Internet Addiction
Interesting place, iNaturalist. I think it is addictive the way that Facebook is addictive. Social stroking for those who contribute. One of the better addictions, perhaps.
I should know about internet addiction. I came late to the internet, first going online in 2001. By about 2005 I was posting in forums, and getting more and more political. In local forums like the defunct lubbockonline forums and Talk Lubbock I probably posted 50,000 times. When all those forums went to the great ether in the sky I got more involved on Facebook, treating it as not only a public diary but a collection of links that interested me each day and including my own nature observations and selected photos.
Internet activities consumed a lot of my time that otherwise might have been devoted to family and legal career. Now my significant others are gone and there is no career that I care about. On the positive side, so much writing and argument made me a better writer, doing what umpteen years of education did not.
iNaturalist is more scientific with objective peer input. A healthier more responsible addiction? Certainly it promotes environmental knowledge and responsibility, and that has to be among the most important objectives in life.
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We tack toward truth like a sailboat on a journey, changing course this way and that, always correcting. What I wrote above is not perfect truth but contains approximations of truth. FORTUNATELY, scientific observations on iNaturalist tack closer to truth than most else in our chaotic lives.
I find it to be quite addictive, in the sense that learning is addictive too! :) There are so many organisms that we share the planet with -- what joy it is to learn their names! :)
No question this is a positive site that promotes certain types of growth. However it uses similar tactics to Facebook in the form of positive feedback. I mean, sure, iNaturalist could use ID software and do away with human confirmation and interaction entirely, but it doesn't, reason being that we need some degree of social interaction and confirmation and a feeling of being socially rewarded for posting observations and having them confirmed by others. Not that I'm agin' it, mind. :)
I don't think technology is at a stage where most observation can be identified using a computer. Most of the time when I find a definitely wrong identification it's because the user just chose the AI's best guess and didn't research.
Male birds can usually be ID'd by software from a decent photo. But I agree you are correct as to most of nature. I'm an old coot who loves and uses bird books.
True, I hear Cornell's Merlin app is very good even with difficult birds, although I haven't used it. But they are using the huge database of eBird photos to form the AI. I feel like it will be more difficult for iNat to make a great AI because there is a seemingly indefinite amount of species with an insufficient number of good photos for many of them.
On the Llano Estacado, unless it is something seen in the same location by hundreds of other people (e.g. house sparrow, Tahoka daisy), you will not get anything reliable.
But if naive users start applying AI-suggested bogus IDs, the system is going to incorporate that as truth and we'll never be able to dislodge it.
Yeah, that's a real issue and one I tried to bring up here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/WnjvyvoZQCs
The discussion has sort of derailed into other topics but there are lots of conflicting ideas for solutions.
At the moment the only solution is to attempt to dislodge it afterwards...
You just can't convince these techies that, outside California, life might differ.
Sorry, Barry, for drifting into other topics, and talking all over your journal. What is this, Fbook?
Hey, Ellen5, go for it! I am all for brainstorming and lack of rigid structure.
Speaking theoretically, isn't that how our language evolved/evolves, with changes of definition and pronunciation? Most lexicographers say the purpose of a dictionary is not to prescribe usage but to describe and catalog current usage. So if scientific nomenclature shifts into ambiguity, it may be an anti-science trend, but is in fact what we have done for millennia with regard to our names for things. Bye-bye Linnaeus, hello pop sci.
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