Re: Changing ones mind

From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 12:06:52 MDT

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    On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 10:35:33AM -0700, Hal Finney wrote:

    > I think it may have been Earthweb or David's Sling. It was written
    > by one of the Drexleristas anyway.

    Didn't Marc Stiegler write both of those books? Didn't know he was a
    Drexlerista. (Didn't know there were...)

    > There was some kind of auditorium, I think with live debaters, and people
    > could add comments in text which would appear on screens, they could
    > fact-check each other and revise their opinions. Highly rated questions
    > would get highlighted and float to the top of the screens where they
    > would be posed to the experts arguing the two sides, all in real time.
    > I think it was supposed to be a depiction of the idea of a Science Court.

    I remember this description, so it's probably from David's Sling.

    > with online? I think our recent terrible failure to achieve anything
    > more than name-calling in political debate here demands a new approach.

    "It's not the process, it's the people." Well, maybe. But populations seem
    to matter. I'm on mailing lists for Lois Bujold and Steven Brust. Both have
    a lot of intelligent people on them, and some variety of opinions. But the
    Brust one had a really long religious discussion which totally failed to blow
    up, and I'm sure the Bujold one would have done so in a tenth as many
    messages. I've been told in past years the Bujold list could have managed
    such things, but it's become more flammable.

    If you've got a population inclined to name-calling or to paranoid judgements,
    or to throw out conflicting data as flawed and biased (a common feature in
    political arguments since a lot of statistics all around are flawed), I think
    it'd be difficult to make progress.

    -xx- Damien X-)



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