Friday, November 26, 2010

Yahoo!Answers Series 1 : More in depth reasoning and arugments


Click here to visit the Y!A Martial Arts category

Please do come and participate in the Y!A community if you are passionate about the Martial Arts. The more with passion and experience, the more everyone benefits.


I participate in the Yahoo!Answers Community, specifically in the Martial Arts Category. I'm "ranked" a Top Contributor of the category but it's my understanding the ranking is based on frequency of answering questions not the quality of the answer so I wouldn't read to much into me being a TC.

The Yahoo!Answers format doesn't allow for a fully developed answer for many of the more complex issues. What seems like a simple question could warrant an entire essay just to cover the background context and set up the assumptions and logic before finally giving the answer supported by logic, reason, and citations. This Blog will be an excellent place to link answers that deserve more development and/or exploration in order to supplement the answer on the Y!A site.

Oftentimes the answers aren't developed enough to be understood and thus good answers by many knowledgable people are rejected out of hand. However, many good answers are rejected out of hand because of the self-serving biases and other factors of human social psychology. Many people don't want a correct answer, they want an answer that reflects and reinforces what they already believe and when they get that answer it is picked as best even if it is factually incorrect. I find that to be a fascinating display of human psychology. Some people get frustrated by the phenomenon but I don't really care if my answer is accepted or not by those who prefer to reinforce their misconceptions rather than learn the correct information. It is not me who will suffer if their incomplete knowledge fails them at a critical time.

I will address some of the Frequently asked questions from that category in this Blog so I can later provide a link rather than repeated typing out the same answer over and over again. I will also link and discuss some of the great answers from other contributors that have an impressive depth and wealth of knowledge about things outside my realm of experience.

1 comment:

  1. It would save time on repeating one of those checklist answers.

    ReplyDelete