as stated before, proposals go on microformats-new, not this list.
Aside from that- microformats tend to be based on existing practice.
Wouldn't it be nice if people stated their assumptions straight off?
Microformats or no. Unfortunately, the persuasive power of many
arguments depend on the assumptions being kept secret. If the
assumptions were stated straight off, it would be so much easier to
debunk the argument by simply showing an assumption to be false. In
an ideal world, everyone would welcome this level of scrutiny and
criticism. Unfortunately, this world is populated with humans rather
than ideals, so we're stuck debunking arguments by sussing out the
assumptions, or spotting fallacies ourselves. Not everyone is
schooled in the nuances of logic.
On 21/05/2007, at 7:37 AM, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
Hi Folks,
Michael Crichton says: "The greatest challenge facing mankind is the
challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from
propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to
mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the
disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance."
One of the keys to distinguishing information from disinformation
is to
have a clear understanding of the assumptions an author is making.
Typically, it takes a great deal of effort to distill an author's
assumptions. Bring clearly to light the assumptions being made would
go a long way towards facilitating a web of trust.
I propose an hArgument Microformat with two properties:
hArgument
assumption (repeatable): a statement of what the author assumes to
be true,
and upon which his/her conclusion follows. [If it can be
demonstrated that
the assumption is false, then the conclusion is invalid]
conclusion (repeatable): a statement that derives from the
assumption(s)
Example: below is an example of an argument. The argument can be
immediately discredited because the assumptions can be shown to be
fallacious:
<p class="hArgument">
<span class="assumption">Microformats are a disruptive
technology</span>
<span class="assumption">Microformats are attempting to supplant
XML
documents with HTML and XHTML documents</span>
<span class="assumption">The main benefit of Microformats is
that it
allows graceful degradation</span>
<span class="conclusion">Microformats go too far.</span>
<span class="conclusion">It's almost better to use a more suited
format in such cases</span>
</p>
The advantage of this is that there is no need to "guess" what are the
author's assumptions. They are clearly identified.
Use Cases: any web page that tries to convince you of something. The
examples are endless.
Comments?
/Roger
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