From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 23:06:42 MDT
Spike,
>If so, how would we know? Accounts of atrocities and secret deals
>are so contradictory and mutually exclusive, I cannot make sense of
>them. I dont see how we can ever find out what really happened in
>the 20th century, for all the accounts seem to have some slant or
>spin. How can we get to the truth, assuming that term "truth" as
>applied to history, has some absolute meaning?
Data Data and more ... Data. From different sources and
perspectives. Seeing with your own eyes, talking with people who
were there. Find sources you trust. Read books that have hundreds of
references (quantity over quality might actually be useful here.)
Then use that piece of machinery called the brain to synthesize it,
and if you want to be methodical, ask the computer to help.
Somewhere in the archives, Anders talked about using Bayesian methods
for accomplishing a goal such as this. Here's an epistemological spin
on it, I don't know if it's useful.
http://www.princeton.edu/~bayesway/IPMU.pdf
Epistemology Probabilized by Richard Jeffrey
(more papers by Jeffrey here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~bayesway/
Miscellany of Works on Probabilistic Thinking)
Amara
the data monkey
--
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating."
--Ashleigh Brilliant
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