Nevertheless, the problem of meandering is certain to re-emerge once we learn how to make machines that examine themselves to formulate their own new problems. Questioning one's own "top-level" goalsalways reveals the paradox-oscillation of ultimate purpose. How could one decide that a goal is worthwhile -- unless one already knew what it is that is worthwhile? How could one decide when a question is properly answered -- unless one knows how to answer that question itself? Parents dread such problems and enjoin kids to not take them seriously. We learn to suppress those lines of thoughts, to "not even think about them" and to dismiss the most important of all as nonsensical, viz. the joke "Life is like a bridge." "In what way?" "How should I know?" Such questions lie beyond the shores of sense and in the end it is Evolution, not Reason, that decides who remains to ask them.
A reader nicely sums up the collaboration dilemma: You can either choose to restrict participation, in which case you limit yourself to the ideas and experience of those admitted to the group, or you can open participation, and wind up with the problems of flaming, trolling, spamming and whatnot always complained about on weblogs.
So the problem comes down to how to rate users and their contribution. An open rating system like kuro5hin or slashdot allows for the broadest range of thought, but allows for abuses as well. A top-down system invariably shuts out some valuable ideas, but provides better control over "problem" users. Both systems have the risk of groupthink, where "truths" become defined and users and contributers either bend their views to fit the dominant ideology of the group, or the group represses the dissenting viewpoint. Can people learn to participate in such a community without falling into these traps?
In personal weblogs, whose content is entirely the responsibility of one person, there is less danger of groupthink. Someone can always spam or troll but he's not going to be linked to. The key thing that personal weblogs bring is accountability. Of course you'll have circles of groupthinkers who are linking to one another, but you can also have open minds who link to one another and not to groupthinkers. This keeps the air fresh.
Someone with views that go against the general grain (be them wiser or stupider), or that are difficult to understand, has to work harder to get visibility by finding like minds who'll link to him, and that's only natural. But the key is that he doesn't have to please a group to get visibility. He can go one person at a time.
"This monthly virtual journal contains articles that have appeared in one of the participating source journals and that fall within a number of contemporary topical areas in quantum information, including quantum computing, cryptography, error correction, and theoretical and experimental investigations of entanglement. The articles are primarily those that have been published in the previous month; however, at the discretion of the editors older articles may also appear, particularly review articles. Links to other useful Web resources on quantum information are also provided."
