Aligning our mission with our reality

When the Pasayten Institute was first conceived, I imagined it as a 501c(3) nonprofit able to raise funds for math and physics communication and adult education. I really wanted to reach as many people as possible, by whatever means possible.

My belief was that locus of user attention was dynamic. I wanted to be agile enough to adapt to changing habits. I also thought that a breadth of exposure would teach us something about how to reach different audiences, and perhaps what sort of Science that would find interesting.

I still believe these things, but I’m no longer convinced a full blown 501c(3) needs to be the end goal. Things are going just fine as a regular LLC - a not not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization.

Of course, we still need money to drive the mission. The website costs money, the software to make the videos costs money, and of course I need to eat! Three years in, it’s time to review what we’ve done and realign our mission and values with what seems to be working.

To be clear, this is a very minor change.

Our mission is now to promote and practice Science and Mathematics.

The effective difference between this mission and our old one - to build and share Scientific knowledge without barriers - involves “practice”. Over the past few years we have supported our work through consulting on Data Strategy and Algorithm design, we’ve done media production work to support conservation organizations, we’ve sold books on Particle Physics and we’ve taught Mathematics.

This new mission statement feels closer aligned with what we’re actually doing, and what projects we’re excited about taking on in the future. It’s also in alignment with our ongoing attempts to find funding for our math videos!

This mission is supported by a smaller set of familiar values that directly impact our practice.

  1. We are outdoors. As much as humanly possible. We want to fold the outdoors into our practice in whatever way we can.

  2. We are platform agnostic. We favor the platforms where we do the most good. Of course, we’d like to do more on a wider variety of platforms.

  3. We value pluralism. Our perspective on Mathematics is just one of many. We need the many! One educational organization or video or textbook on any given topic cannot accurately represent the state of those ideas. We want to help others express theirs.

  4. We are skeptical empiricists, or at least we aim to be. We hold no viewpoint as a priori privileged. Put differently, we reject Platonic idealism wholesale. At least, we try to. We adapt to changing circumstances by falsifying hypotheses. (On a related note, we encourage you to ignore any and all philosophers of Science who reject Popperian falsification wholesale. They are cranks not directly exposed to the actual practice of Science.)

Sean Downes

Theoretical physicist, coffee and outdoor recreation enthusiast.

https://www.pasayten.org
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