Comments on: The importance of seeing what isn’t there

By: Woozle

Woozle — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:54:38 +0000

Well, what you describe sounds a lot like one of the major functions of issuepedia -- which I realize is quite flawed in its current implementation, but perhaps with some constructive criticism and additional contributors (I'm basically running and writing it alone, while dealing with various unrelated crises) it could become better-defined and more of a useful resource. I've posted more of an introduction to it over at Less Wrong.

By: SudarshanP

SudarshanP — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:45:53 +0000

http://ideagra.ph/ is something different. But still might evolve into such a project :)

By: Valkyrie Ice

Valkyrie Ice — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:27:14 +0000

The problem I see with the idea is how do you control a majority faction from preventing any dissenting views? Wikipedia is rife with topics of scientifically controversial theories which are dismissed often times with little more than the opening sentence “this discredited theory” which then proceeds to give only the majority opinion, without examining any of the supporting evidence for the alternate view. Any site dedicated to examining the evidence for both sides of a case would have to be able to control the majority consensus to even allow a dissenting view. Considering the recent “Climategate” issue, it seems such a site is desperately needed in our highly politicized peer review system, but keeping it truly open to all sides would be problematic.

Take for example Astrophysics, which has recently been running into more and more problems with observations not matching mathematical predictions, creating new theories like dark flow and dark energy. There are dissenting views, such as those of Tom Van Flandern or Halton Arp, who point out that in a very real sense, astrophysics has ceased to allow examination of any evidence which could refute the Big Bang Theory, such as the existence of high redshift objects IN FRONT of lower redshift objects, or criticisms of the mathematical existence of singularities in violation of the laws of thermodynamics. While I would not presume to claim I possess the knowledge to debate such topics myself, as a casual investigator, it does seem as if extremely logical, strongly evidenced cases have been made only to be dismissed by “thats not a consensus view so it’s not worth investigating”

Considering a recent report of the enormous number of anomalous experiments that go unrecorded and unreported, it seems such dissenting viewpoints are in dire need of investigation, but will not be because of a mainstream view which controls funding and access to research equipment.

By: Eric Drexler

Eric Drexler — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:07:10 +0000

@ Chris — This is deeply different from the Wikipedia-like social software that I envision. Rather than being structured to bring forth the best evidence for and against controversial factual propositions, it is instead about people and their shared beliefs and values. From the description:

Personal Canonized Values
To find out what someone’s beliefs and values are, click on their ID to get to their personal canonized values page. These personal pages have a list of all supported camps….

The system is intended to be competitive with petitions, rather than being on a par with, for example, the content of scientific review articles.

I am speaking of a medium focused on marshaling factual evidence on factual questions. This is radically different from a focus on values, opinions, and people.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:38:48 +0000

http://canonizer.com/ seems a similar idea.