CZ Talk:Compromise

Compromise or Comity?

I appreciate the spirit of this statement, but have some problems with the notion of compromise, even as very diplomatically presented here. My best response is:

It all depends...

If the issue is presidential candidates, or controversial issues, The Odd Couple, or the taste of Single Malt, or any similar topic that resolves into opinion and has no established basis for moving beyond opinions, I agree.

If, on the other hand, the issue is a matter of interpretation on a topic or field where there are established, recognized procedures for resolving disagreements (e.g., scientific method, hermeneutics, etc.), and established experts and expertise this is emphatically not the way to go. (The optics associated with filming the Odd Couple and the Chemistry of single malt flavor would be such topics.) There, there is an additional qualifier: Are the disputants peers in the sense of both knowledgeable on the topic? If so, the same basis for compromise exists. If not, however, we are faced with an entirely different situation. A dispute between an economist and a non-economist over the meaning and legitimacy of Kaldor-Hicks efficiency is not the same kind of disagreement at all, and to see it as such is to dismiss the legitimacy of most knowledge (and of Citizendium!)

Not to recognize this difference and leave everything at the level of compromise with no qualification is to completely subvert one key basis of the difference between Wikipedia and Citizendium.

In cases of data in astrophysics or psychiatric sociology or an esoteric argument in interpretation of Hegelian metaphysics or any other topic which is part of a field with an established expert base when the disagreement is between a certifiable expert and an amateur of any sort, regardless of how enthusiastic, compromise is not the best route to anything other than assuring pablum.

At the very least, the importance of compromise needs to be qualified by something like the explicit assumption (which may already be implicit here) of standing (Author or Editor) in the area in question.

• Roger Lohmann 15:51, 8 November 2007 (CST)

Forum

There is also a debate about this over at the Citizendium forums. John Stephenson 03:59, 9 November 2007 (CST)