http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/01/02/richard-smith-multiplicity-the-power-of-the-many-or-what-we-can-learn-from-barcelona-fc/ Just another blogs.bmj.com weblog Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:13:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/01/02/richard-smith-multiplicity-the-power-of-the-many-or-what-we-can-learn-from-barcelona-fc/#comment-16376 John Collee Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:57:00 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/?p=23533#comment-16376 Lovely article. Heres a paradox – the internet should foster multiplicity, but it also allows groups of people with a particular mind-set to find a host of people who agree with them – no matter how loopy or marginal their opinions. We’re creating international networks but we’re also creating various massive echo-chambers in which – if you so wish – you can choose to hear nothing but your own views reflected back at you, and reinforced.
In my own main field of interest – climate change – this takes on a very sinister dimension, with groups of climate deniers, all of them in furious agreement, hijacking scientific discussions en masse and making proper reasoned debate impossible. How do we mitigate against the passionate intensity of ideologues without resorting to censorship? One bright spot is Wikipedia which seems better them most at filtering out misinformed ranting. Many discussion fora would benefit from their techniques of benign oversight.

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