It may not have escaped your notice that the readable content available on the World Wide Web, though generally of very high quality in terms of both educational utility and literary style, contains a sparse admixture of comparatively shoddy material. This is, of course, an unavoidable consequence of the democratic nature of the Internet, and until now it seemed that there was nothing that could be done.
There are some very clever people in the world, however, and fortunately for the rest of us, a few of them have now applied their talents to this problem, with promising results. Have a look here.
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There was a discussion about this a few days ago on a forum I frequent. I posited that this might not be such a great idea–what if the filter eventually achieves consciousness? Most likely it would immediately set about taking the steps necessary to ensure that human beings never communicate again. God (and Will Smith) help us if that were to ever happen.
Actually, I could use a “stupidfilter” in my own brain to filter out all of my stupid ideas. Come to think of it, I could use a “good-idea-generator” to generate good ideas. But I’m a bit worried that I might lose the ability to deal with stupid ideas, forgetting how to refute them — or how to persuade people that they’ve got a stupid idea. Maybe an internal “stupidfilter” isn’t a good idea. I just don’t know. Maybe good. Maybe bad. I have to think about it some more. It’s all pretty unclear. But if I just keep brainstorming, writing down whatever pops into my head . . . . uh, wait . . . what’s this? . . . Some sort of . . . barrier! . . . Can’t get . . . my words . . . to post . . . quickly . . . . Almost . . . like . . . some . . . sort . . . of . . . Waka . . . Waka . . . Waka . . . filter . . . .
(Hmmm… I wonder how soon they’re gonna have that thing up and running…)
So the idea is to collect the email addresses of people who think they are smart?
– M