Thinking Thursday

I don't expect anyone's going to pick up on that title and make it a wildly successful meme, a la Wordless Wednesday. I just needed a title, and that was what popped out of the Regurgatron. But, you know, what if we did have such a day -- the day when everyone thinks about a specific problem, and offers solutions? Such concepts occasionally show up in science fiction novels, and either an elegant solution evolves from the mass mind, or one does not, but everyone feels better for having participated in the group effort. I've always liked the idea. Too bad that it probably wouldn't work. Seeing the comments that people put into their blogs, et al, lately, they're not looking for agreement -- they want to flatten the opposition. There is no civility, no willingness to accept the other side as a reasonable person.

I can see it now: Thinking Thursday: Todays Question: How can we best allocate the scarce resources in an inner city school? One or two calm, thoughtful responses, and then a flurry of F-bombs, with 'friggin idiots' here and 'stupid bastards' there... and the comments stop. It would work, I think, if you vetted who was making the comments, sort of like the need to sign in before Blogger will let you make a comment, but that doesn't always work. Even ignoring the possibility of subverting the sign-in process -- how often do people get comments from what are apparently robots -- the loss of anonymity steals something that feeds the creative process. If I have a thought about the current TT problem, but for whatever reason I don't want my name associated with it, then perhaps I won't tell you my idea. Even if the keeper of the system promises that once you've signed on, it'll not connect your name with what you say, there will be doubt that the system can really be trusted-- that malice or accident won't expose the connection. Oh, so it was Harry who suggested eliminating the executive washroom, hey? Most people won't take that risk. An effort to institute a Wikipedia for spies to pool their bits of knowledge almost foundered when it was pointed out that that sort of knowledge, by itself, has very little intrinsic value - you need to know who said it - so they wanted everyone to sign in - whereupon people said 'I'm not putting my name out there, forget it. ' Same problem. So it was Harry who said that an invasion would be a cakewalk, hey?

Which is not what I was going to write about -- I was actually thinking about an article I'd read regarding whether it was ethical to give a patient an anesthetic which effectively removed the last ten minutes of their consciousness - it can be found on the Time magazine web site, here -- but I think I'll pass for now. Time for breakfast.