Wednesday, April 25, 2007

In praise of anonymity

Take a simple statement, "all swans are white." The validity (or not) of this has nothing to do with the identity of who utters it. It's merely a statement about swans, to be tested by looking for a non-white swan.

The key test of an idea is not: whose is it? It's: does it accord with facts and reasoning?

This is one reason why this blog is (thinly) anonymous. Debate should be a dispassionate investigation of facts and theories. Someone's identity matters insofar as it explains their Bayesian priors - no more.

If we personalize debate, it becomes merely a battle of egos, which leads to a politics dominates by tittle-tattle and spin.

Worse still, identifying authority with particular persons leads to an anti-democratic deference to charlatans.

So, anonymity has its advantages.

Em compensação, este blogue deve ser do menos anónimo que há - num só clique, os leitores até ficam a saber aonde trabalho (por outro lado, como eu sou um absoluto desconhecido, até podia por uma fotocópia do BI, com número e fotografia, que era a mesma coisa que ser anónimo)

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