The Invariant Gardener

Thanks to the gentle pressure of Jean Sallantin, the organizer of the next European Conference on Computing and Philosophy that will take place in Montpellier, France from 16 to 18th of June, I have tried to express more precisely what is a garden of ideas. You will find below two abstracts, the short and the long one, which have been submitted to the conference with the hope that they could be found of interest.

Whatever happens, I am already satisfied because I discovered that my idea of a garden of ideas is quite original since there is currently no place in cyberspace for collective and democratic creation of new knowledge. Content creation is everywhere, “information commons” are growing, but the development of original research is still a privilege of the scholarly world. The garden of ideas can bring some changes to this sad state of the art.

Short abstract

In what follows, I will address the possibility of leveraging collective intelligence to develop and nurture the ideas of an individual author aiming at the creation of new knowledge. Currently, the power of the collective intelligence of the social web is limited to mere content creation and is simply not concerned by collective knowledge creation which remains the privilege of the scholar world. This fact has thus far remained in the blindspot of the main actors and commentators of the social web. Finding an alternative seems warranted if we are in the least committed to democracy. After a quick historical apercu of the relation between power and knowledge in the context of the reproduction-variation dialectics which is at the very basis of any living, social or psychological organization, the present time will appear as reminiscent of the pre-revolutionary periods of the 18th and 19th centuries when empowered crowds were on the verge of putting the privileges of their elites to an end. An individual’s freedom and legitimacy of speech and thought regarding knowledge and the facts of science has indeed still to be reclaimed from so-called experts who can, at best, speak of the state of the art but not tell the truth. Since scholarly thinking is a debative, hence collaborative and selective process, opening it to the general public in cyberspace can be done easily and fruitfully. As is well known, peer-reviewed bad or even fraudulent science is not so rare. My stance is that a generalized peer review process based on a user-driven evaluation system would not only offer a safer path to reliable knowledge since each proposal would come under the intense scrutiny of a much wider audience but it could also support, nurture and strengthen innovative approaches before they come under the conformist pressure of Academia. Intended as a genuine collective knowledge creation tool, a « garden of ideas » is an authored collaborative workspace where the collective intelligence of the web can contribute to the development and, possibly, the social validation of a system of thought under the guidance and the inspiration of its creator. It is a kind of « barn raising » in the noosphere. Everybody, whether expert, amateur or novice, can contribute to or initiate such a process, hence its democratic as well as socioconstructivist nature.

Long abstract

The essence of life is reproduction, but life is also at the edge of chaos (Langton, 1990). It operates in a region between order and disorder and has to escape both. The crystal’s stability and the fluid dynamics of smoke are both incompatible with life’s processes (Atlan, 1972). The same is true of ideas. They have a life of their own. They reproduce, develop and die or survive, depending on the balance between replication and variation, both of which are at the heart of adaptive processes.

Ever since their origins and in order to survive, humans have tried hard to escape disorder, i.e., conflict. They have done so through submission to a cultural order formed by consensual representations and activities such as rites, traditions, customs etc. For ages, variations or differences have been very slowly integrated into the conservative process of culture. But since the Renaissance and the uprising of revolutionary crowds against suprahuman authority and order, western societies have been nurturing individual freedom, hence differences, to the point of risking the disruption of culture and other social structures.

With the opening of cyberspace, the problem has reached unprecedented levels and is becoming a source of major concern for all the powers that be : governments, corporations, and religions. A significant part of the control they used to have over which ideas should be allowed to reproduce and which should be forbidden from doing so has been put into the hands of individuals. The slow decay of the traditional forms of authority as well as the development and advancement of new and powerful information technologies have made old and new ideas not only more and more easily accessible to (all) anyone — hence selectively reproduced by individuals, who enjoy freedom of choice —, but also more and more easily produced and published by a user who is no longer an end-user but an author in full.

Paradoxically, it is when the individualistic tendencies of our societies seem to reach their climax that the power of crowds is rediscovered thanks to cyberspace and the web 2.0. Individuals now enjoy more and more freedom of thought and speech, but also freedom of association. The fruits of cooperative online communities appear quite impressive and have gained a legitimate renown like, say, Linux or Wikipedia. The « wisdom of crowds » is becoming a buzzword and intense efforts are accomplished by the entrepreneurial world in order to get better IT capable of taping into the collective intelligence ressources of the web.

However, a close scrutiny of this enjoyable picture reveals the existence of a major blindspot concerning knowledge, and particularly, the creation of knowledge as opposed to mere reproduction (of information). It is a remarkable fact that the creativity of the online community regarding software development is unparalleled with regards to the development of knowledge.

Wikipedia is a great achievement in itself but, as an encyclopedia, it is logically dedicated to the compilation of validated information and therefore openly rejects any kind of original thought or research. In spite of its individualistic turn, the Google project Knol remains oriented toward the production of encyclopedic or authoritative articles, i.e. the mere reproduction of knowledge intended for those who want to learn about any topic. Squidoo aims only at more or less informed personal viewpoints labeled as « lens ». Answers posted on Answers.com are mere… answers which are not supposed to go beyond common knowledge. Thus, the amazing creativity of the social web is understood as a mere content creation resulting in one kind or another of « Information Commons », i.e. repositories devoid of any new knowledge as such. Citizen Science projects attempt to take advantage of the idle human computation capabilities of the general public, but raw data collection is not genuine knowledge.

In sum, cyberspace currently offers no serious example of collective knowledge development « by the people, for the people » when, at the same time, the peer-to-peer networks are empowering individuals in so many ways. Why such an absence?

The most obvious explanation is that scholars have retained many privileges and exclusive rights regarding the production of knowledge. Neither the Renaissance, nor the many political revolutions of the past changed this in any respect : the only community currently allowed to produce new knowledge, i.e., to make discoveries, is the scholarly community. For better or for worse, taxpayers are expected to fund research without saying a word. They can but silently surrender to the marvellous achievements of their knowledgeable elites when, at the same time, the buzz word « society of knowledge » is on everyone’s lips.

It is my contention that, firstly, the new social web tools allow for a truly democratic knowledge creation process, i.e. a collective research dynamic energized by crowdsourcing and, secondly, that there are no serious reasons to be shy about entering the scholar domain, the land of « reliable knowledge ».

The most serious difficulty probably concerns the transition from idea to knowledge. Reliable knowledge is currently understood as resulting from an expert peer reviewing process. But just ask yourself this : « could a generalized peer review supported by the social networks replace the usual team of 2 or 3 reviewers? The answer is all the more obvious because the peer review system has recently come under harsh criticism (see Horton, 2000 ; White, 2003 ; Shatz, 2004 and the Nature debate). There are currently good reasons to think that the peer review process could be easily and advantageously replaced by a user-driven review system (Linkov, 2005 ; Rodriguez et al. 2005). It has to be remembered that the processes of scholarly thinking are first and foremost those of a permanent debate, a conflict of representations aiming at falsification as much as at counter proposal. The dynamic is an endless circulation between consensus and dissensus through hypothesis formation, confirmation and infirmation. It is fairly obvious that the web 2.0 tools nicely serve scholarly discussions, accelerating the tempo of their exchanges as well as widening their range and audience. As a million eyes are far better than 4 or 6 (even expert) eyes, the selection process of ideas —which is the be all and end all of peer reviewing— could not be better supported. In other words, when it comes to suggesting, scaffolding or falsifying an idea, which is the basic business of scholarly thinking, anyone now can and should be allowed to participate since, first, ad hominem reasoning is irrelevant in the process of evaluating ideas (we are all equipotent) and, second, the reliability of an idea depends only of the intensity and the range of criticism to which it is subjected and can withstand.

Since the noosphere is mainly a battlefield where the end result of collective processes are not garanteed, I have addressed a simplified version of the problem of collective knowledge creation. I will focus on an individual’s thought system, asking what could be the easiest way for an author to leverage collective intelligence to the development of her own ideas and, eventually, to knowledge creation?

As underlined by Lanier : « the balancing of influence between people and collectives is the heart of the design of democracies, scientific communities, and many other long-standing projects. » In my opinion, a successfull balance is precisely what can be expected from a collaborative exchange between a somehow stochastic input of contributions and an individual thought system already endowed with some coherence, thus more easily organized, maintained and protected against the nuisances of the social web.

The original thought system can be seen as a garden where ideas are seeds planted in a greenhouse and awaiting nurishment from cyberspace. Users of the garden may visit it, take lessons and/or give commentaries, criticisms, suggestions, hypotheses, or even full fetched theses in pro or con. A key aspect is the full acknowledgement each visitor deserves for even her smallest contributions. Planetmath.org with its authority structure —giving full rights to the (contributed) object owner— and the computed ranking of users is a very good example of what could be done in the beginnings. It simply lacks a collaborative research domain where something like the following sections could conveniently be found : the common axiomatics, a glossary/encyclopedia of the fundamental concepts, a partition of the search space, a list of the research programs, a conjectures & refutations section, hypotheses currently being tested, etc.

The gist of the garden’s functionning is that it is garnished with hypotheses waiting to be put to the test. Thus, what is awaited from its visitors is positive or critical attention to a given idea, infirmation, confirmation or variation of the hypothesis.This could also include cooperation with the gardener in some subsection, around one or several hypotheses or even autonomous creation derived from the axiomatics and its corollary. The ranking of the contributors also allows for a corresponding reward if the garden is opened to some kind of advertizing.

Such a project is, hopefully, expected to help raise citizens’ awareness of the current asymetry in the dynamics of knowledge construction. It is also expected to lead to a collective production of ideas, conceptions and theorizations.Their value could help legitimize the implication of any concerned human in the creation process of new knowledge.

Ideas have a life of their own. They reproduce, develop and die. Hence the possibility of a garden of ideas.

But what are ideas?

I would here suggest that ideas are just a part of action, since “the deed is everything” as Nietzsche said.

Ideas are important because they determine (and propel us into) action through perception.

If we are willing to do what has to be done (the quintessential zen attitude) we need to see what has to be seen.

Thus,  what we need to have in the first place is clear ideas concerning the world, others, and ourselves.

This garden of ideas is intended as a place were efficient ideas, i.e. enligthning ideas which gives us a feeling control over our reality will be nurtured.

This is how, in my perspective, things should be :

·        An idea of interest, whether a well structured hypothesis or a mere conjecture, will be a seed put in the hotbed (a wiki section) with some intellectual loam (wiki + blog). I will do my best to give it the best possible shape.

·        As soon the idea attracts some attention and start growing through discussion in the forum or with any other kind of contributions (blog or wiki), it is taken out of the hotbed, and planted in the open fields section of the wiki.

·        There, it may develop as much as needed in any direction.

Here, as in any kind of collective action, the very question is… responsability !

That’s precisely where lies the difference between the Wikipedia project and Google Knol project.

As the gardener, I will take full responsability for what grows in the garden. But yet, I will make every efforts (hopefully with the help of the web 2.0 tools) to keep track of even the minutest contributions of anyone.

In my perspective, anyone who has been contributing to the growth and value of any idea should gain full acknowledgement of it.

I will do my best to be a faithful and caring gardener, especially invariant regarding justice.

But I will also be adamant regarding the one rule of this garden, which is that contributions of any kind have to « cross over » garden’s ideas or themas.

No one will be allowed to expose ideas whose connection with those planted in this garden has not been made explicit.

A loose connection won’t be sufficient. Each contribution has to take a pro or con stance regarding at least one of the garden’s ideas.

What I call the Koenigsberg’s strategy is simply forbidden (I will come to that later, but let’s say for the moment that it is equivalent to the cuckoo’s strategy).

Last notice : suggestion, approval and criticism are equally welcome in this site.

Next contribution : my collection of seeds

I love this sentence. It’s seems meaningless, with a scent of foolishness. But it is so profound. It goes deep into the mysteries of the human psyche. It goes straight to the essence of human cognition, which is …. recognition, i.e., the fact that we are constantly checking our perception on the basis of our memories, looking for some kind of similarity. This is the one habit of the mind.

Notwithstanding our current devotion to ‘difference’, we should acknowledge the fact that looking for sameness is not only a fundamental, yet covert, goal, it has its beauty in itself, which is the fact that we do like what is like what we expected. It’s only when we can match our expectations with our perceptions that we “feel the real thing”. When we keep in touch with reality there’s a correspondance between our representations of reality and reality itself. We then feel in control, hence we feel secure, and we simply love that !

I don’t know what Dwight Eisenhower had in mind when he uttered this quasi-tautology but, sure enough, he is inviting us to look at reality as if we were recognizing it, no matter what its present state. We are invited to feel as if we were in control, as if we were secure, hence opened to reality. We are invited to pay attention to the innumerable aspects of our present reality which are fulfilling our expectations, our needs. We are thus invited to perceive, think, feel and act positively.

Of course, what is of interest here, is definitely not positive thinking. It’s the fact that we are in love with sameness but we ignore it. We are constantly looking for some kind of invariance in our lives, but we tend to deny it. We tend to associate sameness and boredom when sameness means stability, hence reality, hence control, hence security, hence comfort, hence pleasure. When reality perfectly matches our expectations, we say “it’s a dream” and we feel joyful.

On this site, we will unrelentingly investigate the consequences of our drive for sameness in every aspects of human life, intending to show how it can be at the root of our creativity like reproduction is the very spring of the whole living phenomenon.

A beautiful example of the presence and the power of sameness in our lives comes from a physicist, Hubert Reeves, who I heard recounting on the radio that after he understood Maxwell’s equations of light, he became afraid that this new understanding would ruin the exquisite pleasure he had just contemplating the beauty of a sunset. Fortunately, he soon discovered that his new knowledge of light just enhanced his pleasure.

He gaves no explanation for that. But his testimony makes sense. The more fulfilled expectations you have, the more pleasure you get. The more you know about history, music, biology etc., the more intense your understanding of all the things around you, the more pleasure you get.

Somehow, knowledge is a garantee of pleasure when interacting with the world. Discovery is so pleasurable because it gives you more knowledge, more control, more pleasure, i.e., more opportunities to think that “things are more like they are now than they ever were before”.

Welcome to my garden of ideas, where you will, hopefully, be able to gain as well as offer some knowledge over humankind and its reality.