I hope this is a good place for this - comments/suggestions welcome - offers of collaboration more than welcome!
I envisage a kind of structured wiki, centred around the creation of propositions, which can be linked to allow communities of interest to rapidly come to fairly sophisticated levels of mutual understanding; the aim being to foster the development of strong groups with confidence in shared, conscious positions. This should allow significant confidence in collaboration.
Some aspects, in no particular order;
- Propositions are made by users, and are editable by users - as in a wiki
- Each proposition could be templated - the inspiration for the template being the form adopted by Chris. Alexander et al in 'A Pattern Language', namely;
- TITLE (referenced)(confidence level)
- picture
- context - including links to other propositions within whose sphere this one might operate
- STATEMENT OF PROBLEM/PURPOSE OF PROPOSITION
- Discussion
- CONCLUSION - couched in parametric/generic/process based terms
- links to other propositions for which this proposition is the context
- Some mechanism for users to make public their degree of acceptance of each proposition
- Some mechanism for construction by individuals/groups of networks of propositions specific to particular users/groups (in other words, the links referred to in 3. and 7. above might be different for different users/groups) These networks can work like Pattern Languages that address particular fields / ethical approaches / political or philosophical positions / projects
- Some mechanism for assignment by users/groups of tiered structure to proposition networks (to allow for distinctions to be made between fundamental, large scale propositions and more detailed, peripheral ones)
- Some mechanism for individual users to form associations with other users/established groups who are subscribing to the same propositions
- Some mechanism for community voting/karma to promote individuals to assume stewardship of groups
Enough of these for now. Some imagined interactions might be more helpful;
- I stumble across the site (as I stumbled across LessWrong), and browse proposition titles. I come across one called 'Other people are real, just like me'. It contains some version of the argument for accepting that other humans are to be assumed to have roughly the same motivations, needs et al, as me, and the suggestion that this is a useful founding block for a rational morality. I decide to subscribe, fairly strongly. I am offered a tailored selection of related propositions, as identified by the groups that have included this proposition in their networks (without identification of said groups, I rather think) - I investigate these, and at some point, the system feels that my developing profile is beginning to match that of some group or groups - and offers me the chance to look at their 'mission statement' pages. I decide to come back another day and look at other propositions included in these groups' networks, before going any further. I decline to have my profile made public, so that the groups don't contact me.
- I come across some half-baked, but interesting proposition. As a registered user, but not the originator of the proposition, I have some choices; I can comment on the proposition, hoping to engage in dialogue with the proposer that could be fruitful, or I can 'clone' (or 'fork') the proposition, and seek to improve it myself. Ultimately, the interest of other users will determine the influence and relevance of the proposition.
-
I am a fundamentalist christian (!). I come across the site, and am appalled at its secular, materialist tone. I make a new proposition; 'The Bible is revealed truth, in all its glory' (or some such twaddle. Of course, I omit to specify which edition, and don't even consider the option of a language other than english - but hey, what do you expect?). Within days, I have assembled a wonderful active group of woolly minded people happily discussing the capacity of Noah's Ark, or whatever. The point here is that the platform is just that - a platform. Human community is a Good Thing.
- I am pushed upward by the group I am part of to some sort of moderator role. The system shows various other groups who agree more or less strongly with most of the propositions our group deems fundamental. I contact my opposite number in one of those, and we together make a new proposition which we believe could be a vehicle for discussions that could lead to a merger.
- I wish to write a business plan that is not a pile of dead tree gathering dust 6 weeks after it was presented to the board. I attempt to set out the aims of the business as fundamental propositions, and advertise this network to my colleagues, who suggest refinements. On this basis, we work up a description of the important policies and 'business rules' which define the enterprise. These remain accessible and editable , so that they can evolve along with the business.
- I am considering an open-source project. I set out the fundamental aims and characteristics of the tool I am proposing, and link them together. The system allows me to set myself up as a group. I sit back and wait for others to comment. Based on these comments, the propositions are refined, others added, relationships built with potential collaborators. At some point, we form a group, and the project gets under way. Throughout its life, the propositions are continually refined and added to. The propositions are a useful form of marketing, and save us a great deal of bother talking to people who want to know what/why/how.
Enough... Point 6 is almost recursive.......
There is more discursive (and older) material, here.
Thanks for reading, and please do comment.
While I am certainly not against the idea of a tool that can be used to create formal arguments, the proposal has a subtle but radical difference.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a mathematician, and do not fully understand the concepts I attempt to explain in the following.
In his work published as 'Notes on the Synthesis of Form', Chris. Alexander developed an algorithm for converting a matrix of relationship strengths between analysed sub-elements of a design problem into a 'tree-like' structure. In other words, a hierarchical diagram in which each node can have one connection only, to a higher status node. The number of nodes in each level decreases as one moves upwards, culminating in a single 'master' or 'root' node.
Following the success the publication of 'Notes...' brought, Alexander was employed to work on the development of the metro rail system in San Francisco (the BART), and put his method to work. As a rationalist, he was concerned to find that the results of his work appeared to be failing to fully address the realities of the design problems involved.
His conclusion was that the necessary function of his transformative algorithm which selected the least significant relationship linkages to be broken in order to derive the tree-like diagram was the cause of the problem; some identified real-world relationships were being ignored. And even though these might be ranked lowly, omitting them altogether was destructive.
The essay which captures this understanding is published as 'A City is not a Tree' - read it here: http://www.rudi.net/pages/8755.
In it, Alexander contrasts the tree-like diagram with another; the semi-lattice diagram, which, although still hierarchical, allows for connections across branches, as it were, so that overlapping sets of relationships are legal. Semi-lattices, I believe, are not susceptible to formal logical analysis, but nevertheless can be better mapping tools for complex, real-world systems.
My proposal would deliberately allow for semi-lattice linkages. This would allow, to come up with a quick example, a proposition that called for more cycling to link both to a proposition for less carbon emissions and a proposition for congestion reducing transport initiatives.
Tree diagrams are fairly useless in addressing real-world conditions, as these are usually formally complex, with elements occurring in overlapping sets more often than not. As a result, policy documents are not structured like tree diagrams, and do adduce all sorts of linkages, but do this in a totally unstructured manner, and are often functionally weak, while appearing to address everything. As EY says (everywhere); "A theory that can explain everything, prohibits nothing, and so gives us no advice about what to expect."
My hope for the proposal is that it could bring structured, coherent agreement on sets of principles without the need for total agreement on every aspect of every point.