Comment by camdenlock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by camdenlock | Hacker News Reader

I expend a lot of effort to avoid Wikipedia as a bona dude source of truth, and man is it difficult. The desire for a single easy-to-access repository of knowledge is incredibly strong, but over the years, I've been stung repeatedly by this particular one.

As it turns out, the "Neutral Point of View" rule that Wikipedians so proudly tout is quite strongly biased toward a specific world-view: that of the so-called "progressive" mindset.

It doesn't matter how much value a system of ideals has; if it transforms a purportedly neutral source of information into a dogmatic one, then the source loses all credibility and usefulness.

This seems to be happening on Wikipedia at an alarming rate, which is a real bummer. It's not as ridiculous and blatant as (e.g.) Conservapedia, but... well, frankly, that makes it all the more concerning. Zealotry is way harder to call out when it's cloaked, as Wikipedia tends increasingly to be, in the sly guise of unassailable moral high ground.

Former WP editor, left because I was tired of abuse after the Esperanza project disbanded.

There is always the distinct possibility that progressivism is part of the correct way to interpret the universe. It seems to pop up in many places.

Consider Pirsig's argument: "The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it?"

That quote is wrong in so many ways - the man clearly didn't understand thermodynamics. Life doesn't reduce universal entropy, and inorganic compounds will spontaneously form more more energetic and complex compounds given a little input energy.

(yes, "bona dude"; not gonna fix that one...)

You might be interested in Gee's approach.

https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2015/12/24/getgee-tools-for-...

> As it turns out, the "Neutral Point of View" rule that Wikipedians so proudly tout is quite strongly biased toward a specific world-view: that of the so-called "progressive" mindset.

How? You're making that claim but not supporting it at all. Do tell me how anything here is biased towards a progressive mindset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...

I'm not referring to Wikipedia's written definition of NPoV, I'm referring to its application. Many Wikipedia articles in their various states (past and present) don't fit into any kind of "neutral viewpoint" ideal. They may appear as such, of course, to one who shares the bias; in that case, Wikipedia's content must seem like a bastion of truly neutral rationality.

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