It sounds interesting, albeit to be fair a bit gimmicky as well. To me at least, which may not mean much: I can imagine taking a few minutes to play around with such a tool if it existed, maybe find some contradiction in my beliefs (probably after realizing that many of my beliefs are pretty vague and that it’s hard to put these hard labels on them), and get to the conclusion that really my beliefs weren’t that strong anyway and so the contradiction probably doesn’t matter all that much. I can imagine others would have a very different experience though (and maybe my expectation about myself is wrong as well of course).
I’d be interested in your thoughts on a few questions:
Can you describe an example “user journey” for Philosophy Web? What beliefs would that imaginary user hold, how would they interact with the software, what would come out, just as one prototypical example?
Would there be other, maybe simpler ways for that imaginary user to get to the same conclusion, not involving Philosophy Web? What bottleneck prevents people from making these conclusions?
Who would be the primary target audience for this? What would make the tool “effective”? Are you primarily thinking about EAs getting to a more self-consistent belief set? Philosophy students? Everyone?
What are the most likely ways in which such a project would fail, given you found the necessary support to build it?
Does the project’s success depend on some large number of users? What’s the “threshold”? How likely is it to pass that threshold?
What would be the smallest possible version (so MVP basically) of the project that achieves its primary purpose? Could something be prototyped within a day that allows people to test it?
Assuming the project is built and completed and people can use it as intended—what are the most likely reasons for members of your target audience to not find it useful?
As an additional note, I’m quite a fan of putting complex information into more easily digestible forms, such as mind maps, and could imagine that “data structure” in itself being quite valuable to people merely to explore different areas of philosophy, even to a limited degree. I’m not quite sure though if the project entails such a web being presented visually, or if users would only see the implications of their personal beliefs.
It sounds interesting, albeit to be fair a bit gimmicky as well. To me at least, which may not mean much: I can imagine taking a few minutes to play around with such a tool if it existed, maybe find some contradiction in my beliefs (probably after realizing that many of my beliefs are pretty vague and that it’s hard to put these hard labels on them), and get to the conclusion that really my beliefs weren’t that strong anyway and so the contradiction probably doesn’t matter all that much. I can imagine others would have a very different experience though (and maybe my expectation about myself is wrong as well of course).
I’d be interested in your thoughts on a few questions:
Can you describe an example “user journey” for Philosophy Web? What beliefs would that imaginary user hold, how would they interact with the software, what would come out, just as one prototypical example?
Would there be other, maybe simpler ways for that imaginary user to get to the same conclusion, not involving Philosophy Web? What bottleneck prevents people from making these conclusions?
Who would be the primary target audience for this? What would make the tool “effective”? Are you primarily thinking about EAs getting to a more self-consistent belief set? Philosophy students? Everyone?
What are the most likely ways in which such a project would fail, given you found the necessary support to build it?
Does the project’s success depend on some large number of users? What’s the “threshold”? How likely is it to pass that threshold?
What would be the smallest possible version (so MVP basically) of the project that achieves its primary purpose? Could something be prototyped within a day that allows people to test it?
Assuming the project is built and completed and people can use it as intended—what are the most likely reasons for members of your target audience to not find it useful?
As an additional note, I’m quite a fan of putting complex information into more easily digestible forms, such as mind maps, and could imagine that “data structure” in itself being quite valuable to people merely to explore different areas of philosophy, even to a limited degree. I’m not quite sure though if the project entails such a web being presented visually, or if users would only see the implications of their personal beliefs.