I wrote:
> Until the 19th century, the scientific system
was truly open to
> anyone, and credentials didn't matter much.
And Ray Saintonge responded:
Was it really open to anyone? The credentials were
different but they
still mattered. As long as the means for the mass communication of
scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit
were the ones that mattered. The heresies of a Galileo were not within
the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper
coverage of his trial
I think Ray has confused "science" with "religion." The "heresy
of
Galileo" was not a clash between opposing scientists. It was a clash
between science and religious dogma, in which religious dogma won by
virtue of its ability to imprison, torture and kill dissenters.
Galileo capitulated to the Catholic Church rather than suffer these
violent consequences. The "scientific system" to which I am referring
only emerged as religious authorities lost their power to engage in
this kind of repression, and it did indeed emerge much like the
Wikipedia did, as a system for the accumulation of knowledge in which
credentials had little significance. The Royal Society for the
Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 as England's
official scientific society, drew much of its inspiration from Sir
Francis Bacon's belief that scientific knowledge should come from all
quarters and walks of life. At the time of the society's charter, two
thirds of its members were interested amateurs rather than full-time
scientists. Rather than narrow specialists, scientists of the period
were wide-ranging intellectuals interested in all of the ideas of the
day, from physics to theology. They combined passion for knowledge
with practical interests in commerce, agriculture, and industry. "We
find noble rarities to be every day given in," wrote Bishop Sprat,
the first historian of the Society, "not only by the hands of the
learned, but from the shops of mechanics, voyages of merchants,
ploughs of husbandmen, gardens of gentlemen." That description sounds
uncommonly similar to the description that someone could write of the
Wikipedia today.
Of course, there were limitations to the idea of science being open
to anyone. In the 1700s, literacy was rare and most people were too
preoccupied with daily survival to engage in scientific dabbling or
publishing. Here too, though, there is a parallel to the Wikipedia.
There are no _formal_ barriers to participation in the Wikipedia, but
in practice only people with sufficient time and access to the
Internet are able to contribute, which currently excludes most of the
world's population. (Of course, that's not the fault of the
Wikipedia.)
Ray also wrote:
There's a problem when a source of information
becomes too reliable.
People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front
of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.
I don't think there is any evidence showing that reliable access to
accurate information dulls anyone's critical thinking faculties. In
any case, this problem is merely theoretical for the time being,
since the Wikipedia hasn't reached that level yet.
Where are these "accredited experts" going to
come from. The paradox is
that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the
undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged
experts. The peer review must come from other members of the
undifferentiated masses.
I don't understand your reasoning here. Why can't the
"undifferentiated masses" on Wikipedia intentionally recruit the
advice of people who are currently "the acknowledged experts"? In the
rest of the real world, people do this all the time. When we hire a
physician or an attorney or an architect, most of us go to people who
have training, certification and specialized knowledge in those
fields. Just as I don't need to be a surgeon myself in order to find
a good one to take out my appendix, the "undifferentiated masses" on
Wikipedia don't need expertise in everything in order to identify and
recruit individuals who _do_ have that expertise. Of course, this
system won't be error-proof. (Nothing in this world ever is.)
However, it might help improve the quality and reliability of
information presented here.
I wrote:
> In the future, we may want to have some
volunteer committees:
[SNIP]
> If a dispute arose over a particular
> article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an
> opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the
> dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a
> binding decision.
Ray responded:
Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees! When
they mediate and
render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have
greater weight, but please, no binding decisions. Promoting an
atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.
I realize that the idea of giving "binding" authority to such a
committee is bound to raise concerns, and perhaps I'm thinking too
far into the future. The question of whether and when to delegate
such authority can only be answered after committees of this type
already exist and have been functioning for awhile in a purely
advisory role. I think that any such binding authority should be
given only after careful deliberation, and those in whom it is
entrusted should use it with caution and restraint. However, I think
it is a mistake to imagine that no one here ever has binding
authority over anyone else. We already have a system in place of
sysops who exert such authority, acting under the all-seeing gaze of
Jimbo, our Philosopher King. Just as sysops can step in now to curb
edit wars and vandalism, I think there could be a place in the future
for specialized expert committees to perform similar functions.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (
www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
| Weapons of Mass Deception
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