Prof. Ransdell, I actually think I and others at work on the project need this sort of dialogue, frankly, because we have been heads-down in making it happen and haven't often come up for air, so to speak. So I very much appreciate this critique.
Thanks also for the plug about my dissertation. > It is, of course, much concerned with the problematics of the question > I posed to you in my earlier message about whether or not there are > authorities on authority (or experts on expertise, as you might prefer > to put it). On that precise question, interestingly enough, I might say that there is. I know one personally: my old dissertation adviser George Pappas. He's written a number of articles about expertise and what it is. Of course, if I say that he is an expert about expertise, I am perfectly aware that all I mean is that he's a philosophy professor who has thought and read and written quite a bit about the subject. Whether he really *is* an expert in some deeper sense, I really have no idea. > In stating my critical points, I will ask you to put up with the kind > of bluntness that helps in stating things as briefly as possible -- > though the message as a whole is hardly brief! > -- with the understanding that there is no implicit intention > of being in any way disrespectful in stating it in that way. That's OK, but I reserve the right to disagree. :-) > That > said, let me start by remarking that after discovering that the > problem of authority is something which you have had a special > interest in yourself, I was puzzled at first as to why I did not see > in what you seem to be doing or planning to do in the development of > DU any obvious signs of your understanding of the difficulties that > are implicit in making knowledge claims of this sort. Well, what knowledge claims do you take us to be making? (Just to be clear, you should know that I am not personally in charge of the project. I'm just one of many people at work on it. Bernard Haisch, an astrophysicist, is President of the DUF, and he answers to a Board of Directors.) What we claim, I suppose, is simply that we aspire to be a neutral and expert source of information--not necessarily a source of objective truth. We know, and no doubt will say again and again *that* we know, that experts, according to our very conventional conception of them, can be wrong, and frequently are. > But then it occurred to me > that the reason for this probably does not lie in your not being > willing to apply what you know from your philosophical understanding > of the problem at the theoretical level but rather in an understanding > of the way academic life works which is, in my opinion, too far from > the reality of it to provide you with a basis for a viable plan. I'd like to understand what you're saying here, so I have some questions. By "the problem" do you mean the problem of meta-justification here? Possibly we don't understand it in the same way. At any rate, my own position in Ch. 4 of my dissertation is that there is a benchmark set of mental abilities we have--reason and common sense, in brief--the reliability of which we are perfectly rational in taking for granted despite having justificatory grounds for doing so. Is that what you mean by "what you know from your philosophical understanding of the problem at the theoretical level"? Or something else? Then I guess you are saying that, based on my understanding of the problem (or of its solution, right) I ought to see that there is something fundamentally flawed about our current approach to the DU project. So, what exactly is fundamentally flawed about it? Well, I think you give some elaboration further down. So let's go on. I said: > ... the most it can hope to do is to > represent the state of the art in each field. You responded: > The phrase "state of the art" may > have misled you. There are many fields (and philosophy is surely one > of them) in which there is nothing that even roughly corresponds to > the phrase "state of the art". ... "Current opinion in the reigning > orthodoxy in a field " would be the more accurate description once you > get outside the hard sciences, and even there, where much is > settled, you tread on dangerous ground in thinking that you, > as an interested outsider, eager as you may be to do justice > to the situation in the field, can get into position to make > a wise decision about who is represent that to the world -- > or to have that decided for you by delegated authority from you > -- without spending far more time and energy than you could > possibly commit to it. Well, perhaps to be clearer, instead of "state of the art," I should have used a different metaphor, like "the lay of the current dialectical landscape." Joe Firmage, one of the co-founders of the project, conceives of the DU's mission as making room for all more or less "academically credible" approaches in a field--not just that of the reigning orthodoxy. I could not agree more with him. I am more responsible than anyone for Wikipedia's neutrality policy, which in an early formulation you can find here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neutral_point_of_view--draft&old id=756 In the past few days I've been helping to edit the Environmental Information Coalition's neutrality policy, which is very much in line with the Wikipedia one. > Moreover, It seems to me that you might as well have said that your > intention is to favor the reigning orthodoxy and do what you can to > reinforce it by publicizing it as being what it is not. This is puzzling to me. I deny what you say--that we will "favor the reigning orthodoxy--as you might imagine I would. So do you perhaps want to argue that somehow this will be the ultimate result of movements already in place? That would be interesting. In fact, I *am* concerned that the DU management will not, over the long run, succeed in understanding, agreeing with, and enforcing a robust neutrality policy. I agree that this is a tall order. But--and I specified this with pristine clarity when I was first hired--the project's actual long-term adherence to a neutrality policy is an absolute condition of my involvement. If I see really good evidence that unpopular views, which are represented in academia, are systematically treated unfairly, much less entirely sidelined, and if I think nothing is likely to be done about the problem, then I will find other work. It's as simple as that. You may quote me. > The fact is, > Larry, that you cannot reasonably hope "to be fair to all strands of > expert opinion in any given field" -- the idea of achieving such > fairness or even roughly approximating to it is just implausible as a > practical proposition, and you are merely contradicting what you are > saying about favoring the reigning orthodoxy, in any case, and to no > good purpose. "Just implausible"? Why do you think so? It isn't obvious to me. I admit that it is ambitious, and I admit also that it will be difficult. (Maybe that's all you mean. I admit *that* much.) Many people will eventually be turned off by the project because it does not simply state their party line. It will be called "biased" precisely because it gives views with which they disagree a hearing. The reason I think it is possible, apart from my evident idealistic youthfuless, is that I see articles written all the time for encyclopedias that are admirably balanced. Wikipedia is full of admirably balanced articles, in fact, even if many of them are not so much so. I'll tell you an open secret, something I tell people from time to time. I think that quite possibly the greatest achievement of projects like the Digital Universe and Wikipedia will not be the resource itself, but instead to have articulated to the world a concept--the specific defined concept at the above URL--that it did not adequately understand. Neutrality has, I think, deep importance in the public arena and in commerce. The more we understand it, and that it is distinct from "objectivity," the better. One day I'll write a serious philosophical essay about neutrality. I wish I had time. > What > you will be bound to do, in lieu of what you aim at doing, is only to > add to the misinformation already available, and be doing so, > moreover, in a way that will subject you to resentment and fierce > discreditation to the extent that the DU is in fact successful in the > sense of getting people to make use of it, since that will be to the > advantage of some in the field and to the disadvantage of others whom > you will be choosing to ignore. Well, either you are not aware of our neutrality policy, or you think it's just obvious that we will not be able to enforce it. One reason that I think we might be able to enforce it is that it will be announced, soon, as part of a Digital Universe Charter, and new Coalitions will have to endorse it. Furthermore, there will be a Judicial Board to enforce it, and I imagine that the people on that board will have to take an oath to enforce it. > Knowledge is power, and you are > mistakenly attempting to get into the game of power by > exerting control over intellectual life from a position > external to it, when you should instead be acting in the > interests of the general public by providing non-prejudicial > access to it, which is surely what the DU is intended to do. This is very puzzling. I agree, that's what the DU is intended to do. So I agree that we should not try to control intellectual life (i.e., by excluding certain non-mainstream views) and that we should provide "non-prejudicial access to" intellectual life. Basically, I see the mission of the DU as being the establishment of home online for a worldwide group of intellectuals from all fields, a home they just do not have right now--in which they can work together for a worldwide audience, and do so on their own terms (although under a very big tent). There is no such project online now, that I am aware of. > Don't misunderstand me, Larry. I think there is something worthwhile > in the aspirations of the DU, conceived as vaguely as it must > originally have been conceived, and I admire your audacity and respect > the intent of your endeavor; but it looks to me as if at some point in > fleshing out the originally vague conception to turn it into a viable > practical plan a wrong track was taken, when you ceased to > conceive it primarily and essentially as aiming at providing > systematic topical access to the cognitive resources > available or capable of being made available on-line -- > "aggregating and organizing the world's reliable free > information in one place," as you put it earlier -- and began > to think of the DU instead as being encharged with the duties > of a gatekeeper, deciding for the public in general what is > and what is not fit for them to access because of some > supposed assurance which you can provide that it is > intellectually sound. All right--this helps. I think I am beginning to see what I need to hear more from you, if I am to understand. You seem to think that there is a tension between the admirable aim of "aggregating and organizing the world's reliable free information in one place" and the deplorable aim of acting as gatekeeper, of denying access to some information because it is not "intellectually sound." What you could tell me perhaps is what sort of process might be in place that would aggregate and organize reliable information without in fact promoting *some* of it as indeed *reliable*, and not linking to *other* of it as unreliable. You must be conceiving of aggregating reliable information in some way that does not require gatekeeping--how? For the record, according to our plans as I understand them, not only will there be a neutrality policy that aims at including a much broader array of opinion that you will find in most reference works, we will in fact have a very large database of links "in the background" so to speak, so that one *can* find many websites that are ranked lower than the ones that appear immediately accessible in the sidebar of any DU portal. Now, if you have a philosophical objection to ranking by experts, that would be interesting. Do you? I mean, you could have ranking more or less by more general popularity--then you'd have Google. But we'll have sets of resources that have been viewed and are more or less certified as top quality information by actual, genuine experts (as opposed to, say, about.com "experts"). Or, if you have some other solution to the ranking problem what is it? As I see it, we'll be providing a service that doesn't exist yet. > You cannot do this with any credibility > to people in the research disciplines Why not? If people in the research disciplines are *running* the project via independent organizations, then why wouldn't they? > and cannot deputize any > such task to others and it is most unwise to attempt it. > Perhaps this goes back to the time of adoption of the word > "steward". The term is offensively presumptuous and bound to > arouse suspicions as to your motives. A steward is an > entrusted manager of someone's interests, acting in their > behalf in doing so. Now whose interests are you entrusted > with the management of? Those of people who want to learn about the subject from experts as conventionally identified. E.g., college students who go to Texas universities. ;-) > What science or research discipline > or other creator of informational content appointed you or > anyone else connected with the DU to manage their interests > in this way? Aha, it seems you were writing out of ignorance of our plans (which, again, I must admit are not elaborated very well in the current version of the website). This might help: according to one plan (but this will be settled actually next week, I hope), a large set of new Information Coalitions, so called, will be convened by a very broad group of Interim Stewards (mostly academic luminaries, approved by the DU Board of Directors). They will have steering committees independent of the DU Foundation. The Coalitions themselves will enjoy very broad managerial independence. They can disassociate themselves from the DUF, if they wish. That in fact is the case with the present Environmental Information Coalition, our first active Coalition. We don't control them--they give us requirements, more like. > The interests you aim at serving are not those > of the people in the research disciplines but the interests > of the general public in being able to access such knowledge > and informed opinion as may exist about whatever happens to > interest them, and the word "steward" is not appropriately > used for this. Well, I like to think that we will have information at all levels of educational attainment. That's another part of our (ridiculously ambitious) plan. It is uncharitable to suppose that the Stewards (collectively, the Coalitions) working independently of us will serve only the public and not themselves. For instance, while the first "version" of the Encyclopedia of Earth under development *is* aimed at the general public, Bernie Haisch and I (from the DUF) have insisted on, and had approved, the addition of a professional encyclopedia. Why not? > "Guide" might be an appropriate term for it, and it is surely > legitimate for you to choose people willing to collaborate with you in > providing guidance to people interested in effective access to the > cognitive resources available in the given field. But in choosing > people to provide guidance you should not be looking for some one > person or some unified group to whom you can simply delegate the role > as official guide and gatekeeper but rather be bending over backwards > to avoid even the appearance of choosing and setting up official > gatekeepers for access by appointing as many different guides > as there are people who are willing to add further guidance > for the field, provided they are willing to cooperate with > other guides to the field who have other things to show to > whomever they provide guidance. If they refuse to cooperate > with others in an ongoing process of knitting together the > various strands of guidance insofar as they can be > systematically related, which would be a part of the task > before you, you can leave them available as guides but under > the description of being uncooperative competitors to the > others and let people decide for themselves whether or not to > make use of their guidance. Well, you have identified a problem that we might have to face in the future--that of a recalcitrant Coalition that just doesn't want to play by the rules (including rules about a "big tent"). You're right that we might have to discontinue our relationship with them, and seek to formulate a new Coalition in its place. > If you have reason to believe > that they are dishonest or criminal or insane or fanatical or > with a hidden agenda that is contrary to the general aim of > providing helpful guidance, you are under no obligation to > treat them even as alternative guides, but the most prudent > way of handling such cases is simply to explain to anyone who > raises a question about why they are not a part of the > guidance DU provides that you simply do not regard them as > appropriate in the role of a guide but point out that nothing > precludes use of them as such if the inquirer wishes to do > so: there is no law which requires that only DU can provide > guidance for accessing the resources available on the web. Right, sounds fine. I have no doubt whatsoever that, after we show the way to do it, there will be lots of groups acting as "Stewards" for this and that purpose. > My > general point is that you want to avoid any impression that > you are deciding what people should be able to access. Right, and then bear in mind that our role in such selection, under the current proposal, is only to convene an Interim Board of Stewards (maybe it will have another name). That Board of Stewards will select steering committees in various areas, largely independent of DUF management, and the steering committees will in turn start up the Coalitions in their areas. > My impression -- derived from reading some of the things you > have said on the web about what you have learned from the > wikipedia experience -- is that you believe that the reason > why so little creative effort to develop and extend the > effective use of the web as a cognitive resource is because > people are afraid of being exposed to the junk that > supposedly litters the web wherever you turn: it is an unsafe > cognitive environment, and you have come to conceive the task > of the DU to be that of providing a sanitary version of it. > That is, you have come to reconceive your task from that of > being a provider of effective access to cognitive resources > to being a protector against contamination from error and > other cognitive evils, insofar as that is feasible. Perhaps--that isn't how I would put it, I think. I don't think anyone can pretend (credibly) to protect against contamination from *error*. It's not a matter so much of acting as a prophylactic as it is a pleasure-enhancement--for people who are after expert opinion (not necessarily Objective Truth) and a virtual community in which people take personal responsibility for their views. I used to write all the time for academic mailing lists like Peirce-L, which I miss, because indeed most people were interested in fair-minded discussion and they took personal responsibility for their views. That *isn't* the norm for most of the Internet, I think. > It is understandable that you would think this. It is, after > all, the stock complaint of the academic faculty that the web > is just too full of junk to be tolerated, which would be the > excuse given for not making any real effort to take advantage > of the opportunities it offers to transform scholarship and > research in the many ways that are possible if there were a > will to do so, and it is understandable that you might take > this for granted as the explanation of why the general > tendency in academia for the past decade has not only been > somewhat less than progressive but -- I would say myself -- > even reactionary in this respect. But supposing I am right > about that being more or less how you would regard the > matter, I have to say that I think you are mistaken about > that being the reason. To sum up what I take you to be saying: the reason academics are not interested enough in participating in the various strands of the collaborative Web is that they think it is full of garbage. Yes, that was my hypothesis; that's part of the explanation, I imagine. > I can only state this disagreement > dogmatically at the moment "for what it is worth" because it > would take too much time for me to explain to you the basis > for my view on this, and it would still be only a matter of > explaining a hunch rather than a demonstrable fact, but I > believe that the real reason for academic reaction is not > this fear of contamination by error but rather a fear of loss > of personal security and status because of the changes in > professional life which might follow upon adoption of any > radical changes in the communicational and research practices > of the scholarly world. You're probably right about that too. That's probably another part of the explanation. And I would note again that we intend to give academics and their peers in the research/professional community a forum in which to collaborate *on their own terms*. That means: they're in charge, and no apologies for that either. > Academia is structured as a hierarchical top-down system in > which the top of the faculty hierarchy is composed of people > whose powers of determining the course of institutional > development insofar as the faculty controls it -- I am > speaking of the tenured faculty -- are all but absolute and > without effective constraints on their rationale for > admission or denial of admission of new members to its rank. > Apart from a handful of exceptional institutions and, within > institutions, exceptional departments, there has been and > continues to be little willingness outside of the hard > sciences to knowlngly accept new members with any interest in > experimental development of the new technologies for research > purposes other than as instruments for typing, powerpoint > presentations, and email, and for teaching purposes such uses > as these technologies have for the "efficient" mass > processing of students by graduate students and adjunct > --which is to say, futureless -- faculty. The yearly tenure > sweep, when those on the tenure track who are not accepted as > continuing colleagues of the tenured are re-directed into > academic oblivion, thus has the effect of nullifying what > would otherwise be a normal progression of institutional innovation. > It is, in short, a systemic property of academia that it > should undergo petrification in whatever respects the tenured > faculty wish to remain unchanged. That they have in fact > wished to remain unchanged in the respect we are concerned > with here is surely indisputable, and the diagnosis of the > cause of this particular petrification -- which has petrified > the faculty in general because of the power of the tenured > faculty -- as being due to nothing more than fear of > cognitive contamination seems to me quite implausible when > the more obvious explanation would be that the real fear is > of having to undergo the radical change in professional > practices and relationships that might very well be > consequent upon serious attempts at taking advantage of the > opportunities for innovation provided by the new > technologies. Old dogs can learn new tricks, but the fact is > that not many are interested in doing so. Well, I see this state of affairs as having two possible implications for the DU. (1) It will be difficult to persuade tenured faculty who are Stewards to bring non-mainstream scholars into the loop. They're not in the club. (2) It will be difficult to persuade tenured faculty to get on board, period. As I'm sure you can imagine by now, we've thought about these problems. I think and hope that ultimately the Charter and the neutrality policy (the DUF's clearly-stated expectations) will take care of the first. As to the second, I refer to my experience with Nupedia. I single-handedly, as a completely undistinguished, unknown, freshly-minted Ph.D. managed to attract over 130 Ph.D.-level people from all sorts of fields, in about a year. Without even trying, in the past few months we have already got on the order of 80-100 (I am way behind doing the bookkeeping) Ph.D.-level people (including 40 of the old Nupedians--a full third of the old staff!). That's without doing any serious recruitment. When we do, I fully expect we'll add an order of magnitude more people--so that, within a few years, we would have many thousands of experts involved. This might still be a small percentage of all academics, but it will be more than enough to do what we want to do. If you add to that number a large body of public volunteers who are (avowedly) willing to work under the guidance of the experts--well, the thing will happen. What we're doing is revolutionary. Of course there will be reactionary types who do not want to venture into the (to them) strange and possibly dangerous new world of the DU. But within a generation, participation in this sort of project will probably be de rigeur. Then there might be a new orthodoxy. This is why, I think, it's very important that we set it up right at this point. > If I am right about this -- and I can only suggest it here -- > it is a mistake to think that the solution to the problem of > realizing the liberating potentiality of the technologies of > digitization and computer networking lies in a project > devoted primarily to cognitive policing and sanitation. Thus > the DU project as you now seem to conceive it is not only an > impossible one, as a practical proposal, but even if it were > feasible it would contribute little toward the development of > the web as an instrument of progressive value but only help > instead to further entrench the orthodoxies of the academic > world, which surely is no part of the aim of the DU. > But the DU need not be conceived in that way. You need only > return to the view of it which you had when you regarded it > as aiming at "aggregating and organizing the world's reliable > free information in one place" and focus on the systematic > development of guidance and -- as I think you should add to > that -- the enabling of access to cognitive resources not > presently open or available to access on the internet at all. > There is much that could be done along that line. Well, to sum up on my end, I don't understand why you think we have ever gotten away from that view, and what you think our view is now! > Thanks for > putting up with the inordinate length of this, Larry. I very > much appreciate your willingness to subject yourself to this > sort of criticism here. Of course--but I can't guarantee that any future reply will be of this length. ;-) If you're interested in following our progress, by the way, and want to express your interest in Stewardship, please do it here: http://www.digitaluniverse.net/create/content/stewards/application/ I'm not so sure I should be asking a tenured *emeritus* faculty member to join, though. I mean, if the tenured ones are so stodgy and reactionary, what about the emeritus ones? ;-) All the best, Larry --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
