Re: META: Problems with collaborative filtering (was Re: Improving the

Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Wed, 03 Mar 1999 12:17:07 -0500

KPJ wrote:

> It appears as if Bartley R. Troyan <btroyan@littlekoala.com> wrote:

> |
> |I don't like the idea of Kookify/Glorify as I understand it. Let's say you
> |all decide I'm a Kook and virtually everyone heavily Kookifies me by clicking
> |the Kookify link at the bottom of every message I send to the list. I don't
> |care how you prevent multiple votes (it's not that hard), but it won't make a
> |difference in the end... If I post a lot of rubbish for a while, I will attain
> |an extremely high level of Kookiness after a short time.

Your own kookiness level will be directly proportional to how much you conform to the norm. I am rather disturbed at this idea of using a system of peer pressure to shout down and ignore the voices which state "truths that we all know but don't want to talk about or admit to". This is using conventional wisdom to wipe out the unconventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is rarely correct.

What this will do as extropy becomes more widely known is to dilute the extropian message (as we are already seeing) to more vanilla, pleasing to the eyes of the masses, flavors. The radical founders will be relegated to the margin, since their ideas will then be seen as kooks by the more conservative masses, and extropy will dissolve to meaninglessness.

I for one don't want my messages kookified by the socialist/statist/anti-liberty/anti-individuality types who are on the list. All it will take is one or two determined people who want to turn off the extropian message is to subscribe to the list multiple times and kookify any posting they disagree with.

Mike Lorrey