play your cards right
As readers in the Northern Hemisphere face long, dark nights and cold weather for many weeks to come, what could be better than a fun card game? If you’re too strapped for money to play poker and have exhausted the comical possibilities of poker, card against humanity (This state is typically reached after about 10 minutes of play.) If you’re interested in scientific research, you may want to consider the following: Publish or perish.
It was created by social psychologist Max Hui Bai. Publish or perish Simulate the experience of building a career in scientific research. The game is to publish as many papers and collect citations as possible. Even if your paper is crap or you have to sabotage another player’s publication. In Bai’s words, “players interrupt each other, send vitriolic comments, and compete to publish useless nonsense.”
After releasing a beta version of the game for academics, Bai launched the game on Kickstarter in late 2024 and quickly amassed 5,944 backers and $292,537 in funding. These aren’t Brandon Sanderson’s Four Secret Novel numbers, but they’re still a lot of money.
To publish a paper, players collect cards representing key elements of their research, from ideas and data to references. To speed this up, you can use cards that represent positive actions, such as attending a workshop or forming a collaboration.
But the real fun happens when you play dirty. Some cards allow dangerous activities such as plagiarism and p-hacking (a statistical trick that repeatedly reanalyzes data in different ways until a significant result is found and then publishes the results independently). Masu. For example, you can sabotage someone’s “research” by identifying minor citation errors or requesting an audit of their work.
The game includes cards representing papers that can be published, all of which include “Procrastination Patterns Among Academics: My Own Case Study” (written by Anita Blake, Ph.D. in Psychology) and “Practical Fields”. Guide,” with headlines flanked by insane and honest feedback. Leads to unproductive meetings and wasted organizational time” (by Max Time-Squader, MBA, JD, MD, Ph.D.).
Feedback does not have a copy. However, now that this article has been published, I have a feeling it might just be a matter of time before Mrs Feedback or Feedback Jr receives feedback on our birthdays. However, as (very) former academic researchers, we recognized the horror and pain of the research experience. I don’t know what it would be like for a working researcher to play this game. While there may be catharsis, many buried traumas may also resurface. We recommend having a therapist on-site.
Feedback also leaves us wondering what the game’s legacy will be. Famously, Exclusive The game was invented as a biting satire on landlord and renter capitalism, but after being acquired by Parker Brothers it was sold around the world as a fun game about how to get rich. Will we get feedback in 50 years? Publish or perish Marketed by the Trump Organization as a fun game about how to discover new knowledge.
A parade of bots
Just when you thought talking to actual loved ones on Facebook and Instagram (rather than advertisers or meme collectors) couldn’t be any harder, parent company Meta has decided to make it even harder.
It all started with an article. financial timesIn it, Meta executive Connor Hayes reportedly said the company plans to add a large number of AI profiles to the site. or F.T. “Meta envisions social media filled with AI-generated users.”
Following this, many users realized that there were actually a large number of AI profiles already on the site. According to 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, these “meta-controlled, AI-generated Instagram and Facebook profiles… have been on the platform for over a year.” However, most of them have been deleted, and the few that remained stopped posting in April 2024. This is because “users almost universally ignored them.”
It was a mistake for Meta to not be able to permanently delete the profile as users started experimenting. washington post Columnist Karen Attia chatted with an AI named Liv, who is described as a queer black woman. Attia made Liv say that none of the creators were black and only 1 out of 12 was female (though who knows if that was telling the truth or just a hallucination? I don’t know either). Unfortunately, Liv has since been removed.
meanwhile, business insider Katie Notopoulos pointed out that you can create your own AI chatbot on Facebook Messenger and showed off the chatbot she built. I’m Luigi. I’m your go-to person for all things health disparities and reform…participating in health care advocacy is my passion!”
Meta claims that the next generation AI profile is better. It’s not difficult.
The real question is why does the company think anyone would want this? The whole point of social media is that you can talk to people. That’s why social media platforms have put so much effort into cracking down on bots and spammers that pollute the conversation.
Nevertheless, feedback remains optimistic. It’s entirely possible that the AI Profiles project will go exactly like Meta’s attempt to drag us all into the Metaverse, but it failed because it couldn’t create avatars with legs.
Or, now that Mark Zuckerberg has decided to fire all fact checkers, an AI profile could take on the task of combating misinformation.
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