has ever tasted, let alone heard of, ficus timlada. so at least initially there would be rather large pendulum swings as everyone shares their own definitions of treasure and learns everyone else’s definitions. woah, your favorite fruit is way better than my favorite fruit. woah, your favorite bird is way better than my favorite bird. and so on. the world would shrink more and faster than it ever has. eventually the pendulum swings would be relatively small.
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Topic summary
The discussion revolves around “Optimal recruitment” in the context of iNaturalist, a platform for nature enthusiasts and experts. epiphyte78 proposed an idea to use donations as a signal for which experts are most needed on iNaturalist, citing the example of a new ficus species. They suggested that this could lead to more targeted funding and attention for specific taxa.
However, other users raised concerns about the potential drawbacks of this approach. jasonhernandez74 argued that this system could exacerbate existing inequalities, as high-resource countries and well-studied taxa might attract more donations. guerrichache pointed out that relying on popularity contests to allocate funding could perpetuate existing biases and neglect certain taxa. earthknight emphasized the importance of patience and understanding the complexities of academic research.
jmillsand questioned the assumption that donations would lead to more responsible decision-making and argued that valuing work based on donations is problematic. paul_dennehy noted that experts on iNaturalist are not paid and that donations are used to maintain the platform, which benefits all taxa.
larry216 highlighted the administrative challenges of soliciting donations earmarked for specific species and jasonhernandez74 suggested that epiphyte78 should consider creating their own platform to test their idea instead of trying to change iNaturalist.
On behalf of my wild bee clients, I wish to point out that the references to “bee nature” that are being thrown about so heedlessly in this thread seem to be based on one particular member of a large and diverse family, and that (unlike honeybees) most of them engage in a solitary lifestyle that may involve various sorts of prioritization choices, but does not include sacrificing calories to collaborate with conspecifics.
They also wish to note that some of them provide more effective pollination services than honeybees in spite of their lack of organized coordination and that they generally are not provided any rewards for providing these services.
Their co-plaintiff Apis mellifera further objects to being used as an analogy for human economic practices, given that they are themselves frequently subjected to human exploitation for economic and culinary gain, of which they are likewise not given any share of dividends.
hmmm… not sure what to say. but i feel like i should say something. we’re not talking about a fictitious noah’s ark with virtually unlimited space to hold plenty of living samples of every organism on the planet. we’re talking about a planet destroying asteroid heading straight for us and we just barely have time to build a ship or ships that can just barely carry enough humans, plus a few plants and animals. this means prioritizing. it’s something that every organism does. fortunately, in this case, there’s absolutely no need to debate which organisms to put on our ship(s). we just need to look at inaturalist, and voila. all the plants and animals in the world have already been prioritized. by money.
admittedly, i’m guessing that overnight there would be a rather drastic re-prioritization of all the plants and animals on inaturalist. 8 billion brains all networked to come up with an answer. hmmm, then again, putting that many heads together could literally explode a giant asteroid that was 100 light years from earth.
you know epiphytes? my username. there i was hiking up miravalles volcano in costa rica and there were fallen epiphytes literally everywhere. they die, breakdown, and nourish the phorophytes. i get it completely. but i just couldn’t take seeing so many incredibly cool and wonderful orchids, bromeliads, ferns, peperomias, ericaceaes, gesneriads and so on just die. i picked them up and put them in my backback. pretty quickly my backpack was completely full. then what? then hard decisions whenever i encountered a new fallen epiphyte. prioritization. anytime i wanted to put an epiphyte in my backpack, i had to make room by discarding the least valuable epiphyte. ouch.
when i finally returned to the lodge my backpack and arms were completely full. with the owner’s permission i spent the next few days attaching the rescued epiphytes to trees at the lodge. there was definitely a strong selection bias in terms of epiphytes pollinated by hummingbirds, such as columneas.
saving and rescuing anything depends on prioritization. the trick is for everyone in the world to put their heads together and use money to prioritize all the organisms in the world. then whenever anyone is anywhere in the world, they will know exactly what’s there that is most important to the rest of the world.
Which bird species birders value most is very contextual and I don’t think would work for a system like this. The most valuable species are the many species that haven’t been observed in a region yet.
For example, around 500 species of birds have been observed in Ontario. Only around 250 of those are regular breeders, so those would be the lowest value. The value of the other 250 would be correlated with how few observations there are of those species. Marsh Sandpiper and Yellow-browed Warbler have the highest value, because they’ve only ever been observed once in the province. But something like a Bearded Vulture, Wallcreeper, or Slender-billed Curlew (recently declared extinct) would be even more valuable since they’ve never been observed in Ontario.
In fact since there are ~11k bird species in the world and only 500 with records from Ontario, there are ~10,500 species which would be considered more valuable in Ontario than most of those 500. But that’s only relevant to Ontario; the numbers will all be different for bird nerds in Florida or the UK. I don’t think there’s any world in which people will be spending money just to create a ranking of which vagrants they hope to see most.