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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

What is a neutral response to a question like "what is the impact of increasing taxes"? Do you think there is any authority that could be cited which isn't biased?

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You do what Wikipedia does - present multiple sides to the problem as each of the sides views it, as accurately as possible. That's how you analyze _any_ subjective topic.

Doing that without bias implies to cite the entire corpus of every single public intervention on the subject. Any edit and summarization relies on trust and honesty to reduce bias — without eliminating it.

Wikipedia stabilize with editions being less and less frequent. This is not an unbiased system either.

Wikipedia is anything but neutral on political topics. Their political bias comes straight from the top with corrupt administration and disproportionate application of their own rules and guidelines. I suggest you watch this interview with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger on why you shouldn't trust Wikipedia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0P4Cf0UCwU

Seems pretty easy, if there are a wide variety of differing opinions then cite the most accomplished author from each perspective and let the user figure it out.

How do you determine which is the most accomplished author?

Number of citations, book sales, number of links on the web, awards, use of their work in curricula? Probably a thousand other less obvious ways to determine this too.

How do you determine the quality of the citations?

How do you determine the quality of the books?

How do you determine the quality of the awards?

How do you determine the quality of links on the web?

This is not "simple" in the slightest, you are just swiping all the complexity under the rug

Anything would be better than copy pasting your own biases, if you're really unsure of the providence of the authors then just provide a bigger list.

The bible, Koran, and many other religious text are among the best selling and most read books in all of human history. Should their perspective be giving high weight when you ask how the earth formed?

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