[Tango-L] Style Wars: Truth and Truthiness

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

Rather than approximating the truth, the forever ongoing style wars on 
Tango-L are more likely to yield what Stephen Colbert calls 'truthiness.' 
The latter being facts or concepts one only wishes or believes to be true.

An article recently published in Public Choice 
<http://www.springerlink.com/content/100332/> (subscription required) by 
Michael C. Munger examines the information content of political blogs. 
Munger finds that bloggers and the mainstream media face the same 
difficulties if they wish to rely on the blogosphere as a generator of 
truth.  Both bloggers and media converge on a small number of key blogs 
operated by elite opinion makers as sources of information.  But these 
elite opinion makers are highly aware of how political discourse is 
conducted and are likely to resist any information that doesn't conform to 
their existing attitudes and beliefs.  In addition, blogs and blog readers 
are likely to separate themselves into smaller networks of people who hold 
substantially similar views.  These factors tend to generate biased, 
polarizing views that are self-perpetuating, and people develop an 
us-versus-them mentality. 

Munger's conclusion runs counter to a perhaps commonly held view that the 
blogosphere or discussions on forums such as Tango-L can serve as 
marketplace for information that approximates a parallel processing 
statistical estimator of the truth with nice properties as additional 
observers are added.  The key to a good outcome is that there is some 
mechanism for sharing and aggregating the information and that observers 
are independent rather than polarized.  In a polarized world where 
liked-minded individuals replicate the information already provided by the 
elite opinon makers, the independence property necessary to avoid 
truthiness is destroyed. 

For some related thoughts, see
Why Biased Views Are Self Perpetuating
http://www.tejastango.com/inside_2004archive.html#0027
Taking Tango Styles to Extremes
http://www.tejastango.com/inside_2004archive.html#0007

With best regards,
Steve