Brain Droppings Saturday March 14, 2009

1.

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047138349X.html

"Applied Statistical Decision Theory" is a textbook that apparently has been around since the '60s.

2.

First post by orgtheory

http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2006/04/21/greetings-organizational-world/

3.

The TGGPosphere: it's impressive. TGGP reminds me something of 2001's monolith, or Rainbow End's rabbit.

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=TGGP&scoring=d&sa=N&start=0

Why do biomedical researchers studying consciousness seem more professionally responsible than social epistemologists? I'm thinking here of Fuller's seemingly crankish involvement in intelligent design debates.

4. I'm surprised the web isn't already filled with papers and literature like this:

A draft paper on social epistemology and the internet

http://travel-guide-travel.blogspot.com/2009/03/designing-wisdom-through-web-passion-of.html

Comments

[TGGP]

I like reading OrgTheory, but I don't what's so interesting about their first post.

Why do biomedical researchers studying consciousness seem more professionally responsible than social epistemologists?
What "social epistemologists" are you referring to? Also: from what I've heard there are a lot of creationist medical doctors. I've also heard that medicine is considered more "scientific" by the general public than physics.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

I mentioned Fuller right in that post.

I planned to do a larger bit on first blog posts, including overcoming bias, etc. but I ran out of steam quick on that one.

[Douglas Knight]

Studying social epistemology should reveal what a bad job society does at propagating information. This becomes a "fully general counterargument" not to believe anything in particular.

I don't know about people who use the phrase "social epistemology," but this is what I see elsewhere, that people find it easier to find problems the usual stories of how social epistemology works than to understand how it actually works; and that a common failure mode is excusing specific fringe beliefs, rather than becoming generally skeptical.