[Tango-L] Style Wars: Truth and Truthiness

[Konstantin Zahariev]

On Nov 27, 2007 7:58 AM,  <Stephen.P.Brown at dal.frb.org> wrote:
> 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.


But this is not a symmetric property of the system. This mutation of
truth into truthiness is not an inherent property of the medium or
method of organization and of information exchange, but of the people
that participate in it. Consequently, this problem seems to appear
more readily and is more difficult to quash in places/meeing
groups/blogs that are mostly populated by right-wing authoritarians.
For an examination of this concept see for example
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ and the book (pdf) therein.

So I don't agree that it is the medium and form of organization of
Tango-L that is the reason to expect the triumph of truthiness in it.

With best regards,
                   Konstantin

Victoria, Canada


>
> 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