My experience with Wikipedia has been a source of frustration.  I shared The Marriage Foundation’s unconventional views on unconditional love, which lasted a day or two.  And then it was promptly deleted.  Then, I attempted to contribute to a page on AI and consciousness, citing a large-scale longitudinal study, only to have my comments dismissed due to the discrediting of the journal that published an article about the study.  This individual who deleted my excerpts indicated that the scientific community did not widely accept the research.  He then referenced the media’s discrediting of the journal.

We bantered back and forth, and I advised that technicalities could discredit research for otherwise meritorious findings, primarily when the discrediting is based on corporate interests, funded biases, or mere resistance to change.  The fellow indicated that Wikipedia is closed to original theories.  The “old and boring” are part of its mandate.  However, Harper Collins, a respectable publisher, published the book that documents the research I cited, and the study was also published in an academic journal.  Still, these factors were not enough to merit the ideas as “widely accepted by the scientific community.” It’s hard to fathom the long-term viability of a platform that attempts to expand knowledge through adherence to “commonly” accepted precedent.

Academia is a part of the problem.  It allows us to explore ideas, but only if they align, it seems, with commonly accepted notions and fit within the boundaries of the discipline or with what gets funded by the gatekeepers of the day.  Suppose we’re passionate about a topic outside our department, such as a unique physics concept, but are in a communications graduate program.  In that case, advancing that knowledge in our thesis work or within our disciplines is nearly impossible, barring acceptance in interdisciplinary studies.  But even interdisciplinary studies come with gatekeepers.

I know a researcher whose thesis was about an alternative approach to cancer therapy, a view entrenched neither in pharmaceuticals, invasive surgeries, nor chemo practices, and she was placed on the “fringe,” ordered to revise her thesis to accommodate the “commonly” accepted approaches to cancer therapy.  Also, long ago, the fellow who proposed that handwashing could prevent the spread of bacteria and disease was blackballed, too.  His life ended as one of humility, but today, handwashing to prevent the spread of bacteria is common knowledge.  So, ultimately, the guy was right, and the academic community was wrong.

Reflecting on these experiences, I see a pressing need for a new platform—a platform that encourages original theories otherwise blackballed by the materialist paradigm that prevails in academia.  I think we need a platform that values all forms of knowledge, not just those that conform to the precedent in academia.

So, ChatGPT said I’d need to invest $15,000 to $60,000 yearly in legal, marketing, web hosting, and other fees to sustain what I call a “wiki-original” platform.  Wiki-original would allow for unconventional, original theories that don’t necessarily conform to academic precedent or the biases of the gatekeepers of the day.  It would allow for publication of those theories that are outcasted from academia due to non-compliance to the prevailing epistemological foundation, especially when this new research addresses anomalies otherwise swept under the carpet.  A crowdfunding campaign may help generate the investment for a wiki-original platform, although angel investors and other monetization strategies might work, too, as long as the platform isn’t politicized or bought by commercial or political interests.

I have this spectacular former colleague who started a wiki for my former company, and this fellow is a lightning bolt when it comes to problem-solving IT issues, so I asked him for his views on how to set up the wiki-original platform.  I’m still waiting, but I’ll let us know.  And if any of us Comp Sci students want to research the viability of a wiki-original platform, please do.  The world needs it for rapid progress, especially in a humanitarian/spiritual direction.

Knowledge gaps can stem from subjective consensus and assumptions that fail to explain anomalies, such as near-death experience accounts.  So, if new knowledge arises that’s miles removed from common knowledge, it gets overshadowed and discredited if it doesn’t firmly attach to the pre-existing heap.  However, knowledge is more pervasive than the present piles, which occupy only a limited scope of the entire terrain of possibilities, which may be infinite.  There is so much more than what we allow through the gates.  And what we allow through the gates may not be idealized progress, but both somewhat progressive and regressive to varying degrees.  Perhaps the concept of “idealization” should be built into wiki-original’s quest for original knowledge.  That epitome of idealization, in my mind, is unconditional love for everyone and everything.

Someone who temporarily goes through insanity or near-death experiences, both anomalous experiences, can yield new knowledge strictly based on observation or experience or both.  But good luck with having these ideas integrated into a scientific paradigm.  The secular scientific paradigm (emphasizing reductionism) requires adherence to material precedent, even if the insane observations are, in fact, measurable and as plain as day to anyone willing to perceive the world with keener eyes.  I have a theory on motion parallax that I’d like to establish as knowledge, as I believe my basic assumptions can leverage a new scientific perspective.  However, I’m a Communications master’s holder with a top prior performance in math, but without a science degree.  So, my views may die at the grave unless there is a forum to report them.  And that’s where a wiki-original comes into play.

How many original ideas have been formulated by people in the “wrong” department or parts of the world without access to education or with ideas that go against the grain of assumptions that bind and limit what is construed as knowledge? And if we are nodding our heads in agreement, then we may have a calling to enter a philosophy department or philosophy minor degree.  However, Athabasca doesn’t appear to have a philosophy course on epistemology, which studies what makes “knowledge” justified instead of mere opinion.  It’s the study of what constitutes knowledge, which I’m challenging in this article.

We can barely get a rocket into outer space without fear of malfunction, never mind a ship traversing the edges of the universe or, God forbid, entering a new dimension.  Those are limitations of our present knowledge.  That may indicate scientific knowledge has its limitations.  I could go on for days about the limitations of qualitative research and its emphasis on victim versus oppressor theories as opposed to unbiased, depoliticized unity models, which, to me, are the ideal, and the ideal should always be sought if the goal is actual progress.

We can stretch the limits of the walls of academia by introducing a wiki-original platform or entertaining original research.  But that will make us lone rebels in an entrenched system founded on either status quo, precedent, or vested interests that get realized with financial backing.  It’s difficult for an individual to introduce a radically new concept, even if it’s as observable to everyone as the sun and the moon.  That’s why I present the idea of wiki-original, which could launch a whole new world of possibilities if managed wisely, such as through an open-source platform not purchasable by vested interests nor subjected to politicized censorship.  The potential impact of such a platform is immense.  You’ve got my permission to steal all of my ideas, as my vision is for the ivory tower to allow piles of knowledge outside its moat.

Oh, and after I wrote the above article, I came up with the best conclusion.  Here it is: The Wiki-original would have a mandatory field.  It would require everyone who puts forth their theory to answer the following question.  But first, as background, in academia, students are challenged to answer the “so what?” question concerning their research.  In other words, why does this research matter? Who does it help? How does it benefit others in the bigger picture? So, the Wiki-original would ask the following question: how does the theory contribute to or advance unconditional love, not just for a particular community or sector, but for everyone, with no one harmed and no exceptions? The better the Wikipedia post answers this question, the more points and, thus, prominence it acquires.