Wikipedia and the Wisdom of Polarized Crowds
nautil.us
nautil.us
- IQ, and how much of it is biological
- Actual differences between biological sexes
- Anything related to government fiscal or monetary policy
- The extent (or even existence) of privilege for sexes or races
- If software should be free
- If software can be "stolen"
- Whether it is right or wrong for people to give up so much of their privacy to FANG
- ... and so on.
"Liberal readers preferred basic science (physics, astronomy, zoology), while conservatives went for applied and commercial science (criminology, medicine, geophysics). 'It seems like conservatives are happy to draw on science associated with economic growth—that’s what they want from science,' Evans said. “Science is more like Star Trek for liberals: traveling through worlds, searching for new meanings, searching for yourself.'"
I'm curious how these examples would be categorized: when going down the list, how would a "liberal" and "conservative" group, in general, think about each example; as basic science or as applied/commercial science?
I think that's what they're saying; ie: (a lot of "social science") (namely the pseudoscience) is unquestioningly defended, while the minority of social (non-pseudo-) science is usually ignored because it doesn't appeal to authority, ideology, or politics.
You only have to depend on faith if you don't understand the math.
It's worth noting that this doesn't just apply to groups. There is such a thing as an ideologically diverse individual. See for example the Ideological Turing Test [1]. If an individual can successfully apply the filters of diverse ideologies, they at least have the potential to swap out those filters and apply them to their scientific judgments.
Perhaps we should should systematically apply and score such tests to scientists and use the results as additional data with which to evaluate their work. True, ideologically homogeneous people could learn just enough about their opponents' views to score well on such a test. But even cynically pursued, learning to do that would train them to have those diverse lenses in their toolkit, making them easier to apply and consider.
[1] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.htm...
Wouldn’t a simpler premise, making one’s bias apparent by stating a binary preference (conservative or liberal, but maybe less grossly-defined) somewhere in one’s piece of work, achieve the positive outcome of allowing readers to better analyse content, without betting on the potentially positive side-effects of trying to game a test?
[1]: https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...
I hadn't thought about it in that light before, but the highly partisan nature of the Trump Presidency does seem to have resulted in a level of quality that neither group of partisans would be able to achieve alone. Very encouraging what good editorial policy can do.
Wiki pages for less-known figures being to a lower standard is consistent with the idea that popular interest + little consensus => high quality, rather than an alternative such as general consensus on topic => high quality.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Pag...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multiyear_ranking_of...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
[4]https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/9l30zj/how_...
Right in the second full paragraph, Trump's page turns nasty. The fourth full paragraph is nasty too. OK, seen enough...
Over on Obama's page, every one of the intro paragraphs is nice. I also note the large section on religion that does not even acknowledge that famous interview in which he slipped up and said "my Muslim faith".
TFA states:
> On the contrary, they showed politically diverse editor teams on Wikipedia put out better entries—articles with higher accuracy or completeness—than uniformly liberal or conservative or moderate teams.
The problem is that many of Wikipedia's editor teams are not politically diverse. And some, based on my limited experience, seem totally nonfunctional and dominated by trolls.
Maybe polarization does generate high-quality articles about popular topics. But for topics that aren't so broadly polular, toxicity and edit wars seem more likely.
To wit, Wikipedia allows us to view history, view / participate in talk, and even edit an entry.
Indeed, for any sufficiently complex topic, it would seem to me, there is ongoing and lively debate, or at least discussion. Perhaps even new evidence from time to time.