Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

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I think the root problem is that Wikipedia was created by a couple of Objectivists and they projected that philosophy (belief in a universal Reason) onto its structure.

Randians essentially believe there is only one correct opinion (i.e. that which is true according to universal Reason) and every bona fide Objectivist will (eventually) arrive at that same opinion. Otherwise, they must be misguided by ideology or something. Therefore let's make sure only Reasonable content lands on Wikipedia.

The real world doesn't work like that.

Wikipedia would be better served if it presented data in the format "According to X, Y is true" and make no a priori claims about veracity. Right now, Wikipedia is all "Y is true" with the implicit assumption that it is backed by a so-called "reliable source", which results in horribly biased and misinformational coverage of many sensitive topics.

If you want to discard everything said by CGTN or RT or NYT, fine, but let's put that decision into the user's hands (literally, with cookie-based content filtering) rather than authoritarianly deciding what is best for them.

I feel like the line between Wikipedia and Objectivism is a bit of a stretch.

The key Objectivist principles are that are relevant to Wikipedia — realism and rationalism — are hardly the controversial parts of Objectivist philosophy. Moreover, they seem like appropriate a priori beliefs for an encyclopedia, given that the entire point of an encyclopedia is to be an accurate reference of objects and events in the real world.

I do however agree that the problem of trust and sourcing is a huge issue for Wikipedia, and speaks to a larger problem in epistemology that as our collective knowledge grows, we have to rely more and more on trust and appeals to authority, since most of that knowledge consists of things that you or I can’t easily go verify.

I was going to propose that perhaps Wikipedia should just tighten up their definitions of “trusted sources” rather than throwing out a priori notions of truth, but that would just be appealing to a different authority. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for, though?

> The key Objectivist principles are that are relevant to Wikipedia — realism and rationalism — are hardly the controversial parts of Objectivist philosophy.

On the contrary, I think the belief in a universal Reason is the root what makes it a ridiculous ideology. Way to go putting a postmodern veneer on Plato.

> Randians essentially believe there is only one correct opinion (i.e. that which is true according to universal Reason) and every bona fide Objectivist will (eventually) arrive at that same opinion. Otherwise, they must be misguided by ideology or something.

This is one of the big unspoken rules of HN also don't you think? I'm curious to see if anyone else engages with this one, because I think the reason-as-Truth framework is nearly pervasive and actively policed here.

Sure, HN has particular implicit ideological biases. Many a good faith comment has been censored (i.e. [flagged]/[dead]) for challenging those biases.

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