Lumenism

From Lumeniki

Lumenism is a system for discovering and organizing information particularly on controversial topics. Here's how:

• Debates are made more fruitful and civil by techniques or technology:

• Wikibrawls are when editors with opposing viewpoints collaborate to objectively describe their arguments in a wiki debate map. (See the lumenist hotseat.)
• Time-enforced dialogues (teds) are spoken debates that allow quick, back-and-forth dialogue, while enforcing time/attention restraints.

• Clarifying terminology using neologisms.
• Efficiently organizing and storing information to avoid repetition and enable newcomers to quickly and conveniently see if the answer to their question is in this information storage place. A wikiforum is particularly suitable to this goal, but a wikiforms' function can be simulated with with paper or voice, for people who don't own networked computers, or for information that requires greater privacy, or for people who do not want to become a cripled philosopher like Lumenos.
• Establishing the largest consensus groups possible.
• Research how a lumeniki may be improved to maximize liberty by avoiding power being concentrated in the hands of administrators or the owners of the servers:
  • Allowing modularity so that anyone can easily extract part of the wiki and move it to a different host, sponsor, governor, or legal agreement.
  • Make LumenikiLu useful to readers by allowing them to customize how the content is filtered for them to see rather than administrators censoring what everyone sees.
  • Governance decision power delegated by the wiki software when consensus is not happening: A one-vote-per-person "democratic" system would require identification of people and have disadvantages in terms of privacy and convenience. An alternative would be a meritocratic system that would delegate power based on the amount of content contributed (which is recognized to be valuable). This would avoid cheating with sock puppets and some mistakes due to lack of experience. The idea of software making the decisions (see technocracy) is to achieve real rule-by-law where laws are so perfected they can be carried out by computers/robots. You might think this would require very wise and benevolent policy makers, well sort of, actually power checks are built into the (educational) system although any system may devolve into non-pareto or non-utilitarian, authoritarian hierarchies if not maintained by (the majority of) persons who are either benevolent and/or intelligent enough to maintain it. That is undoubtedly the Truthism.

Contents 1 Clarifying terminology 1.1 Creating new words 2 Manifestos 3 Objectifying beliefs 4 Debate 5 Lumeniki policies 6 The word "Lumenism"

[edit] Clarifying terminology

The ambiguous abstractions hypothesis suggests that philosophy and many "social sciences" are wrought with ambiguous terminology which result in miscommunication and perhaps even an illusion of disagreement. People may think that they have factual disagreements with one another when in reality they are only appearing to come to different conclusions because they are assuming they are defining their terms the same way, when in fact they are not. Lumenism employs a few techniques to demonstrate and correct this unconscious ambiguity (as well as conscious ambiguity).

First we must stop using ambiguous terminology. Here are the instructions for how to do this, in various situations:

• A term is relatively well-defined among intellectuals but it is commonly "mis-defined" by average people. In this case a neologism would not be necessary if you can link to the "proper" definition in the Wikipedia or elsewhere. In print you would put a footnote, indicating that the definition will be found in the glossary.

[edit] Creating new words

If a term has multiple definitions, or if there does not seem to be agreement even among intellectuals as to how a term should be defined, it may be necessary to create a new word (neologism).

A neologism is preferred over a popular term if either of the following conditions are true (if the following conditions are not true then the popular term is preferred):

• The popular term is popularly ambiguous. Even if a dictionary has a "good definition", dictionaries often have more than one definition for a word. In philosophy it is not always obvious from the context, which definition should be implied. If the Wikipedia has a disambiguated name for the term it is recommended to link to the Wikipedia's "neologism" rather than creating your own. The way the Wikipedia often does this is by putting a descriptor in parentheses. For example, there is an article entitled altruism and one entitled altruism (ethics).

• You're not really sure if the popular term popularly means what you would be intending it to mean, if you used the popular term.

[edit] Manifestos

There are many ways you can participate in Lumenism. You can create a manifesto and post it as an article in a lumeniki. You can comment on other people's manifestos. If your interests are more focused on a single topic, you can create an article on the topic and post your comments there instead.

[edit] Objectifying beliefs

Instead of stating what you believe, try describing the belief in general terms. Separate yourself from the belief so that you can analyze it more objectively. Instead of claiming something controversial is true, list the evidence of it or the arguments for it.

[edit] Debate

Real-time debate formats often suffer from either having ridged speaking time allowances (leading to long boring diatribes) or no speaking time regulation (leading to crosstalk and fruitless bickering). Time-enforced dialogue techniques enforce time restraints using clocks like chess players use.

Recorded, real-time debates may be good to discover information, but do not organize information well. When some consensus can be reached (or at least there is a mutual agreement on a third-party arbiter) a better method of "debate" is the wikibrawl.

[edit] Lumeniki policies

See lumenikiLu policies.

[edit] The word "Lumenism"

A lumen is a unit of measurement of light. Many have claimed to have The Light, but in real light everyone usually sees the same thing. The light could symbolize a "consensus reality" that Lumenism hopes to find.