The Seal Of Quality. A new proposal to debate.

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Hello WrongPlanet and its great userbase.

I really enjoy discussing things in a democratic setting. You will hear the idea shortly, but let me continue:

Searching for a Democracy forum website was difficult. It felt impossible. Sometimes, 'democratic' groups become interested in an agenda which goes against an innocent discussion.

So, I chose WrongPlanet, as I know that Autistic people can display great honesty and can offer neurodiversity in debate. This could indeed be a democratic debate of my idea! As I have an unusual mind myself, and I have family members with Autism, I appreciate this community and have read the forums many times and have even been a member many years ago.

Now: My idea is the Seal Of Quality.
Is it Quasi-religious? Is it religious, even? Is it political?
It has many potentials.

I want as innocent-a-discussion as possible about this idea.

It is a global initiative, because, if we can access different cultures with a standard (a standard idea), then we can bring cultures together without taking away their identity. In the future of humanity, we can apply a Seal Of Quality to many concepts, ideas, cultural values, and social initiatives, reaching even further to religion, politics, and then science itself.

For example, Atheists may disagree that there is a God. However, they can still sometimes agree that a religious idea may be a 'good' idea, or an 'interesting' idea. For that, it can enter debate, and may eventually receive one or more seals of quality, perhaps.

History. There is such a thing as historical revisionism. Some people simply don't believe the past even happened.
What do we do about this? If historically and in the future of humanity in the universe, we decide on 'Seals of Quality,' the actual quality might indicate some historical truth. Can we look at things differently, then? Perhaps.

'The Seal of Quality' is not a God. It should not offend, but that doesn't mean it can't offend entirely. Which is why it requires debate in a democratic setting.

Now, I admit that I am a bit unusual as a person. Some of my ideas have been dismissed in the past, and I accept that people in different settings will do this. I also accept that online debates have a different structure to real life debates, and that I cannot dictate against every potential aggression that could occur online anywhere, assuming that there is a chance that such an event could occur.
BUT
This is a great forum, and a historically relevant forum. My idea still has the right to exist in time, hopefully. Obviously it is important to discuss the business of this idea as well, and who or what could use it, and how its cultural significance can be evaluated or even extended.

My initial idea was to create a mock democratic holy book with the stories of many people who meet the 'Seal Of Quality.' But... who decides this 'seal?' This could be a complex debate, naturally.

And finally I thank you for your time, and I hope this topic can remain archived and referenced by others if they see the worth in it.

What, specifically, do you mean? You're saying that certain ideas should receive a seal of quality? What would that mean - that they're considered objectively true and people can't debate them anymore?

That is a really difficult question. May I thank you for it.

I think human beings have a great capacity for subjective reasoning. If we can determine this capacity, then can we determine 'quality' too?

In a manner of speaking, perhaps ideas would have a Seal of Quality. But there is difficulty in this.

This idea is already dead on arrival.
Just bury it and move on.

Okay, I will respond again now I have thought about this more uniquely.
But I am looking for debate, and not to express my every idea.
I understand that perhaps you think the idea is bad because the first response is a difficult question.
But difficult questions shouldn't pose too much risk in quality debates.
To add to this, some people may have differing opinions and may feel restrained against expressing these ideas, but I encourage these people to take part.

Now,

A unique product, a unique book, can have a seal of quality.
A historically relevant item can have a seal of quality.
But just any old idea cannot, and I do not think it should.

Unique ideas, valuable and potentially vulnerable ideas, could have a seal of quality.
The experts and contributors may vary.
But the point I would like to make is that the idea of 'quality' really shouldn't hinder progress. That is my opinion.

Who decides what constitutes quality, though? Even with classic and meaningful books and the like, there are going to be some people who don't care for it.

Sounds a bit like patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Thank you.

Anyway, I can't oversee this topic all the time so can I just say that I would be upset if it was locked or damaged with memes etc. Thank you.

Some good points. I would like people to flex their debate skills and hopefully present varying arguments.
After a while, I may chip in.

Check out Robert Pirsig's books to learn about the metaphysics of "quality".

He spent his life finding a way to describe quality, as he found no way to define it.
The result is that quality must be not understood as a property but an event - one that takes both the object and the subject to happen. That means that Quality is not in the object alone - but also not in the subject alone. There is no objective for beauty, but "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" is also wrong, insofar as there needs to be an object - any object that fits the beholder's standard of beauty.
And that's the crux. The beholder's standards for beauty, for good, for quality are influenced by his biology, by his culture and his own thoughts.

So... Patents are a label of quality for engineers - but a hippie might find your new contraption horrenduous and mechanic and alienating.

Strip away culture and there's not much left - individual opinions and thoughts don't exist without a larger framework, so what's left is biology... Which means then things like the waist-to-hip-ratio, that have been proven a universal standard for female beauty - to men- across culture and time. (yes, I basically just said that the only thing men across cultures can agree on is female butts)

there isn't much to quality, without a cultural framework - things would be easier if there were.

for the long version, again, I'd like to refer you to the Robert Pirsig books, both of them. Personally, I found the second more thorough and interesting, but the first one was better written, the story arc was better.

Last edited by shlaifu on 08 Dec 2017, 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks a lot for that. I will no doubt be enriched by this.

Also, there is one thing I need to mention.
My Seal Of Quality was originally thought up as a religion, where the ultimate seal of quality is applied to a greater power, or people's religious ideas as well as philosophical. Just so you know its potential scope, and that this scope may not have been realised by us humans.

But this is a debate, and of course the post above (by shlaifu) is more valuable than my interjection.
I will take a rest now. Please continue.

well... you are basically describing how a shared religion unified tribes into a religious community- and touched the problem that, well, basically, we're just not sharing the same religion. If we did, in all its readings, then we'd have this seal of quality.

but.. I mean... we have oligarchic processes to define quality, like film festivals, or the nobel prize, or the turner prize for art. -

So you intend to make a codex akin to The Communist Manifesto.



Are you implying that theists/theism get an automatic pass?

As for "who decides this 'seal?'": we already have a process by which society considers and then rejects or approves ideas, principles and people within various marketplaces. For example, Donald Trump has a democratically approved "Seal of Quality" from "the people", Coke has a "Seal of Quality" from consumers, etc.

You appear to be trying to reinvent the wheel as part of your introduction to this section of the forums. My advice is to get back to basics, start with principles rather than vague and incomplete ideals.

Yes, I see what you mean. Understanding how to be constructive from first principles, rather than arguing to the principle, may be useful. (Read Aristotle, ethics, arguing from or to first principles.)

Anyhow, I decided to post this, thinking my personal expression of the idea would be unique, but I was correct to think that I would find something related if I did a search.

https://www.alternet.org/belief/why-rel ... l-approval

This is fascinating. It shows that there really is ground for debate, and that my expression of the same or similar idea can be read differently to this author's version, and it would seem that in some form he or she came up with it first.

So this leads me to a better idea.
Yes, I agree that ideas can seem unfinished. But as human beings don't we have so much business to attend to that we can afford some debates about ideas on forums?

The better idea renames it from a religion, to "Historical Seal of Quality."
In the future, certain ideas can have their own subtypes (similar to personality types, such as introvert, extrovert, etc), but instead can be related to historical qualities, looking at alternate views and constructs of history with their own seals. That way this would not be offensive to anyone, as it would not be religious.
But that doesn't mean that people couldn't see it as a religion if they chose.

Maybe if I search for "historical seal of quality," I might find something also.

I do take pride in my ideas but also, thank you for your constructive criticism "adifferentname."

And really now I must rest.
Edit: subtypes could be h1-e57 R-2. (Sounds a bit blocky but would have meaning.)
So this makes it different to UNESCO heritage approval (historical approval).

Its an inane idea.

Look at the examples you use.

The religious vs atheist, but atheists approve of some ideas from religion.

That's probably more or less true. But at one time, and not just religion in generat, but one church, was THE authority. That was the Vatican in Rome. It gave the equivalent of your "seal of approval" to all ideas, or declared ideas to be "heretical" or "infidel" or "profane and blasphemous" or whatever.

But then came the Reformation, so then there were competing churches within Christianity. It took until the 1700s before Christians started to tolerate competing versions of Christianity. And then secularism was on the rise.

So now we having competing secular and religious creeds just within what is considered "mainstream" in society. So yes you could come with this "good housekeeping seal of approval" for mainstream ideas of today, but things will change. Fringe ideas might start to be widely accepted and so forth. So you would have to update your seal. And then folks will come along to rebel against your seal, call your seal of approval "oppressive dogma" and will create their own counter seal.

So someone else will have to come along and mediate between your seal, and these punk goth rebel folks and their counter seal of approve. And that person would then "take the best of ideas from both seals" and create a third "better" seal of approval. And both you and the second group would be forced to sue this third group for copyright infringement.

And so on...

Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" processes would quickly make each seal of approval obsolete.

Thanks for the constructive criticism naturalplastic.

So I would ask, has naturalplastic and others missed anything, and how accurate are their arguments?
I know of course that Hegel is widely disregarded by many modern philosophers who prefer analytic logic. But I do not know what the 'official,' (if there is one) stance is on Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
I do like hegel's work though. It's cool to hear him mentioned.

So, mathematics is supposed to resolve the differences in external and internal senses and logics etc, am I correct?
Empirical evidence presumably doesn't look for a Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis of information, but it does weigh up the impact of anomalous data.

Personally I think you've helped open up a can of worms for debate. (Although it turns out that 'can of worms' has negative connotations, haha).

So, philosophically there is something to aim for here. Of course non-philosophical judgements should still be expressed in this topic, so let's see where this goes.

I would also like to ask you a question. Does this topic irritate you? I only ask this to you personally because I would prefer it if other people wouldn't volunteer their irritation.

Also, I will take a break for a few days, but feel free to reply in the meantime. As you can imagine, with certain ideas in my head that may be seen as inane, my own thought processes can get me worked up, and I need to take chill breaks from it sometimes.

So these are the first few posts of a "brand new member" eh? haha

Got quite a few to take the bait already. Good one lol.