[extropy-chat] Arxiv.org on UFO visits to Ganymede

[Jef Allbright]

On 2/15/06, "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org> wrote:

> There have been complaints in the past that the arxiv was off limits to
> people from outside the mainstream, and apparently there was a policy
> change recently, with a new moderator in charge.  Now there are some
> really off-the-wall papers appearing, the most amazing of which is this
> one: <http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512062>, "A Solution to the
> Fermi Paradox: The Solar System, part of a Galactic Hypercivilization?".

I'm disappointed to learn that arxiv standards have dropped, but I
suspect it's on the path to a higher level of organization.

It seems to me that are approaching a "phase change" with regard to
how we manage the quality of our online information sources in
general.

For several years, the quality of futurist-oriented email lists was
higher than it is now due to self-selection within a scarcer
environment but these are being swamped by the ease of entry and high
popularity of the Internet.

For a few years, certain web sites rose to prominence as repositories
of higher quality, frequently updated news and information but these
seem to be declining due to the very significant investment of time to
update and maintain them.

For several months, several blogs shown as examples of high quality
content.  Many or most are still there, but being drowned out by the
cacophony of personal blogs of average or below average acumen.

For fewer months, technorati and delic.io.us have been building a
social framework that shows promise of applying reputation management
and collaborative filtering to the problem.

With several hundred items entering my personal inbox each day, I've
already reached the point where I can't even skim all the email
threads.  I'm finding much greater benefit from filtering email on
senders that have earned my appreciation (strategy of promoting good
threads rather than the older way of demoting bad threads), and by
monitoring certain tags on delic.io.us according to person or category
of interest.  What's lacking is greater visibility of other people's
delicic.io.us URLs.

Here's mine:
http://del.icio.us/jefallbright

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net
Increasing awareness for increasing morality