Software tools for community truth-seeking

1 Johnicholas 10 March 2009 01:20PM

In reply to: Community Epistemic Practice

There are software tools, possibly helpful for community truth-seeking. For example, truthmapping.com is described very well here. Also, debategraph.org, and I'm sure there are others.

 

Formalization is a rationality technique

5 Johnicholas 06 March 2009 08:22PM

We are interested in developing practical techniques of rationality. One practical technique, used widely and successfully in science and technology is formalization, transforming a less-formal argument into a more-formal one. Despite its successes, formalization isn't trivial to learn, and schools rarely try to teach general techniques of thinking and deciding. Instead, schools generally only teach domain-specific reasoning. We end up with graduates who can apply formalization skillfully inside of specific domains (e.g. electrical engineering or biology), but fail to apply, or misapply, their skills to other domains (e.g. politics or religion).

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