Quote curation: pros and cons

In this blog post, I want to outline some of the pros and cons of quote curation. Quote curation is the process of selecting and organizing quotes for a collection. There are 4 pros and 3 cons listed below.

Pros

1. Useful explanations:

I believe that quotes have the potential to communicate ideas effectively and clearly. For the same concept, some explanations can be difficult to understand while others can be straightforward and unambiguous. I also believe that there's no limit to how effective an explanation can be and that there's always a more clear and useful combination of words that hasn't been realized yet.

I believe society should make an effort to collect and organize useful and clear explanations for all educational subjects. Quality explanations on scientific topics can help us understand topics that were previously much harder to comprehend. This is part of the larger goal of attaining knowledge and shining light on previously dark phenomena.

2. Transparency of texts:

By focusing on the key ideas, quote curation can help bring greater transparency to a text. Texts are often presented as large documents that take a long time to read. Quote curation has the potential to consolidate the key ideas from a text onto a single page and allow the reader more readily access the primary message.

3. Atomization of principles:

I view knowledge as a collection of principles that have the potential to be combined into systems and structures. Although a principle can be as simple as a short statement, for more complex and subjective principles, a principle might be best expressed with multiple sentences. Quotes allow us to atomize principles and give them more substantiality.

In the future, I can see knowledge turning into something like Legos with principles and quotes as the building blocks to make new structures. Quotes enable the reuse and the portability of principles.

4. Participatory culture:

Quote curation provides an outlet for individuals to interact with texts in a participatory way. Instead of just reading a text, reading with the purpose of quote curation can help an individual feel more engaged. Searching for quotes in a text is an exciting activity similar to searching for rare objects in a public market.

Cons

1. Copyright rules:

Its recommended that published quote collections follow fair use rules, Creative Commons licenses or ask the owner for permission. It should be mentioned that fair use rules vary between different countries.

2. Misrepresentation:

Quote curation has the potential to misrepresent the original text. A few selected quotes can distort the message of a text. This is something that a quote curator needs to keep in mind when choosing the purpose and nature of a quote collection. I believe that a collection of quotes that is focused on general philosophy instead of trying to elucidate the message of the text, has less risk of misrepresenting the original text. It depends on how the quotes are displayed and the ability of the curator.

There is a risk that quote collections can over-simplify what the author meant to say. Its important that a quote collection leaves the impression that there is more to the original text than what is contained in the quotes. This is another aspect that depends on the ability of the curator.

3. Misquoting and fake quotes:

Taking quotes out of context or purposefully making the author say something that they don't believe is clearly not advised. Worse, fake quotes that were never said can be generated and this is obviously bad. This is probably the most problematic aspect of a culture based on quote curation. A culture that embraces quote curation needs to figure out networks of trust and safeguards to ensure that fake quotes are minimized.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

List of political characteristics of the far left and the far right

This post is a list of political characteristics of the far left and the far right.

    Far left

• anti-capitalism
• anarchism or authoritarianism
• communism
• political violence
• redistribution of wealth and income
• rejection of the social order

    Far right

• absolute free markets
• authoritarianism
• racism
• ultra-nationalism
• political violence
• religious extremism

List of full moons in 2022 by astrological sign

This post is a list of full moons in 2022 by astrological sign. There are 12 full moon dates listed below chronologically. Source: allure.com

• January 17: Cancer
• February 16: Leo
• March 18: Virgo
• April 16: Libra
• May 16: Scorpio
• June 14: Sagittarius
• July 13: Capricorn
• August 11: Aquarius
• September 10: Pisces
• October 9: Aries
• November 8: Taurus
• December 7: Gemini

Call for belief analysis bloggers

One of the primary goals for this blog is to find individuals who want to make belief analysis blog posts. I want to find individuals with diverse beliefs who want to express their beliefs using this method.

The current version of belief analysis can be found at this link.

Belief analysis requires reasons to be stated clearly and provides a consistent format to organize supporting material. By making the structure of a belief more transparent, I believe this method can help opposing sides in an argument understand each other more clearly. Instead of reading through paragraphs to interpret somebody's reasoning, belief analysis ensures that the main points are clear to the reader.

Belief analysis does not automatically determine which side more true in an argument. Belief analysis is based on the idea that reason is inherently subjective to a degree. When we make beliefs, we often take a few related facts and subjectively derive the conclusion from those facts. Usually our beliefs are not based on mathematical equations or logical deduction, but rather they are based on a subjective feeling for what feels right. Belief analysis allows us to see the reasons in an argument, but it does not tell how good the reasons are.

I would like to see belief analysis applied to conspiracy theories. I believe that both sides in an argument about a conspiracy theory would be motivated to use a method that promotes transparency. Believers in the conspiracy theory would be interested to exposing the truth and that is best accomplished through transparency. Conversely, people who deny the conspiracy theory would be interested to demonstrate to believers that the conspiracy theory is wrong which is also best accomplished through transparency.

I would also like to see politicians and public intellectuals use belief analysis. This would allow the public to see more clearly their exact reasons on a topic. I think it would be interesting to see which pieces of evidence they select. It would also be interesting to compare leading intellectuals' belief analyses and determine who has the most robust argument for a particular position.

There is a risk that belief analysis can make society more polarized, but I believe the opposite is more likely to occur. Writing a belief analysis causes a person to be introspective about their reasons and pieces of evidence. Being introspective should help a person develop a more balanced belief. I also believe that any method that can help opposing sides in an argument communicate more clearly has the potential to bridge the gap toward mutual understanding.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Call for information bloggers

One of the primary goals for this blog is to find individuals who want to make blog posts according to the information blogging guidelines (IBG). I want to find people who are willing to convert their knowledge into the format of IBG and create new reference works. I'm optimistic that someday there can be thousands of websites that use IBG to create a decentralized network of compatible reference works.

The current version of IBG can be found at this link.

The goal of IBG is to minimize the extra noise on an information web page. Instead of having to scroll around on a web page and read through paragraphs, I believe that information is best displayed when its at the top of the page with as few distractions as possible. The idea is to create the most minimal and information dense web pages possible.

I would like to see all human knowledge converted into IBG. I'm curious to see what IBG would look like when applied to the highest levels of knowledge in topics such as mathematics and physics.

If two bloggers make a post on the same topic using IBG, both posts would exist just as two different web pages on the same topic can exist on the internet. I imagine that there would be curators who would create collections of posts from various blogs. The curator of one of these collections would select their preferred post on a specific topic if there were multiple posts on a topic.

The curators who create lists of IBG posts would be responsible for helping readers find posts and essentially create the network. An example of what this could look like can be seen in the list of posts for this blog at this link.

If an IBG blogger wants to make a change to an old post, they are encouraged to revise the old post or create a new version. It depends on the goal of the blogger, but both options are compatible with IBG.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

David Fuller and sensemaking

This post is a collection of quotes from David Fuller in a conversation with Peter Limberg on Rebel Wisdom in 2020 titled Conspiracy, Sensemaking & Truth. An Inquiry. The video for this interview can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the conversation. There are 3 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "I think we have to find a new way of sensemaking in this, particularly in this liminal space. What we need is some kind of rules of engagement, or some kind of, I don't know, decentralized method of, like a code of conduct or like a set of principles or something that more people can sign up to." (5:38)

2. "[Conspiracy theories] are, as far as I can tell, the most newsworthy phenomenon right now. If you know anything about the way we make sense of the world, you realize that, especially right now where we have an almost infinite amount of information, you can kind of make pretty much any narrative that you want... And then it also plays into all of these wider topics of how we make sense of the world at all. Why we think something is true rather than something else being true." (9:02)

Matthew Taylor and mediation

This post is a collection of quotes from Matthew Taylor in an interview with Rebel Wisdom in 2021 titled Polarisation vs Democracy, Matthew Taylor. The video for this interview can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the interview. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "In mediation processes, one of the methods that's used often, and this is in conflict situations, armed conflict situations sometimes, is a process of getting people to agree what they disagree about. And that's really important. And the reason that's important is because the way most political debates are structured is not over trying to understand what we disagree about; it's about trying to caricature each other. And being caricatured is painful and it makes us angry and it makes us want to lash out." (17:28)

2. "So I think we need to renew our democracy... we need a similar set of institutions, of norms, of psychological insights which recognize that society cannot work unless people have a reasonable degree of shared values and particularly a reasonably strong set of shared values about how it is you go about the business of disagreeing with each other and resolving those disagreements." (24:40)

Daniel Schmachtenberger and the third attractor

This post is a collection of quotes from Daniel Schmachtenberger in an interview with Rebel Wisdom in 2022 titled In Search of the Third Attractor, Daniel Schmachtenberger (part 1). The video for this interview can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the interview. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "The Dunbar number can be thought of as an upper boundary of a particular type of coordination capacity... Once we start getting larger than that, early empires, we got command and control hierarchies and we start to get all the problems that we see in the world today that are, now at the scale that we are, driving catastrophic risks." (2:43:30)

2. "Can we make the types of transparency and the types of incentive alignment, the types of capacity for deterrence that would exist at a small tribal type scale possible at much much larger scales, where the increase in effective coordination starts to be more effective, right, you start to reduce a huge amount of waste and duplication and, you know, failures of those kinds?" (2:44:36)

List of masculine and feminine astrological signs

This post is a list of the masculine and feminine astrological signs. There are 12 signs listed below according to the zodiac calendar. Source: pinkvilla.com

    Masculine

• Aries
• Gemini
• Leo
• Libra
• Sagittarius
• Aquarius

    Feminine

• Taurus
• Cancer
• Virgo
• Scorpio
• Capricorn
• Pisces

List of joys by planet in astrology

This post is a list of joys by planet in astrology. A joy is the house associated with good fortune for a planet. There are 7 planets listed below. Source: theastrologydictionary.com

• Sun: 9th house
• Moon: 3rd house
• Mercury: 1st house
• Venus: 5th house
• Mars: 6th house
• Jupiter: 11th house
• Saturn: 12th house

List of benefic and malefic planets in astrology

This post is a list of benefic and malefic planets in astrology. Benefic planets are considered positive while malefic planets are considered negative. There are 4 planets listed below. Source: astrostyle.com

    Benefic

• Venus
• Jupiter

    Malefic

• Mars
• Saturn

List of minor aspects in astrology

This post is a list of minor aspects in astrology. There are 6 aspects listed below. Source: advanced-astrology.com

• Semi-sextile: 30 degrees
• Semi-square: 45 degrees
• Quintile: 72 degrees
• Sesquiquadrate: 135 degrees
• Biquintile: 144 degrees
• Quincunx: 150 degrees

List of days of the week by planet in astrology

This post is a list of days of the week by planet in astrology. Source: tarot.com

• Sunday: Sun
• Monday: Moon
• Tuesday: Mars
• Wednesday: Mercury
• Thursday: Jupiter
• Friday: Venus
• Saturday: Saturn

List of Chinese zodiac signs by lucky element

This post is a list of Chinese zodiac signs by lucky element. A person's element is determined by the last number in their birth year and is not necessarily the same as their lucky element (0 or 1 = metal, 2 or 3 = water, 4 or 5 = wood, 6 or 7 = fire, 8 or 9 = earth). There are 12 signs listed below chronologically.

1. Rat: water
2. Ox: earth
3. Tiger: wood
4. Rabbit: wood
5. Dragon: earth
6. Snake: fire
7. Horse: fire
8. Goat: earth
9. Monkey: metal
10. Rooster: metal
11. Dog: earth
12. Pig: water

Source of birth years: thespruce.com

Source of lucky elements: review42.com

List of planet mooltrikona signs in Vedic astrology

This post is a list of planet mooltrikona signs in Vedic astrology. A mooltrikona sign is the place in the zodiac where a planet is most comfortable. Traditionally, mooltrikona signs do not apply to the outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). There are 7 planets listed below. Source: netchanting.com

• Sun: Leo (4 - 20 degrees)
• Moon: Taurus (4 - 20 degrees)
• Mercury: Virgo (16 - 20 degrees)
• Venus: Libra (0 - 15 degrees)
• Mars: Aries (0 - 12 degrees)
• Jupiter: Sagittarius (0 - 10 degrees)
• Saturn: Aquarius (0 - 20 degrees)

List of levels in Hawkins scale of consciousness

This post is a list of levels in Hawkins scale of consciousness. Source: second.wiki

• 700-1000: enlightenment
• 600: peace
• 540: joy
• 500: love
• 400: understanding
• 350: acceptance
• 310: willingness
• 250: neutrality
• 200: affirmation
• 175: proud
• 150: hate
• 120: desire
• 100: angst
• 75: remorse
• 50: apathy
• 30: guilt
• 20: shame

Stephen Koch: quotes about Andy Warhol

This post is a collection of quotes about Andy Warhol from Stephen Koch in Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film as part of the PBS American Masters series. The documentary can be found at the following links: Part 1, Part 2. I recommend watching the documentary. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "I think his greatest gift was immediacy: making you see in an unmediated way, just right there in front of you with a kind of absolute frontal clarity. I think that he had that. He had feeling for it and a grasp of it that was unique." (Part 1, 4:10)

2. "The idea that the way you are induced to look at something is as much about making it art as what it is. That is to say, if the artist can make you look at anything as if it were art, it to some degree becomes art." (Part 1, 1:10:47)

Lane Rasberry and Wikipedia

This post is a collection of quotes from Lane Rasberry in a presentation in 2020 at MisinfoCon titled WikiProject Medicine. The video for this presentation can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the presentation. There are 2 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "The reason why anyone should care about Wikipedia is that its popular. There's a very simple reason why Wikipedia is popular is because the search engines will return any query for which for which there is a Wikipedia article covering that topic to Wikipedia." (0:48)

2. "So supposing you're with an organization. Supposing that you have knowledge that you would like to share, I would like to invite anyone in such a position to edit in Wikipedia. Share your know knowledge and publications in Wikipedia." (4:28)

List of sign constellations in astrology

This post is a list of sign constellations in astrology. There are 12 constellations listed below according to the zodiac calendar.

Source of photos: Roberto Mura

License: CC BY 3.0

Wikimedia Commons: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces

1. Aries

2. Taurus

3. Gemini

4. Cancer

5. Leo

6. Virgo

7. Libra

8. Scorpius

9. Sagittarius

10. Capricornus

11. Aquarius

12. Pisces

Jamie Joyce and The Society Library

This post is a collection of quotes from Jamie Joyce in an interview on the Intelligent Conversations podcast in 2022 titled Making Great Choices Based off the Most Information. The video for this interview can be found at this link. The Society Library can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the interview and visiting The Society Library. There are 10 quotes listed below chronologically.

(For readability, these quotes have been slightly revised from the original recording.)

1. "At The Society Library we create a variety of different knowledge products that are meant to serve the public's informational needs. So, one product that we create is the library itself. The Society Library is all about collecting all of the arguments, claims and evidence from across different media types, so its not just the content in books and scholarly articles and government reports and industry reports, but also what are people saying on TikTok and Twitter and in documentaries. What is everyone saying about this issue and how can we bring all of this knowledge together and structure it so that everyone can get both a bird's eye view of all the different positions from all points of view but also be able to dive down as deep as they want to find all of arguments and claims and evidence and the argumentation that refutes or supports claims and arguments? And so essentially the service that we're offering society for the library is essentially just saving thousands and thousands of research hours and organization hours by doing all this research for people and creating this curated collection so people can explore." (3:37)

2. "We're not interested in censoring content. We're not interested in driving people towards assuming certain conclusions. We're just about organizing all points of view, contextualizing it by evidence and type of evidence and some helpful categorizations, and just let people come to the truth themselves." (4:37)

3. "We serve city councils by collecting knowledge from all stakeholders and then organizing it into a micro-voting protocol... When people make decisions they're often times making decisions in the black box of their own minds, and they're making all sorts logical calculations and they're weighting things in ways that may not be obvious to them... The problem with that is that we may not be easily able to detect where we are cognitively bias and where we're making logical mistakes." (5:35)

4. "So our decision-making models are about laying out all of the pro-con argumentation, across different dimensions of a decision on paper so that its externalized in way in which we ask users of the decision-making model to go through every single tiny piece of knowledge, one step at a time, and make a little micro-vote on pro, a con, what have you, and essentially at the end what it tells them is this is how you think about the economic dimension of this issue, this is how you think about the environmental dimension, this is how you think about the idea itself versus how its executed. And so it tells people once you've actually sat down and gone through the methodological process of including all information in your decision-making, here is your decision." (6:20)

5. "What The Society Library's goals are is to figure out, okay, if we're all coming from different backgrounds, we've interacted with different ideas, we have different values and assumptions, and we have different sets of knowledge that we're operating on, how do we create media artifacts and knowledge artifacts and societal institutions to enable the possibility to see from different points of view?" (14:11)

6. "...there are still decisions being made in terms of how knowledge is classified and organized and what tags are on it, and how its cleaned up and steel-manned and all those things. And so in the meantime, in the short-term, what we have are some, you know, anti-bias principles, we've got 22 different methods to overcome our own bias in our research methods, we got our virtues and values and we have our knowledge policies which people can see on our website. Long-term... I want to create a twin system in which the same work is being done by two different groups of people, one could be The Society Librarians internally, and another one could just be open for the general public." (18:20)

7. "...if there's something The Society Library knows, its that our mission is inquire into truth, not to tell anyone what it is." (19:55)

8. "The Society Library is actually a long term plan. What we are dedicated to is figuring out what is the best institution for future generations to grow up with... If our goals are to enable people to understand complexity and nuance and see all these different points of view and interact with media in a way that's going to make them more wise if they choose because they're going to emotionally understand things, and they're going to be able to dive deep into every single subject, and we're going to save them all those thousands and thousands of hours of research and consolidation and all of that stuff. You know, what does that have to look like? And then how do we get it into people's hands as early as possible?" (26:55)

9. "How much knowledge can we compress into a visualization that people will still understand without being overwhelmed? How do we make sure that we're collecting from all points of view? How do we make sure that we're not falling into knowledge policy traps..." (28:42)

10. "The last bit of data I saw was from a Pew survey which suggested that trust in libraries has maintained and that's because they literally just exist to serve the public. They're not there to make money. Librarians are a wonderful caricature in terms of that they literally exist to give you the information that you want and help you find it and they're not trying to, you know, convince you to believe one thing or another, and they're totally anti-censorship." (31:35)

Anthony Magnabosco and street epistemology

This post is a collection of quotes from Anthony Magnabosco in a presentation in 2021 with the Dutch Skeptic Society titled What is (And Why Do) Street Epistemology. The video for this presentation can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the presentation. There are 8 quotes listed below chronologically.

1. "I want to talk a little about how we usually interact when we're having conversations with people with whom we disagree. What do we usually we do? ...we tend to give people facts because we found them convincing... we usually will debate them, give them facts that we found convincing with the idea that they will find it convincing too, and it doesn't usually work that way. This typically leads to argumentation and sometimes even ridicule. And as you have probably have experienced this doesn't help a person reflect on their views or even change their mind." (4:04)

2. "In street epistemology, we're not so much interested in what you know; we're interested in why you think you know it. What process did you use to come to your conclusion?" (5:21)

3. "Most of the conversations where people are using street epistemology are organic, they just happen with family and friends, or maybe a stranger. But they usually naturally arise as opposed to being initiated on the street." (5:54)

4. "In street epistemology we're largely asking questions. We try to hold back on telling people what our views are or what we think their view should be." (6:39)

5. "We want to get to the person's 'epistemology', or how we're using the word: how the person concluded that their reasons are good enough for thinking something is true." (7:21)

6. "So when I talk about the 'what', this is their claim, this is the level of confidence that their claim is true, and then any definitions of words. So if they do say 'karma', I want to understand what they mean by that word." (8:38)

7. "Here's a little tip. When somebody gives a reason... for thinking that their claim is true, make sure that that really is their reason. And you can ask them something like 'if that reason could be shown to your satisfaction that its not a good reason, would you be less confident that your claim was true'. Its a really great question to figure out if you're talking about a reason that contributes to their level of confidence." (9:11)

8. "I think its also a good way to develop more careful thinkers. We see a lot of reckless thinking these days and its a real problem. And I've noticed that street epistemology has really helped the people on the receiving end of my conversations be more careful in their thinking and me as a result too." (11:48)

List of astrological house significations

This post is a list of astrological house significations. There are 12 houses listed below.

    First House

• awareness
• core-self
• identity
• mind
• physical appearance

    Second House

• beauty
• clothing
• money
• material possessions
• spending habits

    Third House

• communication
• hands
• media
• siblings
• short trips

    Fourth House

• family
• foundation
• home
• parents
• hidden life

    Fifth House

• art
• children
• creativity
• entertainment
• pleasure

    Sixth House

• illness
• nutrition
• jobs
• pets
• repetition

    Seventh House

• marriage
• others
• partnerships
• relationships
• romance

    Eighth House

• debt
• inheritance
• sex
• taxes
• transformation

    Ninth House

• higher education
• invention
• philosophy
• spirituality
• travel

    Tenth House

• achievements
• career
• public image
• reputation
• social status

    Eleventh House

• community
• friendship
• groups
• idealism
• shared experience

    Twelfth House

• fear
• intuition
• secrets
• self-sabotage
• subconscious

List of tarot numerology significations

This post is a list of tarot numerology significations.

1. beginnings, opportunities
2. decisions, duality
3. community, creativity
4. stability, responsibility
5. change, freedom
6. reconciliation, nurturing
7. learning, analysis
8. mastery, action
9. success, goals
10. completion, renewal

List of astrological sign type significations

This post is a list of astrological sign type significations. There are 4 types listed below alphabetically.

• Air: ideas, communication, rationality
• Earth: practical, grounded, dependable
• Fire: bold, daring, spontaneous
• Water: emotion, psychic, intuitive

List of tarot suits by element in astrology

This post is a list tarot suits by element in astrology. There are 4 suits listed below alphabetically. Source: astrology.com

• Cups: water
• Pentacles: earth
• Swords: air
• Wands: fire

List of sign representations in astrology

This post is a list of sign representations in astrology. There are 12 astrological signs listed below according to the zodiac calendar.

• Aries: ram
• Taurus: bull
• Gemini: twins
• Cancer: crab
• Leo: lion
• Virgo: woman with wheat
• Libra: scales
• Scorpio: scorpion
• Sagittarius: centaur with bow and arrow
• Capricorn: goat
• Aquarius: water bearer
• Pisces: two fish swimming in opposite directions

List of planets by tarot card

This post is a list planets by tarot card. There are 10 planets listed below. Source: sunnyray.org

• Sun: The Sun
• Moon: The High Priestess
• Mercury: The Magician
• Venus: The Empress
• Mars: The Tower
• Jupiter: Wheel of Fortune
• Saturn: Judgment
• Uranus: The World
• Neptune: The Fool
• Pluto: The Hanged Man