666_howitzer

How do we really know whether double blind randomized controlled trials actually work? Is there any RCT done on evaluating the efficacy of RCT?

If you have strong prior belief about outcome of your action, if it doesn't go as you planned. You have a way better signal to update your internal model.

That is kinda true, since the peers who would be rating your weekly progress update wouldn't necessarily be your target audience.

So, you'd have to optimize your products pitch to be appealing to your peers, that means spicing up your landing page, adding cool graphics etc. I even went as far as having an option of easily creating a test account to play with the product without needing to sign up and sadly no one used it. For the first 2 weeks, I was getting more downvotes than upvotes. After which, I focused more on sharing metrics (sign ups etc) rather than solely focusing on reporting the work I have done. This did have a material impact in the peer rating process. Once I made it to Top 50, my project was selected by one of their experts, quite fast.

I think this problem has more to do with the pipeline than their selection process.

> the lever is demanding transparency on exactly what these companies are doing.

I think a even more powerful lever would be having laws that allow consumers easily export their data from one platform to another or make internet companies adopt a common standard for increasing interoperability of users data.