H. B. Phillips: “It is presumptuous for any one to take his own feeling of mental certainty as final evidence that he is right.”
Credit: Courtesy of the MIT Museum
Then and now, we face the problem of determining what is true.
In this article, Simson L. Garfinkel explores Wikipedia's epistemology and discovers that, far from being the free-for-all its detractors portray it as, the world's most popular reference is decidedly rigid. In its effort to ensure accuracy, Wikipedia relies entirely on "verifiability," requiring that all factual claims include a citation to another published source (preferably online, preferably in English). As a result, Garfinkel argues, "on Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject."
There are, of course, times when the consensus view and the truth align perfectly. The problem is how to determine when this is the case. In an essay for TR published in April 1956, the former head of the MIT mathematics department, H. B. Phillips, described one method for doing so. Since Phillips was a mathematician, it's little wonder he appealed to the laws of probability for a solution.
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