Search For Truth

This, for whatever it's worth, is not something amenable to structure or content of TheReformSociety. Happily most of the SociologyWikiSeedList pages don't seem to be about a SearchForTruth; they're about societal problems and proposals for reform - and that is exactly what TheReformSociety is about.

But if you want to SearchForTruth, you're still out of luck in WikiDom. Our best advice is to run up your own wiki for it - and good luck! You should also observe that many people claiming to engage in the SearchForTruth (there is a prominent example very near by!) are actually carrying out what the esteemed philosopher Susan Haack calls ShamInquiry?.

A few questions from an interested party

Forgive me if I've missed the answers in the messy details of this [SociologyWiki] page; I've given it what I think is an appropriate "twice-over quickly". Both Josh and Richard have expressed primary interest in the concept of search for objective truth. Even though existing forums have proved disappointing in providing the environment you wish for, can you please see if you can spot and then report on two or three good examples from Why or Wiki where this "search for truth" concept materialized to your satisfaction? The example of "Bill Gates invented the internet" isn't too convincing. I guess what I'm looking for are examples of your private "truth" being altered through interaction. And cases you'd regard as non-trivial, please. I'd like to take a look at the conflict levels around that process, if possible. The instabilities inherent in these kinds of interactions seem overwhelming, but do they have to be? Thanks, if you can. -- WaldenMathews

God/Truth is in the Details. -- JediMindTrick

Ok. There aren't going to be many examples for me because very few of the opinions expressed here are actually substantiated by arguments. WtcPoliticsOfTerror? is a good example - the people I disagreed with said we were under threat and compared things to the Middle Ages and WWII, but that was it. On Why, when I asked someone why he thought Chomsky could be dismissed out of hand, he specifically declined to make any comment or give any reference. This doesn't make learning easy. You can compare to the best case scenario I gave above, where I could expect to change my opinion a lot.

The closest people come to this is, in my opinion, RK at his better moments before conversation degenerates. There, he at least gives an outline of what an argument might end up looking like, or some links to provide better information. But since I'm already standing closer to him than most people here are, shifts towards him aren't going to look like much, and, of course, most of them are influenced considerably by life outside the wiki.

Not too much, but not too bad under the circumstances. As said, hopefully the new forum would be better, by encouraging people to substantiate what they say. -- JoshuaGrosse

Regarding Walden's question: some great examples of SearchForTruth happening were on CanadaCountry and DefinitionOfLife. On DefinitionOfLife, the definition was modified 3 or 4 times to deal with fine details. Another example of SearchForTruth, though unresolved and unsatisfying, went on in FreeSchools. The origin of FreeSchools was debated until I found a reference to their being started by anarchists more than a century ago (not something most proponents of FreeSchools wish to acknowledge). -- rk

I'll do me homework then and read some of those pages to see if I can see opinion being wrought into new shapes. In the meantime, have you guys thought of any specific moderation processes that you think might work? For instance (I throw these out casually) what about a buddy system? What would Josh think if he had to bear partial responsibility for Richard's misunderstood but otherwise excellent discretion? Here's another wild-ass one: what if 'moderator' was a rotating responsibility, where the worst behaved gentleman of the week pulled moderator duty for the next week. And moderators don't get to work the content angle at all, only the process. Personally, I doubt anything would work well enough to satisfy a critical mass for long, but who knows.

You know, I might add that it doesn't say much for the Canadian education system that you two guys - full time students? - are looking for a place to have a deep conversation. Too bad you didn't apply to Yale. <smirk> -- Walden

What does it say about the American education system that it doesn't produce anyone desiring a deep conversation? I'm not a fan of formal education systems so I'm not interested in defending Canada's.

I haven't thought about moderation because I don't know what kind of problems would come up. Somewhere above, I give a long list of problems that I don't think will come up.

Personally, I have problems dealing with very ignorant people when they don't know they're ignorant. Sometimes that's due to dishonesty and sometimes not, but it's usually possible to tell which fairly quickly. The former could be excised easily by appealing to the ideal of SearchForTruth. I have this hope that with an unambiguous title and homepage, they'll be prevented from occurring at all. Meanwhile, the latter cases tend to resolve themselves after heated exchanges. It's a pain to synthesize those exchanges and it doesn't feel right when you're one of the participants but that would be an appropriate penance. -- rk

One kind of problem that might come up is that you and Josh might end up having the equivalent of a private email exchange on a public wiki. Would that disappoint you? I didn't quite get the part about synthesis and penance. Does it mean that after you prove the other guy's ignorance and he backs down, you get to sort out the material as your punishment for something? Or does he get the punishment for being stupid? (Or am I being stupid?)

Hey. Did you tell me a story about how you had your mind changed as the result of a heated exchange yet? That was the one I was most interested in.

I like your comment about the American education system. I partly avoided that system, which accounts for my depth. I'm convinced.

-- Walden

I've had my mind changed on several occasions but since they were due to either friends or my own investigations, they weren't heated exchanges.

After you prove the other guy's ignorance and he backs down, at a minimum you should remove all the references to his being a stupid jerk. And as penance for having called him a stupid jerk, you have to sort out the material. Synthesis by one of the participants may still be a bad idea. -- rk

: Do they back down because they are stupid, they feel stupid, or they think you're stupid? How could you tell? I feel stupid after someone backs down from me. -- SunirShah

And in your experience, Richard, people always back down when you prove their ignorance? How do you measure if they back down, anyway? Do they say "I give in, you're smarter than me?" Or do they simply stop posting? -- francis

I give in, you're smarter than me. -- rk

: All right, thanks. Now am I supposed to go back over the rest of this page and refactor out all of your contributions that have magically been proven null and void? (I suppose I should also figure out if I've called you a stupid jerk anywhere here, though I usually think "jerk" is too tepid an insult to be worth the trouble.) ~ francis
: Why would there be insults, if the purpose is the search for truth? Surely, if the goal is to change someone's opinion, insults are counterproductive, and if the goal is to win the argument, you are not concerned with the other person at all -- PeteHardie
: Because some of us apparently believe that when opinions vary too much, such variance becomes a liability in the search for truth, instead of a strength.
: I should say also that I don't understand how insulting others is compatible with having your own opinions changed one bit. It seems to me that if I call someone a "stupid jerk", that makes things pretty clear that I'm not about to back down on anything. ~ francis

Note this probably doesn't happen to RK very often - it certainly doesn't to me. Most of the time when my discussions get heated, they either start slipping topics, preventing anything from being resolved properly, or my opponent decides he does not need to support what he is saying, but continues to maintain it anyways (I'd like to think I don't do this). I don't see any reason things shouldn't work, though, if we try to minimize the chance of these sorts of things happening. Rigorous compartmentalization and predication ought to help.

And, btw, to Walden above. If a new wiki was created but ended up as simply me and RK talking to one another, or more likely him talking and me listening, I would consider it a great disappointment. That is something that is better done by e-mail. When I say I am interested in a wiki, that inherently means there should be more than two people, and preferably they should have some diversity of opinion, so that they can learn from one another, correct one another's mistakes, and generally keep things interesting. I simply don't think that keeping around untenable positions helps any of those. -- JG

In reading over the little exchange above, the thing that strikes me is how dumb I was putting that stupid smirk comment about Canadian education system right after the paragraph I actually wanted you to respond to. Gee, maybe I did attend school after all.

I read through CanadaCountry and DefinitionOfLife just now. They don't really tell me what I want to know in any detail (about the nature of the interaction - I learned more than I want to know about Canada), but the fact that you are proposing them as examples of something good is significant. I wasn't sure, when I asked, whether any candidates would surface.

You guys are saying that you want diversity (Josh anyway) without idiots (Josh and Richard). You also appear to be saying that you want a moderator smart enough and tough enough to correctly identify the idiots and export them before the experience goes too far down. I hope you read me correctly when I say idiot, meaning as you've said Josh, someone who holds too tenuously. Would you say your interest in the forum hinges critically around that moderation? I'm curious to know how much noise you each can tolerate. I'm not volunteering to moderate, by the way. I don't think it's a doable job. My interest would mainly be in continuing some discussions on the nature of consciousness and finding opportunities to explore language history more. Nor do I have a clear agenda for these, so I admit I'm not much help.

So what exactly is delaying the startup of this forum? Is the critical path a matter of finishing an acceptable charter for Ward, or something else? -- wm

Lack of expressions of interest in the SearchForTruth form of SociologyWiki. The distinction between SearchForTruth and PostModernism has split what little interest existed in SociologyWiki. Most of the interest now is negative; people who want politics off WikiWikiWeb. I wonder how much interest there was at the beginning of MeatballWiki and WhyClublet.

I don't know how much a moderator would be needed. Keeping the intellectually dishonest people out might just be a question of telling them they're not wanted. Idiots per se can serve as a challenge.

Are you trying to collaborate or convince? If your "common" goal is to prove to others that you're right, I guarantee to you the others don't share your goal. They'd rather prove to you they are right. In that case, you're talking at cross-purposes and you will fail.

Collaboration requires boredom. The secret to building a winning wiki is to be incredibly boring. Passion is the enemy. -- SunirShah

The requirement that people support their positions and deal with things on a basic level first should make things boring enough not to fly apart, if it's enforced. And remember, I want people to try and convince me I'm wrong. That's how you tell whether or not your position is valid.

Maybe you haven't learn anything from being here, but you're always wrong on a wiki. That doesn't prove your position is invalid because life isn't bivalently logical. But as long as you demand conflict, you will get it. Don't demand that people try to prove you wrong. As long as you humbly teach what you know, and cautiously suggest only what you barely know, people will naturally fill in the details and the counterexamples because people can't resist teaching what they know in turn.

I'm very efficient at creating conflict here, and very efficient at avoiding it elsewhere, so I know what I'm talking about. -- SunirShah

Life isn't bivalent, but some things are right and some things are wrong, and I like to know which is which when I can. I like sharing as much as the next person, and I'm not demanding conflict. In fact, almost all of my proposals above were designed to minimize it, to transform it into something better, to impede direct fights which in my experience don't ever lead to much. I want people to prove me wrong because otherwise they'll just say so which doesn't help me at all. Which is not to say that I've learned nothing from being here, it's to say that I think I could learn more. At the moment, though, it seems a moot point. :(

So, they say

: You're wrong! -- Troll

Just respond with

: Sure, but why?

If they can't answer, just ignore it. Everyone else will. One day, years from the event, it will be refactored away. The hardest thing is to learn how to ignore it. -- SunirShah

Reading through a lot of this page made me realize that although I've participated in a number of political discussions here, I don't think I've learned a single thing. (Unlike JoshuaGrosse, I figured out Americans are violent long ago.) As opposed to the stuff I've learned here about OO programming/design, and then the more abstract stuff about WuWei, WabiSabi, AlexandrianForm, etc., etc.

When I do learn about politics, it tends to from different sorts of media. From online and print magazines I get small insights into new developments. From books, I get big paradigmatic arguments.

But from online discussions? Almost nothing. And that's not just Wiki, that's all sorts of online discussion forums - UseNet, e-mail lists, the lists on XeroxParcLambdaMoo?, BBSs, etc., etc. My memories of online political discussion are mostly of me spouting. Here on Wiki, I spout less and I read a lot more.

Maybe that just means that I learn more when I shut up. -- francis

This site remains dedicated to capturing and examining the real experience of expert developers and succeeds to the degree that it gets expert developers to report their first hand experience. I don't know that we can expect the same of the SociologyWiki. Do we have access to primary sources? Are we experts in the topics or can we attract experts to join us? Would we be happy with a site where reports are from other media, say the wire services, opinion magazines or popular books? We may be. I would be. But, then, I enjoy discussing politics at cocktail parties even though this falls short of the search for truth. -- WardCunningham

The DefinitionOfLife page is not a good example of a successful SearchForTruth. In essence, RK would only ever consider one opinion, his own. The page that currently exists is rather disgraceful, in my opinion, due to the level it misleads the casual reader. The huge flame war that occurred has mostly been swept away, and the 'definition' at the top most definitely does not represent a consensus (except maybe between RK and JG). It should probably be refactored into a DefinitionsOfLife page, along with a page for the major proposed definitions (I believe the person who suggested this was LaurentBossavit).

Personally, I think a SearchForTruth Wiki would be fruitless, but if it distracts hot-headed fanatics away from this Wiki long enough for us to carry on a polite conversation or two, I say go for it. A true SociologyWiki, on the other hand, would be good all around. -- RobHarwood

I don't have the energy to SearchForTruth; I prefer to SearchForWhatWorks?.

I like the sound of this. And I think it may be part of the reason why I have learned so much from the software content here, and so little from the politics stuff here. Much of the software content here is based, at least in part, on personal experience and pragmatic advice. In contrast, much of the politics stuff here is a bunch of guys sitting around spewing their own theories about why the world's going to hell in a handbasket. (My own spewage included.)

And honestly, I don't know if an online discussion group is the right place to seek out grandiose, overarching truth, anyway. ~ francis

Enough, I say. It's already been proven the SearchForTruth wiki won't work. It won't work because people are more anxious to predict its failure based on C2 and Why than to come up with ways to avoid the same problems, it won't work because anyone who disagrees with some text will hold that as a herald of doom rather than considering it, and above all it won't work because RK and myself are the only ones who have shown positive interest, let alone whatever problems might come up if we actually attempted to implement it.

So you all have nothing to worry about. If Ward does eventually create a SociologyWiki, it'll almost certainly be PostModernism or something like that instead of SearchForTruth, and the same for almost anyone else, except RK and myself. Don't make a gentleman's bet on that happening, and even if it did you wouldn't have to patronize the result, thought I'd make sure you were notified. So stop kicking our downed idea, ok? It doesn't need it.

JoshuaGrosse

Josh, I don't think the idea has been proven unworkable. I think the way it's been proposed is too heavy on the constraints against what two people might deem unwarranted attention to defective positions. That's what turns me off. It could be that you and RK would be delightful "hosts" on a forum like this, but from the prelude it looks as if RK intends to spit and fume; it maybe even looks as if that's his real agenda, not truth at all. Appearances can be wrong, but they sure as hell matter when you're trying to grow a community. And you are, admit it.

I hereby throw down the gauntlet to JoshuaGrosse and RichardKulisz. The challenge looks like this. You guys are intellectual heavy hitters and talented crafters of language. Maybe too smart for the rest of us. Use those smarts to grow a community of intellectual excellence. You may have to change a practice here, and attitude there, but so what? (What good is truth if you can't use it?) You're allowed mistakes, but you are charged with the duty of making your own "truth" as regards growth of intellectual web-based community. Figure it out together. If you can't do it, you're bums. Are you interested in finding that truth?

Of course you are. Start.

PS - please don't construe this as another negative force against your idea. I really think you should do it. --wm

-- WaldenMathews

It is wise to search for truth, but foolish to believe it can be found. All we can do is create models that approximate truth. The best model is only as good as the data used to test it, and we have no way to know how complete our data is. -- EricHodges

But if you believe in Formalist Metaphysics, the "best model" is your definition of truth. And so you've found truth.

Luckily I don't believe in any metaphysics, so my best model is just my best model. -- eh

You do believe in a metaphysics if the term "truth" has any meaning to you. And it does if you can say "All we can do is create models that approximate truth".

: No I don't.
: Then you're an idiot who doesn't understand what "metaphysics" means and refuses to believe someone who's telling you what it means.
: I know you are, but what am I?

Either way, if you think it wise to search for truth, then you probably agree that the best model is the best model. That "best" is not some subjective criterion, and that one does not shop around for the best model of reality like one shops around for a beer, a job or a lifestyle.

: I don't agree. The best model is still just a model. There is no way to know if there's a better model than the one we're currently using because we can't know how much of the data we have required to test the model.
: Who cares? The best model we have is the best model we have. That's it, that's all, end of story. If someone comes up with a better one, good for them, here's a pretzel.

A model is either good or it isn't, and it's quite irrelevant whether or not "alternative" models exist which millions (of twerps) believe in unless one of these other models can be shown to be superior to it.

: No, models can't be categorized as "good" and "bad". Perfectly useful models are replaced when new data becomes available. The new data doesn't make the old model "bad", it just reveals weaknesses in it.
: Nope. It makes the model bad. Before it was good, now it is bad. So what? Here, have a pretzel.

That's the essential difference between those who believe in search for truth, and those who don't. Not anything about whether or not truth can be attained, or even how you define truth. But whether it's a disinterested intellectual affair, or a shopping experience in the "market of ideas". (I have to wonder whether this latter view correlates with consumerism, and if so then with psychopathy.)

: There's no dichotomy between a "disinterested intellectual affair" and a "shopping experience in the 'market of ideas'". It's possible (and common) to do both.
: I guess you're one of the shoppers. This is the end of the discussion for me. I try to avoid interacting with ShoppersForTruth?, people who think truth is a matter of personal taste. And I certainly cannot respect a shopper who pretends to worry about truth.

-- RK

[I'll say there is not a single truth. There is my truth, your truth, my neighbour's truth, my landlord's truth, BillGates' truth, Monica Lewinski's truth and so on so forth. The only truth is there is no truth and some say it is the proof that no truth exists since in itself the first statement contradicts the second.

Even in popular wisdom there is no truth. For each saying there is a counter-saying. See TriteSayingsComeInPairs.

Apart from this, perhaps the one and single truth there would be is a law of balance. There is a balance in the animal kingdom (animals eat others and are eaten by others); there is a balance in the earth, our lifes are a search for an equilibrium, a balance; politics is the art of balancing everyones interest etc. I am sure WardCunningham believes that (and experience has proved) that on this wiki a balance is reached eventually, a sort of equilibrium. He is definitely right on this one!

Surely each non-truth is balanced by its negation, which is a truth.

See also PassionAndPragmatism and TheopoeticsNet AdviceToRichardKuliszForHisNewWiki?

Contrast with: SearchForDiversity (shopping experience)