October 27, 2013: Online Work Bee

Ben ... sleepy. I wish my laptop wasn't dying.
Eric ... just got back from UU, and they always make me feel good ... also excited about harvesting my potatoes today

Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben

November 2 Service: tentatively 8:45 am PDT (11:45 EDT) (Ben) Last week of Viventibus Mundos
November 9 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Eric) First week of Viventibus Galaxia

November 3 Work-Bee: tentatively 4:30 pm PDT (19:30 EDT) (Ben will be returning from Bioneers about then)

A charity that gives you some contact with the people you're helping ("your chance to build a lifelong friendship with an impoverished child")
For $25 per month, you become a sponsor for a single child
Eric has heard of a religious group that does something similar, but drops support for any child who becomes pregnant because she's a "sinner"
Children International doesn't appear to be religious, but Eric thinks the group he's thinking of hides their religious nature to some degree

List of ideas for experiences: Direct experiences that lead to religiousness
What would the experiments look like?
Eric: Is the experience of watching a movie that supports the upward spiral distinguishable from that of watching one that supports the downward spiral ("filled with orange explosions that teach us to cheer for death")?
''Avatar" does both
The value judgments involved lead to a temptation to twist the data toward what we want it to say
Ideally we'd have randomly chosen research subjects who don't know which group they're in
Ben: How do we handle the subjectivity of the data? Is there a baseline we can reliably measure against?
Eric: Break up the problem into smaller chunks, e.g. compare movies about revenge with movies about building a relationship
Ben: Each participant would probably have to watch both types of movie
Questionnaire design
Ben: Degree of epiphany or life-changingness seems difficult to ask about in a coherent, scientifically valid way
Eric: Ask about it 6 different ways and use a 5-point rating scale (Eric read about this technique in a literature review paper)
Eric: We should do a literature review ourselves (which might require money for accessing the relevant articles, although we could use Patrick's university account)

Ben ... Its 11:38 and I feel we have made good progress ... I would like to thank Eric for discussing the topics that I wanted to discuss. Ouch Petra quit digging your claws into my leg.
Petra Meow but I like the feel of my claws in your flesh. I just want to hold on to you because I love you so much.

Eric ... This was a good call ... we covered a couple of topics that we've put off for way too long ... I'm going to go harvest potatoes now