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It dawned on me that human knowledge is highly disorganized, poorly categorized, redundant, often wrong or corrupted, unfocused, and often suboptimal. Most attempts to provide some structure are themselves suffering from similar flaws. It would be very useful if we applied the scientific method to most of it more liberally. Under epistemology, some attempts were made but the field itself is replicating haphazardly. Same goes for ontologic attempts at mapping knowledge.
Some ideas on focusing human knowledge:
1. Provide clear labels and categories for sections of knowledge (e.g. science, pseudoscience, non-science, truthiness, BS).
2. Develop presentation layer that transcends any one language and its limitations (e.g. any book(s) in English or any other language is but a shard of knowledge, whereas a verifiable and flexible schemata that links books, articles, monographs, theses, experiments, theories, etc beyond any one language might be a better presentation layer). Improve book form beyond TOC, index, preface, notes (e.g. include commentary, critique with each book or at least make it more easily accessible).
3. New and old ideas and theories should be tested and verified. If they fail either, they should be at a minimum labeled as such and binned accordingly. Parts maybe cleaved and recategorized as needed. A few good places to start are: politics and laws.
4. Some areas of knowledge are largely non-verifiable and non-testable and that is fine: e.g. art and religion.
5. Free up access to knowledge, organize it and make it easily accessible (e.g. arxiv.org and its clones, archive.org, Project Gutenberg, wikipedia).
6. Free up access to education, organize it and make it easily accessibly (e.g. free courseware from Ivies in US).
7. Start easily accessible online project to advance all the above by using platform similar to wikipedia and stackexchange, but better structured, presented, organized and queryable for our purposes. Ability to zoom in/out with ease by novices and experts alike, find links between knowledge areas, better summarize, present assumptions, weak spots, unknowns, critiques would be major pluses.
Some ideas on focusing human knowledge:
1. Provide clear labels and categories for sections of knowledge (e.g. science, pseudoscience, non-science, truthiness, BS).
2. Develop presentation layer that transcends any one language and its limitations (e.g. any book(s) in English or any other language is but a shard of knowledge, whereas a verifiable and flexible schemata that links books, articles, monographs, theses, experiments, theories, etc beyond any one language might be a better presentation layer). Improve book form beyond TOC, index, preface, notes (e.g. include commentary, critique with each book or at least make it more easily accessible).
3. New and old ideas and theories should be tested and verified. If they fail either, they should be at a minimum labeled as such and binned accordingly. Parts maybe cleaved and recategorized as needed. A few good places to start are: politics and laws.
4. Some areas of knowledge are largely non-verifiable and non-testable and that is fine: e.g. art and religion.
5. Free up access to knowledge, organize it and make it easily accessible (e.g. arxiv.org and its clones, archive.org, Project Gutenberg, wikipedia).
6. Free up access to education, organize it and make it easily accessibly (e.g. free courseware from Ivies in US).
7. Start easily accessible online project to advance all the above by using platform similar to wikipedia and stackexchange, but better structured, presented, organized and queryable for our purposes. Ability to zoom in/out with ease by novices and experts alike, find links between knowledge areas, better summarize, present assumptions, weak spots, unknowns, critiques would be major pluses.
