Defining Truth
This is what truth actually looks like.
There was the day in February when an editor replaced a photo of Hillary on her Wikipedia page with a picture of a walrus. Then there was the day this month when a Hillary supporter changed Obama’s bio so that it referred to him as “a Kenyan-American politician.” But such sweepingly hostile edits are usually fixed quickly by other Wikipedia users. Often, it’s the most arcane distinctions on the candidates’ pages that provoke the bitterest tugs-of-war. Recently, an angry battle broke out on Hillary’s page over whether to describe Clinton as “a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination” or just “a candidate,” since each phrase implies a different shade of judgment on her chances. Five minutes after an Obama supporter deleted “leading” just after 11 p.m. on March 8, another editor put it back. Seven minutes after that, the word was deleted again. Some thirty minutes after that, it was put back. On it went, with different Wikipedia editors debating the significance of Hillary’s delegate deficit on her talk page and accusing each other of introducing the dreaded “POV”– or “point of view,” a violation of Wikipedia’s most fundamental principle–into the article. At around six in the morning, completing the atmosphere of pandemonium, somebody replaced Hillary’s whole page with “It has been reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton has contracted genital herpes due to sexual intercourse with an orangutan.”
Just a whole bunch of people with differing opinions.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Yeah, wikipedia most certainly is more truthful than, say, the experts who wrote my neuroscience textbooks.
Then again, I guess you’re entitled to whatever opinion you want about where the hypothalamus is. After all, if there’s no such thing as ‘truth’ or ‘fact’, every opinion must be just as valid as every other.
The retarded part is that you have the audacity to accuse -me- of relativism.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Lol. When we had a question about Oxytocin we went to wikipedia not your neuroscience book.
March 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I recall suggesting wikipedia when you had doubts regarding my assertion that it was both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. If there had been disagreement between my memory of what the book said and what wikipedia said, I would have re-checked the book and if there was indeed a discrepancy between the two sources I would favor the book. You wouldn’t?
March 30th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Sigh. So you did accept what wikipedia said? Got it.
March 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I never knew you could get genital herpes from an orangatan.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
“Sigh. So you did accept what wikipedia said? Got it.”
Are you intentionally failing to address my point or was I unclear?