Disclosure: policy and performance
Over at the FASTforward blog, some discussion of blog cred.
Labels: blogs, fastforward08, social media
posted by Tom Matrullo at Monday, May 05, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Where good taste, clear and distinct ideas, and graceful modulations tend to be viewed with lowering suspicion.
Labels: blogs, fastforward08, social media
posted by Tom Matrullo at Monday, May 05, 2008
6 Comments:
>>Many bloggers I read are also friends that I have meet in person. Friends had the highest trust ratings in the Forrester study<<
When he refers to "Friends", does he mean the TV show or groups of Quakers?
I'm guessing neither, but if it had to be one of the above, I'd opt for the show. I don't think Forrester has expanded its practice to cover the DRM, OPML, and WMDM of the QWV (Quaker world view).
Tom, I enjoyed the thread that developed in the comments after the end of the article. (More than the article, and I'm not just saying that because you were the catalyst behind some of the discussion).
I wonder who paid for the Forrester Research poll? I don't trust that poll. In some way, it's inclusion seems to diminish the meaningfulness of the discussion.
If we look up trust in wikipedia, one of the branched paths leads to game theory, Pareto efficiency, Prisoner's dilemma, Nash equilibriums and other concepts that I find a bit blurry.
After reading the FASTforward discussion concerning trust, I get the feeling that some nebulous big entity wants to know "who's authority will we best submit to"? Will we trust the blogger more than the newsman when they suggest that we board the trains headed for the camps or buy version 2.0a of their next software scheme?
When I googled "prisoner's dilemma and trust", and skimmed a few of the links, this bubbled up, "I rather believe that there will not be any single 'repository of trust', instead a successful system must build on the open exchange of trust-data between those who hold such information."
To what ends, this "trust"?
When we consider the nature of how we go about gathering our data, info and ultimately "knowledge" and consider how the process relates to notions such as truth, belief, trust and justification, we also touch upon our "means of production of knowledge", as well as "skepticism about different knowledge claims". In other words, our epistemological system. "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?"
I'm no expert, but would like to think that the enhancement of my knowledge about the world isn't dependent upon some sort of authoritative hierarchic trust ranking system. (As implied in the Forrester Research Poll) IE, I can trust A more than B and X more than Y, etc...
In some respects, "trust" involves elements of conjecture, justification and reliance. If we hold all elements open to criticism, and never resort to authority for justification, then "trust" becomes somewhat moot. By this I mean that, if ... "We could adopt an attitude of readiness to listen to discussions and learn from experience; fundamentally an attitude of admitting that 'I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth'. The effort might entail the following:
"(1) The check of logic: Is the theory in question consistent?
(2) The check of sense observation: Is the theory empirically refutable by some sense observation? And if it is, do we know of any refutation of it?
(3) The check of scientific theory: Is the theory, whether or not it is in conflict with sense observation, in conflict with any scientific hypotheses?
(4) The check of the problem: What problem is the theory intended to solve? Does it do so successfully?" [note]
I'm in over my head -- probably just attempting to justify my own dubiosities.
Kent, this does certainly suggest that at a certain point, one either submits to the control of an authority one has decided to trust (but upon what authority?), or falls into a bottomless abyss of feckless niceity.
Here's something I wonder about your four checks (none of which, alas, are in the mail, I'm guessing): These seem to dovetail with a problem of knowledge that involves something in an external reality - i.e., the concern is to see if what is stated exists independently of the statement and accords with it.
But do any of these checks address motive and interest? As when what we have to do is assess not so much an accord between statement and world, but rather estimate the credibility of intent of a speaker?
Not sure if this is clear, especially to me...
>>the concern is to see if what is stated exists independently of the statement and accords with it<<
Yes, you excellently summarize what I'm attempting to say. And, lets void the checks if they're in the way. But, if "what is stated" can (by some means) resonate independente sans dominationem, then I don't think that we must fall into the land of indifferent punctilios. I want to belief that the modes we use to attest and indemnify "what is stated" aren't reliant upon the possibility of some variant of an ad hominem fallacy or two.
The science part works for things scientific, but where ethics enters in, then what?
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