[Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people)

[David Gerard]

2009/4/22 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:20 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get
>>> the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European
>>> countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek
>>> literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains
>>> relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there
>>> were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque
>>> connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their
>>> prefaces.>

>> I'm not clear on the connection between neutrality and Marxism ...
>> could you explain the logical steps between the two clauses of your
>> first sentence?

> I wanted to say that if neutrality is forced in a field which is not
> possible to present neutrally, you'll get bizarre explanations why
> some course or book is neutral. (As young revolutionary authorities
> demanded connection between any field of knowledge and Marxism.)


Yes, that makes sense :-)


> Even further... Book in elementary algebra may be written well
> according to the NPOV (but, not by following neutrality!) because NPOV
> has clause which is related to the "common knowledge". But, if you try
> to make a book with a specific approach to a number of micro and macro
> dimensions in the Universe, by using NPOV or neutrality, you would get
> a book which is not useful:


en:wp has experienced this - the arbcom finally had to say "no,
peer-reviewed journals are more reliable sources on global warming
than Rush Limbaugh radio transcripts or Michael Crichton novels, and
fifty faith-based science advocates don't get to vote the UK's top
climate scientist off the island. Don't be bloody stupid." In a few
more words than that.


- d.