[p2p-research] Eating crow on Google Knol re: Jobless Recovery

Fri Jul 2 17:00:35 CEST 2010

 thanks Paul for the update on your Google Knol page, here at
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2


> Subject: Eating crow on Google Knol re: Jobless Recovery
> Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:52:44 -0400
> From: Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
> Reply-To: virgle at googlegroups.com
> To: virgle at googlegroups.com
>
> I did some sniping here and on OpenVirgle in posts two years ago about
> Google Knol vs. Wikipedia including a Star Wars anology (worried that Knol
> would be too commercial and harm a growing open source Wikipedia),
> http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/browse_thread/thread/3db9570c808782fd
> http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/64761d37e823b2db?hl=en
>
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
>
> But after having an article about the Jobless Recovery that I helped
> organize on Wikipedia (and put a lot of work into) get mostly deleted, I
> have to say I'm seeing more the value of the Google Knol approach. :-) Or
> at
> least, to having some other alternatives to Wikipedia. Other comments by me
> on that in a thread someone else started on "the wikipedia decline":
>
> http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/thread.html#6190
>
> So, rather than get involved in an edit war. I moved the deleted content to
> Google Knol. I guess I could have just put it on my website, but I decided
> to try something different. Fighting over the content on Wikipedia would
> also be me and a few heterodox thinkers vs. legions of believers trained in
> mainstream economic theology, and I'd be on the losing end of that most
> likely, and I don't have enough time/emotion for doing that endlessly.
>
> Here is the citation on Knol:
>
> Paul D. Fernhout. Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on
> 21st
> century economics [Internet]. Version 6. Knol. 2010 Jul 2. Available from:
>
> http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2
>
> By the way, contrast the mockery of the article here:
>
>  "Buddhism and humor as a cure for a Jobless Recovery"
>  http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=29617&pid=239225&st=0
> "When I keep saying that a lot of Wikipedia's articles on Economics need to
> be simply deleted and written back from scratch, rather than "fixed" this
> is
> the kind I'm talking about: Jobless Recovery. ... Damn, we hit the bottom
> with that one. I nominate that for the worst article on Wikipedia"
>
> with this, which was one of the sources by a well-respected economic
> thinker
> that they laughed at: :-)
>
>  "Buddhist Economics" by E.F. Schumacher
>  http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
> "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
> threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to
> enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in
> a
> common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a
> becoming
> existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To
> organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring,
> stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of
> criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people,
> an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to
> the
> most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for
> leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete
> misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that
> work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and
> cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of
> leisure."
>
> Even though economics is claimed to be a mathematically-based and
> empirically-based science, these sorts of broad disagreements are, to some
> extent, religious disagreements, like in the sense Albert Einstein talked
> about here:
>  http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
> """
> For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are
> related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such
> objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you
> will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and
> the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that
> knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One
> can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not
> be
> able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.
> Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the
> achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing
> to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to
> argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only
> by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge
> of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a
> guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the
> aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore,
> the
> limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
>  But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in
> the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes
> that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means
> itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the
> interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense
> of
> the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and
> valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual,
> seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to
> perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the
> authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and
> justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy
> society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations
> and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something
> living, without its being necessary to find justification for their
> existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through
> revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not
> attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and
> clearly.
> """
>
> I also just don't see how anyone can watch, say, this video of Marshall
> Brain talking about automation and economics and not at least see there
> might be some weaknesses in mainstream economic logic about job creation:
>  "Marshall Brain - Automation & Unemployment "
>  http://www.youtube.com/user/pdfernhout#p/f/7/W0Z8TR4ToNs
>
> That Knol article probably still needs a lot of cleanup, as links to
> references still go to the Wikipedia archive. But it is a start. I'm
> impressed that I could paste in content from Wikipedia (on a Mac) into
> Knol's web interface and it preserved links, etc.
>
> Much of it applies to how we can have an "Open Source Planet" like the
> Virgle idea promises. Especially this part:
>
> http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2#Four_long%282D%29term_heterodox_alternatives
>
> This is not to say I yet have complete warm fuzzies about Google or any
> other big corporation playing mostly by a scarcity-mindset. :-)
>  "How Google Works (Infograph)"
>  http://digg.com/software/How_Google_Works_Infograph
> "A flow type chart that diagrams the process of how Google gets it data and
> what happens in the second after you search. It's a $20 billion a year
> process for Google, and pretty interesting."
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
> http://www.musicalphrases.com/ Compose music on your Android phone...
> ====
> The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
> abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
>
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