@smooch Academic. Folks do often get a lot of spam, so an authoritative email address or a mutual contact is often used as a filter, for better and worse.
Thanks, that's great
I'm trying to reconcile your above notes on "general approaches for contact" (which are on-point by the way) with the more specific case of "contacting authors to ask for a copy of a paper" (which i appreciate is perhaps a separate situation)
Certainly my success-rate on the latter aligns with "non academic emails being blocked or ignored"; but for any occasion this wasn't the case, (and my request was read by a human) your above notes might have changed outcomes
I figured that my problem was that i hadn't learned to beg properly — and while your notes describe more of a "trout tickle" — i think in context, they're kinda the same thing
Really, we're talking about "a conditional mechanism which governs access to information" — and in that way, it's a kind of "flattery (or worthiness) captcha" — and represents the direct insertion of conditionality/ bias into the otherwise essential flow of information
It's hyper-normalised right, we don't even notice — but it's a bit fucked-up that the intellectual-progress of our species depends upon flattery/ gaming/ interpersonal manipulation (like begging, or tickling the belly of a trout) to gain access to essential resources
systemic dysfunction/ bias as a service, or whatever...
That aside, it's pretty funny that for all of the worry about what some "future AGI threat" might achieve on technological grounds, that quite possibly one might "command the entire species at whim" based on little more than your above notes on "nullification of resistance, via areas most responsive to overstimulation by the tickle of flattery"
Bloody advanced, aren't we 🤣
