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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2100 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 1, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So how many of you were at Aella’s birthday party?

I don't get the fascination with her. At all.

She does something that, as far as I know, literally no one else does. She applies statistics to what makes sexual activities pleasurable and the best ways to do and get it from a female perspective. She also frankly talks about the kink community which I can enjoy from an anthropological perspective, and uses the rationalist lingo which I lie.

The one time I saw a graph of hers posted somewhere (here, maybe) the instrument was a Twitter poll, which--I am no psychometrician but I took a few courses in stats, and more to the point research design--seems of dubious generalizability just considering the homogeneity of the sample (thirsty horndogs). Are these pilot questionnaires? Is there some degree of scrutiny of the research design or is it just ask some questions, get answers, and make interpretations? But honestly I have never looked too closely. Maybe there's more to it than I imagine.

She does a lot of Twitter polls, and I think it's important to recognize them for what they are, and not give them more or less credit than they deserve. They are not making grand sweeping claims about all human kind, they are looks into her follower base. They can be the first step to seeing if speculation into a topic is useful(what kinks are especially rare even among kinksters? Are any kinks that are thought rare actually ubiquitous?), where the Twitter poll is not supposed to be the final answer but rather the first question.

A lot of times too she looks into the relationships between two variables, like say income and kink. She might ask, Do you have an income over $100k? Are you kinky? Yes/Yes, Yes/No, No/Yes, No/No. Then the conclusion isn't that if 50% of responders say Yes/Yes, that 50% of Americans have an income over $100k and are kinky. It's about seeing that if more wealthy followers are kinky than wealthy followers are not kinky, but the relationship is reversed(or even just less extreme) among the poorer, there might be something interesting going on there. Among normal people the % of kinkiness for all groups might be lower, but it's quite plausible the same relationship will exist.

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