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Joined: Jun 2005
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Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle


Since the beginning of modern science, the obscurantists have borrowed scientific terminology and produced puerile diatribes that no doubt sound impressive to anyone who is completely unfamiliar with the subject.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/alternative_science_alternative_medicine.php
(I think this is a different Orac)

As I browsed Tiller's article, I felt a little bit like I did when I was watching that movie "Proof."

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Regarding the subject.. are you saying there is no science behind the idea or are you just needing to rant against an idea of science being available to those who see a relationship to their own ideas and experiences?


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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My fellow programmers have ideas on how to weed out the stupid crap.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/16/stupid.filter
I'm reminded of a friend's comment to me shortly before I started my career: "You can't make fool-proof programs; fools are too ingenious."

Spam-filters use these techniques and they tend to work for a short while and then the spammers find ways to break through. OTOH, the spammers are consciously trying to circumvent the filters. In the case of idiot-spam, the Dunning-Kruger Effect would suggest that most of the idiots think they're geniuses. Why would they reword their brilliant theses just so it makes sense to the masses? And why would they? *COULD* they do it and without destroying the implicit stupidity of their leavings?


OTOH, there's another way of doing it:
stackoverflow.com for example is brilliant

People vote up and down on answers. Stupid questions get voted down. Stupid answers get voted down. Very good questions and answers can be marked up. This works because there are reasonably objective standards:

For questions: can others understand it and was the question important?
For answers: do they work?!

Only really asinine stuff gets deleted. Stupid questions and answers can actually stay up, but you see instantly on search results.

Of course, a weakness of any self-policing method is vulnerability to swampage by a herd of idiots to skew results. But as long as the vast majority of participants aren't goofballs, the quality stays high.

Interestingly, stackoverflow has related sites (which I have not used yet). Click on http://stackoverflow.com/faq and go to the bottom of the page. You can see there are sites on other things that are interesting to techie types - gaming, science fiction, physics, various computer specific things. I tend to get quick, clear, working answers on stackoverflow - not sure about the others.

Of course these are not mutually exclusive - any more than these methods preclude all others.

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