Re: How We Know

I have, for what it's worth, difficulty agreeing with either side
here.


*Neutrality*

I'd think that what we should strive for is not a selection
characterized by lack of bias, or neutrality, or objectivity, or
-- certainly -- freedom from ( at least latent ) social pressure.
It would be simply futile and silly to do so -- since that kind
of selection is unachievable anyway.

What is desirable ( and the best we can do ) is that there be
lots of different selections with each its different unavoidable
bias and subjectivity and social pressure. That has the ultimate
advantage of leading to something approaching a collective
objectivity -- as I said :  the best we can do ;  and it is indeed
perhaps achievable in an open, pluralistic environment.


*Selecting "the best" of what there is*

And Jim keeps insisting that selectors are there to select the
"best". And he writes that users "want what is "The Best"".
Maybe they would also in the first instance put it that way. It's
a common cliché, I thought.

But it can for one thing be quite legitimate that good selectors
in some cases or situations select not what is the best but
rather what is the most representative. ( That was certainly a
conscious element in my work for over two decades as a
library selector at U. Amsterdam in a particular field, one in
which I also happened to hold a PhD and had been a prof
before doing the MLIS routine. )  And what if every selector
everywhere only selected the best -- the unavoidable result if
all selectors did their work in optimal fashion according to
Jim's norm ?

And for another thing we all know how problematical and
downright dubious it can be to select and to collect on basis of
what users "want", and certainly of what they say they want --
i.e., that portion of users that comes out and says anything about
the matter at all. Yet in spite of what they may say or even think
they ( at a given point ) specifically want , what they in general
want ( i.e., really, pragmatically, want, and also need ) is not
The Best, but rather the most useful. And here we come to the
classic problem :  we don't really know to what extent and *how*
they will use what we provide them ( to say  nothing of those
things we don't provide them ), or how they have used what we
did and didn't provide them. Furthermore, they are themselves,
after the fact, unable coherently and accurately to tell us ( even
if they should have the time and occasion, or be so disposed,
which they in general haven't and aren't ) just how they have
used it. What we do know about the patterns of use, and non-
use, of the resources we select and of the many more we don't
select, is that they are not univocal or fixed, but rather constantly
contingent -- from discourse community to discourse community,
from user to user, but also, for any given user, from resource to
resource, from situation to situation, depending not only on the
prevailing objectives and circumstances but even for instance on
affective factors.

We should ( must ) keep all of this in mind, I would say, in
ruminating on the difficult issues discussed in this thread.


*Garbage*

And as far as determining and subsequently ignoring what Jim
terms "real garbage" is concerned, I think that we have to be
cautious with our concepts here. Even this is sooner a task in
which somehow also the user ( in his/her context at any given
moment ) would ideally play some part -- given that even this
person ( and of course a fortiori the selector ) is unable to
predict where from case to case such lines might better have
been drawn. Just as this person is likewise unable to predict
( and therefore to inform the selector ) what is going to prove
useful for yet unknown objectives and in yet unknown contexts
further down the road. And this seems particularly poignant,
for while it is possible to some extent to judge beforehand what
is ( and will remain ) "the best" selection, it is much more
problematical to judge beforehand what is ( or will be ) the
most useful selection.


*Non-(inter)subjective definitions*

And one last thing that seems to me to be strictly utopian :
John's "objective definitions in the psychological community".
Definitions are not, even [ or especially ? ] in psychology,
discovered like natural phenomena, or handed down from on
high. It's human beings who craft them.

 
- Laval Hunsucker
  Breukelen, Nederland