Science, Religion, Democracy, and Wikipedia
A controversy currently raging in the Wikipedia community prompted me to think about the fascinating puzzle presented by "open" systems like Science and Democracy.
All such systems are based on a few rules (e.g. science begins with the idea that no fact should be held true in the face of contradicting evidence) and this eventually give rise to a guardian class whose job is to enforce the rules.
If the guardian class is too weak, anarchy is a likely result. If the guardian class is too strong, the system ceases to be "open" -- heresy is the life of a religion.
So how do you get the guardian class tuned just right?
All such systems are based on a few rules (e.g. science begins with the idea that no fact should be held true in the face of contradicting evidence) and this eventually give rise to a guardian class whose job is to enforce the rules.
If the guardian class is too weak, anarchy is a likely result. If the guardian class is too strong, the system ceases to be "open" -- heresy is the life of a religion.
So how do you get the guardian class tuned just right?
posted by Charles Ames at 5:46 AM
1 Comments:
You make an interesting observation there. The evidence suggests that no society or group has ever managed to get the guardian role/class tuned just right. Healthy societies and groups manage to have regular oscillations within a middle zone where contrasting viewpoints are tolerated.
For example, in political systems, left wing and right wing governments often alternate on a cycle of a decade or so, and spend much of their time in government undoing each other's excesses. This is futile for them (since they never get a chance to complete their programme), but generally a good thing for the rest of us (since they never get a chance to complete their programme!).
So it's not about tuning, so much as making sure that there is some kind of trigger that reverses the drift when a certain point is passed.
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