Books as Reasons to Agree or Disagree

Books as Reasons to Agree or Disagree

"What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." ~ Thomas Carlyle

We should allow users to suggest books as reasons to agree or disagree with an idea. 

We could have three fields:

1. One place where you submit the Book that agrees or disagrees with the original idea. 
2. The second field would let you classify the object. Is it a book, a website, or simply a logical argument? 
3. The third field would be a place where the user explains why they believe the book supports the conclusion they have drawn. 

Then, we allow users to vote on whether the arguments that the book supports their belief hold up, or post their reasons to agree or disagree with the original author's argument. 

Imagine what an algorithm could do if someone says that a book agrees with their beliefs. For example, data is readily available from Amazon, eBay, or the New York Times bestseller list to indicate how well a book has sold. This is where the algorithm could get very sophisticated. For example, would you want to give more credibility to those who claim to have actually read the book? Would you provide even more credibility to those who have bought the book, as further proof that they have actually read it? What about people who wrote an essay on the book on the website? 

If Google were to do this, it could provide a platform for users to write essays on books, similar to how Amazon allows users to write reviews. They may not let people copy and paste essays into the form. It would only allow people to type their essays directly, preventing the theft of essays. Perhaps people could vote on whether the book essays were good or not, similar to how Amazon lets users rate reviews, as to whether the review was "helpful" or not.

So, as an example, you could submit a best-selling book as a reason to agree with an idea, and then write a thoroughly convincing explanation of why this book agrees with the idea, and an essay that proves that you understand the main points of the book.

If Google really wants to organize the world's information, it must do this. We have a vast collection of books, and we have an abundance of content on the internet. We need ways to organize this information into what it all means and how it should affect us. The only beneficial way information can affect us is by helping us make better decisions. To make better decisions, we must understand all the reasons to agree or disagree with a particular course of action. To do this, we should not start at ground zero, with only our own thoughts in our heads. We should bring together all of the great thinkers from every age and every corner of the planet, and organize all of their great thoughts, so that we can make the right decisions.

As you can see, this algorithm may seem simple, but it also presents programmers with hundreds of years of challenges to make it more sophisticated. This is a strength of the idea because it allows for continual improvement.

Examples

Books that advocate for school reform.

1. De-schooling Society, by Ivan Illich

People have tried to use technology, such as books and videos, to support their arguments. But none of these can organize beliefs, how they relate to each other, and help us evaluate the validity of each specific argument, like a well-designed relational database and a good logic-promoting algorithm.

Books are usually one-sided, not updated when new data is available, and can not be considered comprehensive.

If authors wanted their books to be considered comprehensive, they would have to incorporate all the good stuff that has been written on the subject from all the books that have ever been written in the past, logically organize their arguments, and correct their mistakes.