Philosophy: remind me not to be so stupid, Who needs experts Options

[Peter Damian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Philosophy

I keep coming back to this page, mainly because it gets 5,000 hits a day (that's nearly 2m people a year rely on it as a source of knowledge about an academic subject. I am taking on 4 people only 1 of whom has any kind of formal qualification that I can see. Someone claims

Kant, in particular, claimed that there were philosophical questions that could only be answered by going beyond reason.

I point out that the guy, by his own admission, has never read any Kant. And someone else claims

Whether someone has read Kant is not relevant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Philosop...uote_of_the_day

Someone please tell me, and keep reminding me, that anyone who gets involved with this project is fundamentally insane. thank you.


(What they are objecting to is a version of the introduction which was written by myself and a professional philosopher and which was good enough to be used by Trinity College Dublin in their prospectus. Let's just step back and see ....)

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Peter Damian]

The problem is not so much the average person (and I am a great believe in the wisdom of crowds, so long as the crowd contains a few average people).

The problem is that few average people are going to contribute to (say) an article on philosophy. So the debate gets polarised those known almost nothing of the subject, but who lack the self-awareness required to tell them they know nothing, i.e. cranks, and genuine experts (but generally the sort of expert who gets a kick out of belittling well-meaning but ignorant cranks).

You can find countless examples of this in the usenet forum sci.logic. For example here

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.logic/b...8a96bfd6b8a8af#

Where someone called 'elsiemelsie' claims the Zermelo-Frankel set theory is 'inconsistent'. I don't know who elsiemelsie is, but the nature of his claim rather suggests he doesn't know what he (or she, probably he) is talking about.

Immediately the guy called 'George' comes back. I know George quite well (as a contributor). George in fact does know his stuff, but he is extremely belligerent. Note the excessive use of capitals and strident tone. I haven't looked further down the thread but it is usually not long before he descends to obscene language and poisonous abuse (this is why George would not be allowed on Wikipedia). The style of his contributions are indistinguishable from the cranks, indeed, far worse. But he does in fact know his stuff. He gets a kick out of insulting people.

There was another guy called Torkel Franzen, a distinguished writer on Godel who used to frequent that space also. His style was much more subtle than George, and Torkel was very clever at drawing cranks in then hitting them with something in a way that would cause the informed onlookers to laugh silently at the poor victim. Sadly Torkel died last year, the usenet world is a lot poorer without him. Although sometimes I felt his subtle style was almost crueller than George.

So there you have it. Cranks whose main incentive is to prove their idiosyncratic views. Experts who are motivated by cruelty and intellectual sadism, and the deeply felt need to belittle and make fools of those in whom intelligence and education are lacking.

[edit] Oh joy, they still haven't taken his site down at Lutheran university. Here is Torkel's excellent guide to trolling. I have taken a copy for posterity.

http://www.sm.luth.se/~torkel/eget/net.html

[...] your aim as a major nuisance is to establish intellectual contact with your[...] opponent, opening his eyes to certain facts or difficulties. If your opponent is a very reasonable person, he will quickly see the point of your queries or criticisms and adjust his thinking to the extent necessary to take them into account. Fortunately, such reasonable people are rarely encountered in news. Instead your opponent, even if by no means a loon or sectarian, will either fight tooth and nail to avoid having to admit to any mistake or defect in his reasoning, or else, his idea of a good time being as warped as yours, happily continue arguing just for the sake of argument.

Note the bit in bold, which kind of bears out the point I was making above.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: