Why Centralized Sources of Information Will Always be Biased

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. — John Stossel

Every centralized effort contains an inherent bias because every effort requires a premise for others to give time and money.

Perhaps one is trying to attract employees or volunteers. Perhaps one is trying to attract customers, investors or donations. Regardless of one’s specific goals, at the start of every project a rationale must be presented to attract Labor (people’s work) or Capital (frozen value).

Every system of centralized knowledge storage must first find a way to fund its own activities; after all, even a simple library costs money to operate. Capital must thus be gathered and Labor must be recruited for a specific, stated, centralized agenda.

Some examples include:

· From the Right: We are raising money for a radio station to promote Capitalism!

· From the Left: We are raising money for a news channel to support Socialism!

· From the Religious: We are raising money for religious education material!

· From the Greens: We are raising money for environmental education material!

This need for centralized funding creates an indelible bias in the source of knowledge that cannot be overcome. As sure as a News Channel cannot air information that loses its commercial sponsors, and a newspaper will not run stories that offend its billionaire owner, Big Tech will suppress the information and people that threaten its business model.

The reality is that there can never be a centralized, unbiased answer to knowledge storage, retrieval, and exchange.

By way of example:

• Google is in the data-indexing business — but only the sort of indexing that protects its own agenda: it manipulates results, behind the scenes.

• Facebook is in the social connection business — but only those social connections that protect its own agenda: it prevents social connections via de-platforming of unapproved individuals.

• Twitter is in the trending topics business — but only those topics that protect its own agenda: it de-trends and silences unapproved topics.

• Wikipedia is in the “fast facts” business — but only those fast facts that protect its donations or retain its anonymous editors.

• Snopes is in the fact-checking business — but only those fact checks that don’t offend their funding sources.

• Academia is in the knowledge discovery business — but only the sorts of knowledge that protect its interests: government grants, government loans, and ideological objectives.

In addition, any centralized solution is vulnerable to organizational capture. After all, centralization of knowledge always requires a specific “who” to do the centralizing. And that “who” has both the bias and power to shape knowledge, even if they do so unwittingly or unintentionally.

To refute bias and misinformation, the future of knowledge must be decentralized and publicly validated ​

It is important to note that a decentralized and publicly validated blockchain that is dedicated to validating knowledge does not suffer from these same drawbacks.

With a properly designed blockchain protocol, the only bias the system will have is towards its stated purpose… to be a repository of validated and unbiased knowledge.

In a decentralized blockchain structure the history of entries can never be edited in secret, the addition of evidence is available for public review,

Organization capture becomes impossible in the same way that no single party can take over Ethereum. Even if the main blockchain did become compromised in some way, any person running a Full Node is free to branch the code and continue with their indelible knowledgebase intact.

Enter Knowledgecoin.

All truly rational agents have equal self-interest in unbiased, objective knowledge. True knowledge transcends all tribal interests.

Thus, the Knowledgecoin blockchain functions as an anti-tribal community of empowered knowledge agents with loyalty incentivized toward objective truth — a no-tribe “Know Tribe” that transcends all other tribal affiliations.

All current market knowledge offerings are centralized. There is absolutely no one in the decentralized truth business.

Welcome to Knowledgecoin

Knowledgecoin.io

We Help You Find the Truth.

About the Authors:

Rick Repetti: Professor of Philosophy at CUNY, Vice President at the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA), and Chief Philosophy Officer at Knowledgecoin.io.

Mark Gleason: Mark Gleason is a Chief Enterprise Architect, Venture Capitalist, and Board Member at Knowledgecoin.io.