Thanks for looking at it!

Yes, a lot of people are excited about using it! For example, some people I have spoken with, who, like me, do not want to die, see that by modeling biological systems and medicine we could speed distributed science exponentially. That's because by knowing the causal structure of the biological systems it will instantly "peer review" theories or studies thereby taking months or years off the the time it takes to ask a question and get an answer. If you model your theory or study results it will be fairly easy for it to check if the model coheres with other models and with (models of the) evidence. But it can model anything. So many people are excited about modeling their country's legal system. One (American) person's idea is to model the contents of the Constitution. Even if we cannot agree on such a model (that is, perhaps we converge on 2 or 3 versions of the model) we could still instantly determine if a new law or action is constitutional if all the competing models agreed on the case. My personal favorite use-case is modeling the news to see if various outlets are spreading propaganda.

.

>>"it seems at a first sight like a lot of work has been done to have "perfect"

>>fundamentals (like developing a new programming language), but I worry a

>>lot of it is uncessecary for an MVP."

Quite possibly you are right. But does it matter? The code is largely done. We are seeking $2500 to finish Phase 1 which involves removing bugs and creating enough models that you can see how it works, and a video demonstrating how to use it. The video is to recruit the people needed for Phase 2. Phase 2 will be about using it to make the foundational models; like a Wikipedia that is written in our modeling language 'Proteus' instead of English.

By the start of Phase 2 it will be easily demonstrated that this will work. Currently it can be demonstrated but the examples are technical and it takes a lot of explaining how the parts will create the whole.

If you would like a long video call where I demonstrate it and answer all your questions I am open to that. But funding any project takes a leap of faith doesn't it? The most responsible people might get sick and not be able to finish. In our case it's not a huge leap because why would our team of smart people work on this for years if there was a possibility that it wouldn't work?

We won't quit if we don't receive this funding, but it would make us happy and speed things up considerably and our video will be better because we will be able to use the Adobe suite.

Thanks for doing Manifund! It's amazing that people want to support other people's projects!

Fingers crossed!

Bruce

Do you have some examples of users for Slipstream who have expressed interest in using the final product? Going over the Github repo (https://github.com/BruceDLong/Slipstream) it seems at a first sight like a lot of work has been done to have "perfect" fundamentals (like developing a new programming language), but I worry a lot of it is uncessecary for an MVP.

Thanks for the feedback! I can see that parts of the Project Summary and possibly the "Is it harmful?" section use trendy and vague language. I could describe it as a "truth engine" instead of talking about "shared narratives", which may sound political. A Truth Engine helps people cooperate because they can more easily trust each other when they know lies or propaganda will be exposed. Truth (or accurate information) is politically neutral. Our project is definitely not vague or undefined, we have specific design requirements and have already coded all the hard parts.

Regarding the demonstration video, perhaps I should have mentioned that the video is for recruiting people from various fields to enter the low level models needed to jump-start the more complex models such as models of medicine or law. It isn't a fund-raising demo. Nevertheless, if you want to see it, why not fund it?

Hi Bruce! I'm a fan of software projects and modeling, and appreciate the modest funding ask. I'm not going to be funding this at this time, but hope you continue to make progress and would love to see what your demo/video looks like when it's ready!

One note on your application, it does use a lot of jargon which makes it harder to understand what you're going to do, reminding me of this passage from Scott:

Another person’s application sounded like a Dilbert gag about meaningless corporate babble. “We will leverage synergies to revolutionize the paradigm of communication for justice” - paragraphs and paragraphs of this without the slightest explanation of what they would actually do. Everyone involved had PhDs, and they’d gotten millions of dollars from a government agency, so maybe I’m the one who’s wrong here, but I read it to some friends deadpan, it made them laugh hysterically, and sometimes they still quote it back at me - “are you sure we shouldn’t be leveraging synergies to revolutionize our paradigm first?” - and I laugh hysterically.

I think concrete examples (or the demo/video you mentioned) would help!

Our web-site is https://theSlipstream.com. From there you can access a blog, some technical material, and the github repositories with our code.