(At least in economics) authority is the ability to make a decision: if you are a monopoly or a monopsony, you decide on the price and the conditions. In retrieving information, because it is expensive to do so and useless to copy it, this monopoly is the optimal case, and there is only only one leading expert.

> more of our own thinking

Actually, scarcity was introduced as a scientific criterion in the Fourteenth century by Ockham. With digital formalisation of information, machined-learned models relaxed the constraint to let humans understand and accept every explanations — not always for the best, if you consider the Law of Greater Numbers, e.g. the recent financial crisis has been driven by people smoothing models, to the latest figures, adding noise instead of trying to grasp a comprehensive, limited view (including back-firing crashes).

Not always — but possibly so. Google has dozens of rules that apply to its algorithms, still hand-picked elements from Machine-Learnt suggestions; some internally advocate for less human control.

I don’t think we need “more” understanding or to be more astute in validating claims (we might already be overwhelmed with that) as much as understanding how to organize algorithmic treatment of information — but that probably was what you meant.

So I wonder what authority really is and why is it valuable? I think we use the scarcity of authority and tokens of authority as a proxy for the complex task of discerning truth. The future of intellectual thought will force us to do more of our own thinking about what the truth of a matter really is.

That means we should shift education toward the goal of teaching how to critically evaluate sources and how to validate claims.

Because I read this rebuttal, I really though you (Fred) and him were aligned, and I suggested ‘Freedom’ in the comments of his blog — hope that was OK with you. Let’s see if he likes it, or if his detractors will.

I first said I couldn’t understand how your software could have any relevance — obviously I changed my mind since, although I much prefer to close my computer and go in the garden.

I do think the control of that mediation is both exciting and scary.

I think one company being able to control scarcity (and define truth) is historically dangerous.

Crowdsourcing is amazing unless it’s just a new dictatorship. Who controls the filter on the crowd?

I’m kind of an intellectual Darwinist, here – sure we can preserve methods of literacy through instruction (they do still teach how to recite epic poems in Greek and Middle English), but what’ll survive is what’ll be useful in the world. Us old folks might whinge that the kids are a bunch of ignorant heathens – just as they did when people started reading novels and not just the classics, or newspapers, or listening to radio, or watching TV… I feel like it’s almost a cliche to point this out and yet somehow people keep forgetting the “all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again” nature of these changes.