[Sigia-l] morality in IA

[Jon Hanna]

> This has begun to bother me too recently.  In particular, I've
> been reading a lot (too much apparently) about the meaning of
> truth, and the ethical mandate people have to search for the
> truth rather than just assume or make decisions based on a gut
> feel... a lot of philosophy gets rather harsh on this point--
> that just going with your gut is akin to perpetuating an
> environment of stupidity.

I think a lot of it is more about being honest about how good the premises
of your decisions are. We cannot research many things to the fullest extent
possible (attempts to do so quickly become comic pastiches of
deconstructionism), but the biggest problem with "gut feeling" or even of
research which may be limited as far as cultural breadth or other factors is
that we aren't prepared to qualify it as such.
It's when we don't qualify in this way that gut feeling moves from being a
necessary part of our decision-making to replacing reason entirely
(ironically the worse culprits are probably those who consider themselves
"rational").

All the time you see stuff in the media that proclaims
> the benefit of gut feel and downplays data as stogy and tiresome,

If you want to really give yourself a fright try doing some reading on how
emotive material (especially pornography) has been used in propaganda
(especially by Goebbels).

> I suppose my ethical mandate probably can't extend to telling my
> clients they're perpetuating an environment of stupidity, or
> refusing to make decisions based on assuptions, at least if I
> want to keep my job,

See, that's why my boss won't let me talk to clients any more (that sounds
like a joke, but it's true).

 but I wish I could come up with something
> practical to do.  It's really begin to bother me.

Identify one area in which current IA systems perpetuate these problems.
Build an alternative. Take the 200 section of Dewey for instance (since it
was mentioned earlier); build an alternative that is more egalitarian and
better reflects the nature of religious diversity in the world. Make it have
practical advantages over Dewey for at least some uses (say if it works
better with Semantic Web technologies), and make sure Wicca isn't filed
under "philosophy/psychology" anymore cause that annoys me :)