Fear Of Uncertainty →?→ Fear Of Learning, Inquiry Into The Basic Block To Inquiry Options

[Jon Awbrey]

Fear Of Uncertainty →?→ Fear Of Learning

People who haven't seen it happen, over and over and over in their own experience, or people who have no inkling of the last 50 years worth of research in the area, grossly underestimate the power of cognitive factors, especially the negative ones like dissonance and doubt.

The most honest thing that Jimbo ever says is that Wikipedia is all about having fun. What he knows but does not say is that his target demographic can have their fun only at the expense of just about everyone else who tries to contribute genuine knowledge to the sum.

Wikipedia is a game than runs on making people feel good about what little they know. That is the hook for all of its biggest addicts. In itself that could have been a good thing. If you add what little you know to some area that no one has touched yet, then the sum of knowledge in the database increases and you get the incentive to add a little more.

Where it can go wrong is when one person adds a bit of knowledge that makes other people feel less impressed with what little they thought they knew. This can be a critical moment in personal growth. It happens all the time in environments that have the job of fostering inquiry, learning, and teaching. A well-designed educational environment eases people over these rough patches — it helps people let go of the little they know in order to learn a little more. Wikipedia is not a well-designed educational environment. It is based on a cheap way out of this difficulty and the result is sheer disaster for those who need knowledge and for those who have knowledge to share. The only winners are the gatekeepers who block the flow of knowledge between the others — for them the pay-off is the feeling of power they get from controlling knowledge they neither have nor care about except as an ego-ointment.

Jonny

Fear of uncertainty is only natural — in a state of nature the critter that hestiates is often lost. And so eternity and evolution equip the creatures of time with diverse adaptations for traversing a state of uncertainty and coming out the other side.

Charles Sanders Peirce gave the cache-all name of inquiry to any way of achieving the fixation of belief, that is, of passing from a state of doubt to a state of certainty, however absolute or relative, genuine or illusory, stable or transient that certainty might be. By way of a first analysis he sorted the most prominent methods of inquiry into four types. In order of effectiveness from the least to the greatest they are as follows:

1. Method of Tenacity
2. Method of Authority
3. A Priori Rationality
4. Scientific Inquiry

So a state of uncertainy finds us at a fork in the road, with choices to make.

As we puzzle over the tragic trajectory of Wikipedia, one of the phenomena that we need to understand better is the persistent tendency of Wikipedians to choose what turns out to be a very dysfunctional branch of that fork. It appears that the fear of uncertainty overwhelms the capacity for more effective inquiry and they fixate on a state that can only be described as a fear of knowledge or a fear of learning.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Thu 17th April 2008, 4:26pm

[Moulton]

As we puzzle over the tragic trajectory of Wikipedia, one of the the phenomena that we need to understand better is the persistent tendency of Wikipedians to choose what turns out to be very dysfunctional branch of that fork. It appears that the fear of uncertainty overwhelms the capacity for more effective inquiry and they fixate on a state that can only be described as a fear of knowledge or a fear of learning.

There is an obstacle, built into Wikipedia, that is manifestly absent in other venues of encyclopedia writing. Normally, the author of an encyclopedia article is a recognized subject-matter expert who has personally researched the subject, sufficient to become a respected and credentialed authority.

But on Wikipedia, the strictures against including the fruits of original research mitigate against this kind of author. So for the most part, the articles are written by amateurs who have read some secondary sources (e.g. newspaper articles) written about some other researcher's primary investigations. And even when the primary texts are available, the Wikipedia editors generally don't rely on them, because reading and interpreting primary source documents is too much like doing original academic research.

[Jon Awbrey]

As we puzzle over the tragic trajectory of Wikipedia, one of the the phenomena that we need to understand better is the persistent tendency of Wikipedians to choose what turns out to be a very dysfunctional branch of that fork. It appears that the fear of uncertainty overwhelms the capacity for more effective inquiry and they fixate on a state that can only be described as a fear of knowledge or a fear of learning.

There is an obstacle, built into Wikipedia, that is manifestly absent in other venues of encyclopedia writing. Normally, the author of an encyclopedia article is a recognized subject-matter expert who has personally researched the subject, sufficient to become a respected and credentialed authority.

But on Wikipedia, the strictures against including the fruits of original research mitigate against this kind of author. So for the most part, the articles are written by amateurs who have read some secondary sources (e.g. newspaper articles) written about some other researcher's primary investigations. And even when the primary texts are available, the Wikipedia editors generally don't rely on them, because reading and interpreting primary source documents is too much like doing original academic research.

From what I've seen of the way that people behave there, I think that there has to be something more to it — something more affective and primitive — than a simple matter of "Our Rules Get In Our Way" (ORGIOW).

I still have lots of encyclopedias and other standard references stacked around my desk right now, all left over from a time when I was trying to write articles for Wikipedia. General, philosophical, technical encyclopedias among them. Sometimes articles are written by acknowledged experts and signed. Sometimes they are not signed, but there is a board of editors who have the expertise to do the job right, or else no repectable publisher would print it.

There is something very paradoxical about the Mystique Of The Absent Expert (MOTAE) in Wikipedia. I have seen folks "reason" along a line that boils down to this — "We don't have a Nobel Prize winner writing this article, so we might as well make it garbage."

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Mon 7th April 2008, 5:46pm

[Jon Awbrey]

But on Wikipedia, the strictures against including the fruits of original research mitigate against this kind of author. So for the most part, the articles are written by amateurs who have read some secondary sources (e.g. newspaper articles) written about some other researcher's primary investigations. And even when the primary texts are available, the Wikipedia editors generally don't rely on them, because reading and interpreting primary source documents is too much like doing original academic research.

A statement like that betrays a serious confusion about the difference between original research and sourced research. Sourced research demands that one read and interpret primary sources. It doesn't become original research just because you touch original sources. I realize that Some People have been campaigning very hard to confuse Other People about that distinction, and working very hard to maintain that confusion, but that is just part and parcel of their overall programme of mystification, and Some Of Us are not fooled about the reasons why they want to do that.

Jon Awbrey

[Milton Roe]

A statement like that betrays a serious confusion about the difference between original research and sourced research. Sourced research demands that one read and interpret primary sources. It doesn't become original research just because you touch original sources. I realize that Some People have been campaigning very hard to confuse Other People about that distinction, and working very hard to maintain that confusion, but that is just part and parcel of their overall programme of mystification, and Some Of Us are not fooled about the reasons why they want to do that.
Jon Awbrey

To be fair, this isn't entirely a planned Wikipedia obfuscation. The fact is that there's some difference in what "research" is, among the various fields. Historical "research," for example, is only rarely of the Samuel Eliot Morison Two Ocean War type, wherein the naval historian goes out and observes the battle himself, in real time, knowing he's watching history as it is made. Most of it, in fact, is done by the historian examining various "primary" documents like letters, diaries, newpapers, government records, etc., long after the event. Usually entirely that way. In much the way Morison did for Columbus, rather than the way he did it for what he saw himself of the naval side of WW II. For some history on subjects so far in the past that no letters, diaries, or newspapers exist, the historian has to rely on reinterpretation of secondary sources, like somebody "researching" Roman history by reading an abbrigement of a book by Livy which itself no longer exists, and which itself is based on texts Livy says he had but we no longer have, and which in any case described stuff that Livy himself never saw... You get the idea. You can do original history research with four or five levels of this kind of thing, and get it published as "primary" historical research.

In math and the natural sciences, original work is something entirely different, and consists of doing experiments or manipulating equations in ways that are entirely novel, and publishing your results.

In Wikipedia, the extra level(s) of textural sourcing that lie between event and writer in some fields, but not others, has caused no end of confusion about what a primary or secondary source even is. And then there's the problem that you can't DO writing without synthesis of a sort, even review writing, and Wikipedia refuses to recognize this simple fact. Arggh. A pox on them all.

[Moulton]

One example I had in mind was a BLP that referenced an hour-long video of the subject espousing his views on a controversial subject. The only reference to the video was via a sloppy and unjournalistic review on someone's personal blog that the editors saw fit to quote hacked and error-ridden excerpts from.

I obtained the actual DVD and proposed that it be used instead of the error-ridden unjournalistic blog review. And I transcribed the full excerpt that had been hacked and chopped. I also found a YouTube link with that particular passage, so that any editor could confirm both my descriptions and transcript.

The adversarial editors resisted putting in a bibliographic reference to the source material featuring the subject's own words, in context, and declined to replace the erratic excerpt with a correct transcript.

[Jon Awbrey]

A statement like that betrays a serious confusion about the difference between original research and sourced research. Sourced research demands that one read and interpret primary sources. It doesn't become original research just because you touch original sources. I realize that Some People have been campaigning very hard to confuse Other People about that distinction, and working very hard to maintain that confusion, but that is just part and parcel of their overall programme of mystification, and Some Of Us are not fooled about the reasons why they want to do that.

Jon Awbrey

To be fair, this isn't entirely a planned Wikipedia obfuscation. The fact is that there's some difference in what "research" is, among the various fields. Historical "research," for example, is only rarely of the Samuel Eliot Morison Two Ocean War type, wherein the naval historian goes out and observes the battle himself, in real time, knowing he's watching history as it is made. Most of it, in fact, is done by the historian examining various "primary" documents like letters, diaries, newpapers, government records, etc., long after the event. Usually entirely that way. In much the way Morison did for Columbus, rather than the way he did it for what he saw himself of the naval side of WW II. For some history on subjects so far in the past that no letters, diaries, or newspapers exist, the historian has to rely on reinterpretation of secondary sources, like somebody "researching" Roman history by reading an abbrigement of a book by Livy which itself no longer exists, and which itself is based on texts Livy says he had but we no longer have, and which in any case described stuff that Livy himself never saw. You get the idea. You can do original history research with four or five levels of this kind of thing, and get it published as "primary" historical research.

In math and the natural sciences, original work is something entirely different, and consists of doing experiments or manipulating equations in ways that are entirely novel, and publishing your results.

In Wikipedia, the extra level(s) of textural sourcing that lie between event and writer in some fields, but not others, has caused no end of confusion about what a primary or secondary source even is. And then there's the problem that you can't DO writing without synthesis of a sort, even review writing, and Wikipedia refuses to recognize this simple fact. Arggh. A pox on them all.

I understand all that.

I am telling you what I saw.

When I started editing Wikipedia, the principal policy pages were nothing more than reminders of what any researcher would already know. They derived their validity from external sources, namely, ordinary common sense and the common practices already validated in the relevant fields.

That is no longer the case.

The major works of creative fiction that we now find on Wikipedia policy pages no longer reflect the customary practices in the Real World — unless you count funhouse mirrors as "reflecting".

The texts on Wikipedia policy pages are not supposed to originate any norms of research, but merely to indicate what is already grounded in practices that are validated elsewhere. They presently fail to do that. The campaign of distortion that led to their present state was relentless, and it resulted in the elimination of many good people who tried to keep those policies grounded in Real World standards.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Tue 8th April 2008, 12:10am

[Jon Awbrey]

One example I had in mind was a BLP that referenced an hour-long video of the subject espousing his views on a controversial subject. The only reference to the video was via a sloppy and unjournalistic review on someone's personal blog that the editors saw fit to quote hacked and error-ridden excerpts from.

I obtained the actual DVD and proposed that it be used instead of the error-ridden unjournalistic blog review. And I transcribed the full excerpt that had been hacked and chopped. I also found a YouTube link with that particular passage, so that any editor could confirm both my descriptions and transcript.

The adversarial editors resisted putting in a bibliographic reference to the source material featuring the subject's own words, in context, and declined to replace the erratic excerpt with a correct transcript.

A week full of adventures in home, yard, and auto repair have rendered me even more distracted than usual, so I apologize if I did not track what you were saying. The fact that we are even having to talk about issues that would be no-brainers to anyone with common sense is a sign that we are probably standing too close to the brain-damage machine known as Wikipedia.

I never worked on articles about The Historical Authenticity of Mary Magdalen's Two-Headed Martian Love-Child — so forgive me if all this subtilizing about sourcing is somewhat lost on me.

I worked on things like the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. There the distinction between primary sources and secondary sources is pretty clear:

• Primary Source. Stuff that Charles Sanders Peirce wrote.
• Secondary Source. Stuff that other people wrote about him.

It is also pretty clear which is definitive and which is merely ancillary.

The work of Charles Sanders Peirce is studied by folks from all walks of life, amateur and professional alike. And the one thing that all competent students understand is that questions about what his thinking was are best answered by readings from the horse's mouth. Not so in Wikipedia, where they have the most uncanny knack for always attending to the wrong end of the horse.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Tue 8th April 2008, 12:50am