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November 14, 2007
Filtering the Fortean Storm
A friend who manages a list asked us think about the kind of foundation we might establish had we the means.
This may not be quite that, but it's what I submitted as a shot in the dark when I saw the Knight Foundation's invitation, below. My offbeat proposal made the first cut but was not confined to a defined community ("the earth" is not sufficiently constrained) and that was that.
But the essence of it is, addressing the need for education in critical thinking, deeper thinking, learning how to do research (beyond clicking something on the first google page or accepting at face value a wikipedia article), learnng how to turn context into content for reflection, turning concusions into premises, in short, thinking.
I asked for a million dollars over three years, BTW. I mean, why not?
My friend wrote:
> Assume that you win the lottry, cash in your stock options, or otherwise are fotrunate enough to have some extra cash and you want to set up a foundation to use your wealth to "do something". What would the purpose of The
and the Knight Foundation published this teaser ...
KNIGHT FOUNDATION SEEKS INNOVATIVE IDEAS FOR NEWS
If you have a bold new idea for improving the production and delivery
of news and information, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
wants to hear about it.
The Knight Foundation, a backbone of American philanthropy in
journalism and First Amendment causes (and a supporter of Secrecy
News), has millions of dollars to give to help nurture new ideas for
the future of news.
"Whether you're a high school student, a college professor, a truck
driver, a brain surgeon, a stay-at-home parent, a journalist, an
entrepreneur, a nonprofit organizer or anything else, anywhere in the
world: If we like your idea, we will give you money to make it
happen."
and I proposed ...
Filtering the Fortean Storm
Mining Masses of Anomalous Data in Pursuit of the Bigger Picture
The history of science brims with papers not published, papers published but ignored, and anomalous data that remains invisible or is discarded for lack of a pattern in which to integrate it, e.g. Lawrence Morley’s paper on spreading seafloors and plate tectonics, rejected by the /Journal of Geophysical Research /as more appropriate for cocktail party speculation but later described as “the most significant paper in the earth sciences ever to be denied publication.”
Other critical breakthroughs, ridiculed by the thought police of a mainstream consensus, never got into a paper at all. Because those transformational insights conflicted with the consensus reality of the majority, they were literally unthinkable, unheard at the edges of society’s conversation with itself.
The information revolution, while resulting in a storm of anomalous data derived from random observations and ideas, has accelerated the flow of information, but has not generated the means for discerning meaning and patterns in that flow not taught citizens how to search for meaning.
The information revolution has also accelerated the speed with which new paradigms or consensus realities replace former ones. As constructions of society, new ideas move from the edges where they are not heard, then rejected or ridiculed, then accepted as the core of a new consensus, by which time newer ideas are emerging at the edges. Because the flow of information is accelerated by current technologies, this is happening faster and faster. The rate of change is itself changing.
Yet cultural and societal filters as well as the conservative nature of scientific progress removes anomalous data and unusual observations and reports from the mainstream. Significant insights, especially ones which might turn out to be revolutionary, are not allowed into the light.
Paradigms determine the questions that can be asked. Once one determines the questions that can be asked or even thought, one does not have to worry about answers. Answers to unasked questions remain forever implicit in unknown and unthinkable notions beyond the edges.
Current political and social realities filter out even more data because secrecy in the name of security obsessively excludes much data that would inform people about ... the Real. Scientific and social scientific research, often weaponized or hidden in covert budgetary sleeves, is increasingly done out of sight.
Areas in which this dynamic is rife include - weapons development, biotechnology, research in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, credible observer reports of unconventional events and objects, pharmaceutical and medical research, political and economic events, and much more.
It is not complexity or massive amounts of data that prevents the average person from seeing the real. No one is overwhelmed when they enter a university library with millions of volumes when they know how to use a card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System. No, it is not the mass of information, but whether or not it is indexed in a useful scalable way, that matters.
When it is, we can do what we call “research” rather than merely googling random items arranged according to predetermined or accidental patterns. Then we can aggregate data into meaningful patterns. Then we can aggregate the anomalous and make it meaningful. Then we can critique current models of reality and discover new ones.
The tools to filter large masses of data already exist. They are used by the numerous components of the intelligence community, think tanks, research facilities, and corporate R&D groups to identify relationships and patterns. From time to time, insights derived from this enterprise leads to a hierarchical restructuring of the models and habits of thought that make sense of our lives. Then new possibilities are disclosed that transform the very definition of what it means to be human.
This project suggests means by which to put these tools and knowledge of how to use them into the hands of ordinary people. Invoking the name of Charles Forte, who spent his days searching through periodicals from all over the world and aggregating anomalies which suggested new insights (such as panspermia (the seeding of planets with organic molecules from interstellar space, now an accepted fact but ridiculed when we wrote it), I call this enterprise “filtering the Fortean storm.”
This project has two components: mining the Fortean Storm AND educating the citizenry in how to derive value from thinking critically about the results.
(1) Create and make available on the Internet an inviting interface that would enable people to input observations and anomalous data.
(2) Simultaneously adapt the means of mining large aggregates of data to this enterprise. Public/private government/corporate/NGO partnerships would assist in this phase, porting their expertise to the body politic at large.
(3) Educate and train people online through tutorials and mentoring how to think critically and remain agnostic about anomalous data, how to hold things tentatively while entertaining new models, how to curtail ridicule as a primary means of filtering. The simple tools and techniques of doing research – the marks of rational and critical thinking, openness to heresy (“all great truths begin as blasphemy,” said George Bernard Shaw), and the use of research tools – will be taught online interactively as well as in communities through public venues. Organizational structures will scale. The use of volunteers will be essential.
(4) Use the expertise of classification analysts, that is, librarians, retired intelligence analysts, project managers on both a volunteer and paid basis to develop these meaningful structures so users are not overwhelmed but encounter a scalable, useable interface which fractal-like enables individuals and communities alike to move up the ladder of abstraction to the bigger pictures that currently elude us.
Posted by Thieme at November 14, 2007 04:33 PM
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