I think that the whole concept of discussion has degenerated a lot over the last 10 years or so. People are increasingly stuck in cesspools of groupthink, often on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook where it is very easy for companies to manipulate the group's thinking by exploiting flaws in the platform. The Russia-Twitter thing is making news now, but that exact same sort of thing is being done constantly, on all subjects, and on all major platforms -- often for for-profit reasons, but also sometimes for political and/or nefarious reasons. Meanwhile, traditional "trusted sources" (eg. news outlets) are nearly all incredibly biased and clearly uninterested in the truth. It's a worrying trend.

Maybe the existence of "champions" is sort of a crutch that people use to get some truth when everything else they're looking at is garbage. 99% of what you hear on the major platforms is false, so you have to have someone you consider trustworthy like eg. Andreas help you filter the signal from the noise. But while this is better than just exposing yourself to the raw noise unguided, and I would not discourage knowledgeable people from acting as champions, it is a point of trust/centralization. There's also the problem of how your trusted sources are themselves supposed to reliably arrive at the truth when they're also surrounded by garbage all the time; they'll have the advantage of knowledge, experience, and some high-quality connections, but it's still difficult.

I wish that I had a fool-proof way of solving the underlying problems of discussion and truth-finding, but I only have some ideas for making things a bit better, not a complete solution.

That said, I agree that it would be beneficial for more people to create more good information and guidance.

(BTW, when talking about decentralization, you have to keep in mind that the complete elimination of centralization would be a dystopia in the same vein as Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. You are the sole central authority of your own thoughts/feelings/actions/statements. Some people have a harmful knee-jerk reaction against pretty much anyone doing anything because it is "centralizing".)

Thanks for the reply Theymos.  The decade long experience in moderating one of the most volatile and dynamic communities speaks in your post above. Your point about the Groupthink issue as well as its manipulation by "companies" is succinct and spot on.

These tools for social mobilization which were once supposed to enable the small guy to question authority have been turned on their heads.
Social Media made it possible for anyone to gain the spotlight. Unfortunately, the kind of people who exploit this feature most, usually aren't the thoughtful or productive ones. Most thoughtful and intelligent people have a certain dislike for the shenanigans involved. They'd much rather put their heads down and work than make themselves available for social media instigations and attacks.

That is why people who have a full understanding of the ideas and are willing to publicly present and defend them are so rare yet so effective. Like Andreas of course. This was one of the things that was so inspiring about bitcoin's A team. Satoshi, the core devs, your team. You were all backing an idea and finding ways to present and defend them publicly. The 10,000 BTC pizza and the other stuffs of legend here. This ingredient seems to have gone missing now.

That is what we need to revive and need our champions back for. The developers and thought leaders. For one, more activity on the core blog would be really welcome. We could all use a common source of the latest in making or conceptualization.


I totally agree that complete decentralization is not feasible. Its our own stupidity that makes us feel that we can reduce every concept to something debatable and have everyone's view on it. There will always be people who will understand concepts better and make changes faster than us. We find it hard to face up to the fact that we are not all equal when it comes to the ability to take decisions. We have always had people who guide societies and make history because they are faster and smarter. The difficult deal is finding out who to trust. This discussion ultimately devolves into one of civic and personal morality and will be too much of a tangent for now.

Team building at workplaces is an effort to let that inequality sink-in among hundred odd employees. Isn't it especially hard for the older generation that wields the ultimate power? Something of that sort is happening in society too where there are millions of us involved with our egos linked to our viewpoints. The present scenario is such that everyone with a phone and access to internet (Whatsapp and Facebook in case of my country) has a 'strong, authentic' opinion about everything. It doesn't matter that its molded by memes, slide shows and 2-minute videos with voice-overs.

A lot of this feeling is also reactive to the comparatively long sway that the intellectual elite has held in the past. Events of the recent past have convinced people that the intellectuals are no good at "making the best, the most tremendous deals". Although as the Russian troll farm story shows, this may have been supported by external and internal interests.

This makes it even more important that people with real knowledge and the ability to go a step further should step up to the challenge and raise their voices. Not to be silenced by trolls and manipulative distractors. Whatever their field of expertise maybe, you should call out stupidity and always hammer the truth in.

The merit system has definitely done some good in solving the problem of discussion-quality. Truth-finding would be difficult but its great that you are thinking and working on it. The forum definitely needs more of your inputs. Let us know if we can be of any help.

Degenerated... but theymos is it really a bad thing? Look at it through wild-west looking-glass.
Black hat robbers, robed crypto-bank, townsfolk gossip. There is a new sheriff in town, townsfolk gossip.
Lauda defamed once again! Says headline of the local news paper.
And all this without actual* threat of body harm.
theymos its alive! This is all the cause of the dream becoming real. I think its beautiful.
Cheer up m8

“Thought leader”, maybe. But not “leader” in any sense that implies coercive power (i.e. “as we know it, Jim”) because in a network of pseudonymous peers, neither sanction nor coercion is available so there are no levers of power, only peers to be persuaded.

If anyone's interested in building a deeper understanding: Frederick Laloux' Teal organisational model (informed by Ken Wilber's 60's model of human organisational development) would seem to be the closest-matching description. The implications of peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrencies being pure Teal organisations are quite intriguing¹. More usefully, the results of Laloux' work are presented prescriptively.

Cheers

Graham

¹ https://minkiz.co/library/a-different-perspective-on-cryptocurrency.html <- an introductory overview, which Ivory Tower denizens might find marginally useful.

Your main point about considering subject matter and presentation with a grain of salt is correct, and even from purported experts and seemingly very smart people. 

On the other hand, if some people have gained a lot of trust (whether in this forum or otherwise), and they seem to be presenting their content with genuineness, by default you may well be better off to give them more trust than you would do to others. 

Of course, in the end, as you said, each of us remains responsible to use our best judgement, and we have to admit that sometimes we may get it wrong too.  In this regard, not all levels of lacking in trust are the same since sometimes people feed us bad information by their own mistake, rather than by their intention, and sometime, nutjobs really believe the bullshit that they are spouting out.  So the gambit of disinformation (or good information) and intention can be quite wide.

I have also learned a lot from the forum over the years, yet sometimes, I have troubles identifying whether some post are disingenuous or faulty in logic or facts... On the other hand, there are some patterns to bullshit, too, which help to identify, even if I cannot quite put my finger on what is wrong with the post, I am going to feel some level of discomfort in relying on the content of the post, and may well skim the information and disregard the information of the post rather than putting very much if any weight onto it.   

I have found, also, that sometimes, I might run across a post that is questionable, and if I challenge the post in some kind of way by writing a response, then the response back to me (or the lack of a response) may provide me with some insight regarding the extent to which I feel comfortable relying on any of the information contained within the original post.  So, yes, sometimes we can get a decent amount of information from the forum.  We can trust and verify, and frequently, we may just get some idea or news, but will have to do some of our own research and tinkering on our own before we decide how much weight to give the information and even the extent to which we share our own insights.