Plausible Accuracy

I’m not a psychologist, sociologist, or anthropologist (as a matter of fact, I’m not any kind of -ologist), so today’s post might meander even farther from the realm of accuracy than is typical even on a normal day.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issues of internet anonymity, rational discourse, and the psychology of the village (or small group if you like).  In my mind, there was a time in the not too distant past in which most people lived in relatively small communities.  Those inside the community were neighbors, friends, and family while those outside the community were strangers.  To this day we’re tought as children to mistrust strangers; they might try to hurt us.  As time has gone on, advances in communication technology have enlarged our “community” - that is to say the group of people with whom we can rapidly share news and information - more and more.  The largest community of all is the internet of course.

We are all familiar with the social buffoonery that takes place daily across the web.  We have new words for these actions - spamming, trolling, griefing, etc.  It’s the 21st century version of the stranger who comes into town and steals a sheep.  The problem is that on the web, we are all strangers to one another - there is no real community.  Sure, certain groups may congregate to certain web sites and forums (I think it’s clear that a certain self-selected personality type is in residence at Digg, for instance), but the members of that community don’t really know one another.  The flux of incoming and outgoing members, the ease of creating a new identity, and other similar factors mean that the community never settles down and becomes a wholly familiar environment.  I think that this factors heavily into the reason that negativity gets much more play online than positivity.  The posts in which I am more harshly critical tend to get more views and more commentary than those that are supportive.  Since (as for all bloggers, most likely) I enjoy knowing that someone is paying attention, this is a pressure to write more negatively, which I can’t say that I like.

Now I’ve said all of this while tangentially considering how this applies to the Open/Semantic/Social science movement.  Those who have spent any time around scientists can attest that there are already feuds and animosity amongst competing investigators.  My concern is that if a higher percentage of this interaction moves online, we’re likely to see a deepening of these divides.  The reason is simple: if two people argue during the question and answer session at a conference, they can still go out for a beer afterwards.  If two people argue on the internet, all they do is steam up and get more angry.

You can see this already from time to time around the more popular science blogs on the internet.  There is a certain acidity to the discourse that often seems to be amplified by a misunderstanding, overpersonalization, or overly vehement attack - all hallmarks of web discourse as a whole.  When discussing philosophical ideas or opinions this is fine, but I don’t know that it would better the advancement of science if we debated research findings in a similar way.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to come off as a luddite who thinks that all scientific communiques should be sent via telegram (and I would hope if you’ve read any of my other posts you are aware that it’s quite the opposite).  My point is just that, as we push the practice of science more and more into the impersonal online arena, we should take pains to ensure that the discourse remains civil.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under ethics, open science, practice of science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.