On 29 July 2011 11:25, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
At times I wonder if some Wikipedians have ever heard of epistemology.
Larry Sanger was no great shakes as a philosopher, but at least he'd heard of the stuff.
Here's essays from Tom Morris (another philosopher):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Reliability_Delusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Definition_Delusion
Basically, the fact of "Wikipedia's epistemology is broken" is becoming better-known.
I also have taken note that there is a tendency among some editors to truncate probability calculations to the nearest whole number.
This is Wikipedia-induced aspergism, which turns otherwise-socially-able people into annoying doctrinaire nerds, who CANNOT STAND UNCERTAINTY.
This is where Wikipedia's epistemology is broken: the real world is made of uncertainty. And the grey areas are what people are actually interested in.
None of what I'm saying here is new, it's been circulating since 2004. That doesn't mean it isn't in urgent need of being fixed, now that Wikipedia is *the* reference work and we've dodged the Expert Problem by being so big the experts are now coming to us.
- d.