Re: [Wikipedia-l] A new source? (was Re: Are we running out of sources?)

Hi David, Thanks for the supportive comments about systems other than wikipedia. We're doing all this via open source, and volunteer work, and all free, much like wikipedia. And those of us working on this system believe something like this is desperately needed today. And as I indicated earlier, the goals and niche for canonizer.com are completely separate from where Wikipedia is. I'm surprised to here you say you think that canonizer.com is 'fundamentally a blog'. I believe blogs and the canonizer.com open survey system are diametrically apposed extremes. There are millions of blogs. And for that matter, there are also tens of thousands of publications on the issue of consciousness as the now 20K and growing number of entries in Chalmers Bibliography on the mind proves. (see: http://consc.net/mindpapers) The problem is all these millions of blog postings and publications are all individual testimonials, all using their own unique terminology. There is no way any common man can achieve a significant understanding or survey of even a small portion of all this in one lifetime. And all these blog posts continue to get piled higher and deeper exponentially compounding the problem. We believe this is why this field of study is so mired in all this thick mud and so failing to make any significant progress. It is currently completely failing to communicate just how much consensus there really is on the important issues. Nobody can see the revolution some believe is taking place in this field as we speak, simply because nobody has yet attempted to rigorously survey and measure for such. In the wikipedia article on qualia it appears there is just as many qualophobe experts, as there are qualophiles. And most of the world believes this. But many experts believe this is not only completely wrong and misleading, but a wave of people are converting to the qualophile camps - and that a scientific revolution is taking place as we speak on what is accepted by the experts as the best theory of consciousness. Some people attempt to, by themselves, survey and summarize the various 'camps', and the problems they think exist with all other summarized competing theories to their own, but most of such, since it is done by an individual, can never be completely unbiased or an accurate survey of all points of view. Any attempts at such descriptions of the various camps must include all the diverse terminology that the various individuals use in a futile attempt to fully describe any competing camp - yet another problem making easy communication in this field near impossible. And any such attempt to summarize the various camps by individuals is certainly never quantitative - and never definitively showing how many experts, and who, and when are in each camp. The other big problem of the way all these blogs, forums, seminar presentations, publications and discussions is that they tend to all focus on what everyone disagrees on. Once any two people agree on anything, the conversation completely stops. They only talk about the minor differences in their beliefs or terminology, and so on - resulting in eternal yes it is, no it isn't back and forth forever - completely failing to communicate to anyone what is most important and where the consensus is. The best you get is some statements along the lines of some experts think one way, and some think another - with no indication of how many and who are in each camp, and which camp is significantly growing and revolutionizing the current 'thought' on any still theoretical issue. Canonizer.com is designed to resolve all of this chaos, wiki edit wars, and disagreement and to make a quantum leap in the ability of diverse experts in diverse fields to easily communicate both amongst themselves, to different fields of study, and to the rest of the world - concisely, definitively and rigorously indicating what the current 'scientific consensus' is. The hierarchical 'camp' structure, and the way the system rules work encourage everyone to work together, cooperatively, and find what they all agree is most important. Everyone can concisely state this in the higher level camps where all that agree can support it - rigorously, quantitatively, openly, and in completely equal or unbiased ways for all theories. The best terminology to use is always what communicates the ideas the best to the most people. Efficient survey systems, and the way canonizer.com is set up to encourage negotiation to win or convert others in their camp, is what is desperately needed to rigorously determine what is the best single terminology to use for any theoretical idea or doctrine. Before canonizer.com, it always takes a huge amount of effort, and hours and hours of back and forth discussion to find out what another philosopher means by various terms and so on - before any good communication can even start. And in any one life time, you can only do this with a limited number of people. Now, with canonizer.com, you just say I am in the concisely stated XYZ camp on this issue and all camp members are working as a team on this theory. And suddenly communication between people in various diverse fields, and to the general population, becomes trivially easy. And this kind of communication is what is required for any complex and still theoretical field of study like this to get out of the mud and finally make any kind of significant progress. I challenge anyone to find any place where even a few experts of this stature, of the kind that have been joining, supporting, diligently developing the 'Consciousness is Representational and Real camp' (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6) for several years now, can agree on anything. Show me any place where this many experts are able to definitively agree on anything as concise and usefully descriptive as the theories described in this camp statement - including the sub camp structure concisely and quantitatively representing the still diversity of beliefs about what the best theories about what, where, how, and why qualia are. Even when and individual gets an article to be published in a leading peer reviewed journal, requiring a year or more, passing a hand full of 'peer reviewers', you don't have near the amount of support and rigorous editing and negotiation that has gone on for many years now to develop this camp. And this camp (and all competing ones) are just getting started. As ever more experts participate, this camp continues to improve at an increasing rate, and to extend its lead compared to all other competing camps - all on a perfectly level and unbiased playing field. Perhaps, going forward, some other camp will emerge as a new leader? Perhaps some new scientific evidence will show that some now minority camp is a much better way to think about things than the current consensus? If so, shouldn't we be rigorously watching, measuring and monitoring this consensus in a real time and in a historical way going forward? Must everyone that agrees on a camp or theory at any time publish similar papers stating such before anyone will count such? Also, I assume what you mean by a 'non scientific survey' is something that has the goal of using statistics to find out what large numbers of people believe, based on small 'random' samples. Any time you use something other than a 'random' selection of survey takers, it is 'not scientific'. Although some scientific or rational information could be derived about all experts, from any subset of them participating in an open survey such as this, whether this subset is random or not, non of this is the goal of canonizer.com. The goal of canonize.com is simply to have a concise representation, and quantitative measure of what large groups of all participators think. If you have a hundred different blog posts, each with a thousand comments, all using slightly different terminology - that is completely useless to any one. But if all their points of view. especially the similar ones, are all unified and concisely stated and quantitatively measured, this is powerful information, and takes communication and debate about still controversial theoretical issues to an entirely new level. Also, there are myriads of scientific problems with the traditional 'scientific surveys' you are talking about here. Such as once you ask the first person to answer a survey question, the statement or answer choice is locked in stone, and can never change. You have the same problem with signed petitions - once the first person signs, the statement cannot ever change. But the way canonizer.com is set up, competing camps continually develop, change, and progress as new arguments and scientific data continue to arrive. Also, a 'scientific survey' is just an instantaneous snapshot taken at a moment in time. Usually the same questions are completely irrelevant a year later after new scientific data comes in. Canonizer.com is a real time rigorous and quantitative measure of all the best theories and how their popularity grows and wanes as ever more scientific data comes in, causing members of disproved camps to jump to knew and improved camps. And saying canonizer.com is a much less reliable representation of experts view than are their published works, I would disagree. I have had occasions where experts have claimed that David Chalmers no longer believes in his 'Principle of organization invariance' which he published a paper about long ago - as evidence by he hasn't published anything significant on this since. Amongst the growing number of participators in this topic on the best theories of consiocusness, the camp representing this idea is clearly the leading theory. (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/8) But is David Chalmers after all these years, still in this camp? Many claim otherwise. Also, the many diverse theories about consciousness can't all be right. All would agree that science will eventually prove which of the many theories, if any, is THE ONE, and the demonstrable scientific data will eventually prove which one it is. The definitive measure of this occurring being that everyone is forced, due to the scientific date, to convert to THE ONE camp. The goal of canonizer.com is to rigorously measure this process in real time. If you wait for the years required for someone to get a retraction to their previous publications published, how many will even do this? Must everyone in the previous consensus camp publish a similar paper? At canonizer.com, you can watch all this happen easily, and in real time, and in a historically recorded way. If people stay in the 'wrong' camp to long, it can significantly damage their reputation, which people can rigorously measure for using reputation based canonizer algorithm in the future. I would argue there is no better system to definitively define, and more importantly communicate concisely what someone currently believes, compared to all others, than the canonizer.com open survey system where people effectively 'sign' the dynamic petition stating what they currently believe (including the history of what 'camp' there were in in the past.). I guess my question at this point would be: have I converted you to the canonizer.com can be a trusted reference definitively defining what and how many participating experts currently believe on still theoretical and controversial scientific issues such as this? If anyone is still not in the so far unanimous 'yes' camp represented here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/104/2 It would sure be great to get your POV, and reasons for such definitively 'canonized' so all can know why rigorously, concisely, unbiased, and quantitatively. And remember, when you join a camp, your reputation is definitely on the line. It will be very easy for people to come up with and use canonizer algorithms in the future that simply ignore people that were in the 'wrong' camps in the past for way too long. And those in the right camp, the soonest, before the herd, will as they deserve, be the ones with all the influence in the system in the future. Identity and reputation is everything at canonizer.com. Thanks!! Brent Allsop David Goodman wrote: