What I find interesting is the + and - votes often appear to be attempts to deny or affirm the truth of the post in opposition to its actual truth content. Its as if mere expression of an opinion contains the expectation of being able to coerce reality to agree and that a counter opinion can cancel that effect. Its Postmodern philosophy in full flower. Kant would be proud of his intellectual children.
Thankfully, there does seem to be much less adherence to Postmodern philosophy on this list compared to others which is why I bother with this list. However, the philosophy lives deeply inside the Karma feature.
The fact remains, that throughout history, what most people believe to be true has little to do with what is actually true. Any new truth that is discovered, is discovered first by a single individual. If that truth is fundamental, it will be rejected by "common sense" and "consensus" until at least one generation has passed - likely several. So also a crackpot notion of a crank will take at least a generation to pass or at least the death of the crank. The age of a "truth" has a poor correspondence to what is actually true.
The net of this is each is responsible for filtering the noise coming at him and finding the few gems of truth it contains. There is always the possibility of being wrong. Karma scores are simply irrelevant accumulations of noise signals. Sorry, that is the nature of the beast.
What I find interesting is the + and - votes often appear to be attempts to deny or affirm the truth of the post in opposition to its actual truth content. Its as if mere expression of an opinion contains the expectation of being able to coerce reality to agree and that a counter opinion can cancel that effect. Its Postmodern philosophy in full flower. Kant would be proud of his intellectual children.
Thankfully, there does seem to be much less adherence to Postmodern philosophy on this list compared to others which is why I bother with this list. However, the philosophy lives deeply inside the Karma feature.
The fact remains, that throughout history, what most people believe to be true has little to do with what is actually true. Any new truth that is discovered, is discovered first by a single individual. If that truth is fundamental, it will be rejected by "common sense" and "consensus" until at least one generation has passed - likely several. So also a crackpot notion of a crank will take at least a generation to pass or at least the death of the crank. The age of a "truth" has a poor correspondence to what is actually true.
The net of this is each is responsible for filtering the noise coming at him and finding the few gems of truth it contains. There is always the possibility of being wrong. Karma scores are simply irrelevant accumulations of noise signals. Sorry, that is the nature of the beast.