belief clusters - different groups with a lot in common

two silly things to mention first. in the previous blog, i said 'either i'm getting hacked, or google is messed up.' i meant 'inclusive OR.' i'm always getting hacked. it might be more annoying, intrusive, bothersome, or interfering than usual today. but with regard to this specific problem, either the hacking or google itself is more relevant as the cause.

second, i thought harry potter was today. it's not, it's july 15. first, i thought it was june 1, because i knew it was a summer month beginning with J. but it was the wrong J month. so i decided it must be july 1st. wrong again. i keep getting disappointed. it's ironic because i don't even expect the movie to be all that miraculous, just entertaining.

okay, about belief clusters. i 'invented' the idea of belief clusters recently, after seeing 'tag clusters' on flickr. i liked the tag clusters - they were pretty good at making tags more meaningful and more useful.

i was annoyed by some tag spammers whose tags were so general and all-inclusive that they seemed to have nothing to do with the pictures - for instance, someone was taking pictures of architecture and tagging it 'people' for dozens and dozens of photos that i had to scroll through (on dialup, waiting for all my search results to load), because architecture is something which is created by people, so it's vaguely connected. the tag was used in a very general, abstract way.

technically, EVERYTHING in the universe is connected to everything else, and therefore, i could take a picture of an apple, and tag it 'people,' because people grow and pick and sell apples; or i could take a picture of a black line on a white background and tag it 'faces,' because faces are where our eyes are located, and our eyes are the sensory organ used for seeing black lines on white backgrounds. you get the idea. no matter how irrelevant, you can argue that in some extremely distant, abstract way, the tag describes this photo.

tag clusters helped with that problem. you don't think of something as having only one meaningful tag. it will have a bunch of meaningful tags associated with it, which makes it more likely that this is what you're looking for. 'people,' 'children,' 'faces' clustered together might give you better results.

anyway, i thought of 'belief clusters.' after i thought of it, i looked it up, and this idea already exists. other people are talking about belief clusters.

i was thinking about this because i was wondering which religion, or which group of people, i would join. if i think of joining any kind of group, i notice that there are some beliefs i like, and other ones i don't. if a particular belief (or practice, behavior, etc) is important enough to me, i won't join that group if they don't have it or if they're doing it wrong.

i have noticed that, on the internet, there are belief clusters where certain groups of beliefs tend to be associated with each other. if you start reading a page about one particular belief, you might click on relevant links to similar, associated beliefs. for instance, if you read about homeschooling your children, you might also go to links about self-reliant homestead living, gun ownership rights, or links about the economic depression/recession.

but if you are reading a page about homeschooling, you're not likely to find links to other pages talking about how wonderful our education system is, or links about the importance of the teachers' union, or links asking for donations to your local school system. these things would seem contradictory.

but not necessarily, though. sometimes two beliefs seem to contradict, but the contradictory parts of it are viewed as unimportant, or not central, to the person holding the belief. this was written about by some of the other authors talking about belief clusters. i don't recall which web page it was on, but i wrote down the names of a couple authors, t.f. green and m. rokeach, who were doing some kind of research.

so i was imagining that a group would list its belief categories, and you could see if you have a lot in common with them, even if a few particular beliefs are different or missing. i have a lot in common with the environmentalists, except that i've been very influenced by author julian simon, so i disagree with them about a few important things. but with everything else, i'm similar to them.

sometimes our beliefs and attitudes are unconscious, but still important, and you can't always articulate or explain what the problem is. that happens when different cultures talk to each other. one person might talk slowly, the other quickly; one person might think it's okay to arrive an hour late for an appointment, while the other thinks that five minutes late is too late, and so on.

if you ask, 'why won't you join this group?' and find that some key belief is missing, is actively opposed, or is there but it's not quite right, you can learn how important that thing is, versus what someone might be willing to sacrifice or disagree about, if it's something unimportant or not central.

in order to accomplish some goals, you can work with people who differ with you on less important or less relevant beliefs. this is helpful, for instance, with small political parties that don't have much power, and have a few minor differences, but a lot in common. it's like an alliance.

i am thinking about these things because i would like to build an intentional community. conflicts are very important if large amounts of money are involved (like buying land), so an intentional community takes a lot of planning in advance, and clear communication to make sure everybody understands what they will be doing.