I don't know how many people stumble onto this site but I came here from Wikipedia since I'm writing a paper for Metaphysics and I think MindModelling@Home hopped from cognitive model which hopped from the Multiple Drafts Model explaining consciousness.
My question is...what the heck is going on here and what do you need to do to help? I mean...I have a computer...is this just like...running models on computers or do you need to have actual knowledge of what you're doing because I have none of the latter.
I've by no means exhaustively read every thread on this site but also it just seems like a site for people who already know what they're aiming for. Congrats on the new server, tho?
Like...what are jobs? Or credits? Or badges? why are there teams?
I get that it is volunteer distributed computing but like...for what??
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BrandonProject administrator
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Hi holdtheotter,
We are a volunteer supported research project that provides Cognitive Scientists a faster way to run their scientific experiments. The scientists create their own cognitive models, which they then submit to MindModeling.org to be run on the volunteer supplied computing power. All of these experiments focus on modeling the human mind. We created this BOINC project to support that goal. BOINC allows us to distribute the experiment to volunteers all over the world, who run the BOINC app and donate their spare CPU time.
To make volunteer computing more interesting BOINC has added a competitive aspect to it. When you complete a workunit from a project you are awarded with credit. You can then compete against others as an individual or as a team to see to can get the most credits.
Badges are given out by the BOINC projects themselves as another form of an award system for the user. Generally these are awarded when a volunteer has been granted a set amount of credit for that project. Unfortunately we currently don't have any badges. We would really like to add badges, we just haven't had the time to do it.
To run the project all you need to do is download the BOINC from the boinc website.
Link: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
Create an account through the app and then add our project.
Hope this helps clear up at least a few of your questions.
Best,
Brandon
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