Data and the Liar’s Paradox by Jim Harris.
Jim writes:
“This statement is a lie.”
That is an example of what is known in philosophy and logic as the Liar’s Paradox because if “this statement is a lie” is true, then the statement is false, which would in turn mean that it’s actually true, but this would mean that it’s false, and so on in an infinite, and paradoxical, loop of simultaneous truth and falsehood.
I have never been a fan of the data management concept known as the Single Version of the Truth, and I often quote Bob Kotch, via Tom Redman’s excellent book, Data Driven: “For all important data, there are too many uses, too many viewpoints, and too much nuance for a single version to have any hope of success. This does not imply malfeasance on anyone’s part; it is simply a fact of life. Getting everyone to work from a Single Version of the Truth may be a noble goal, but it is better to call this the One Lie Strategy than anything resembling truth.”
More business/data quality reading.
Imagine my chagrin after years of studying literary criticism in graduate seminary classes (don’t ask, its a long and boring story) to discover that business types already know “truth” is a relative thing.
What does that mean for topic maps?
I would argue with careful design we can capture several points of view, using a point of view as our vantage point.
As opposed to strategies that can only capture a single point of view, their own.
Capturing multiple viewpoints will be a hot topic when “big data” starts to hit the “big fan.”