Posts tagged wikipedia
7.1 Extraterrestrial life is rare or non-existent
7.2 No other intelligent species have arisen
7.3 Intelligent alien species lack advanced technology
7.4 Water world hypothesis<br/> 7.5 It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself
7.6 It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others
7.7 Periodic extinction by natural events
7.8 Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time
7.9 Lack of resources to spread physically throughout the galaxy
7.10 Lack of desire to live on planets
7.11 It is cheaper to transfer information for exploration
7.12 Human beings have not existed long enough
7.13 We are not listening properly
7.14 Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time
7.15 They tend to isolate themselves
7.16 Colonization is not the norm
7.17 Outcomes between all and nothing
7.18 They are too alien
7.19 Everyone is listening but no one is transmitting
7.20 Earth is deliberately not contacted
7.21 Earth is purposely isolated (planetarium hypothesis)
7.22 It is dangerous to communicate
7.23 They are here unacknowledged
( Found poetry via Fermi’s Paradox and WIkipedia)
“In Greek mythology, Erebus /ˈɛrɪbəs, -əb-/, also Erebos (Ancient Greek: Ἔρεβος, Érebos, “deep darkness, shadow” or “covered”), was often conceived as a primordial deity, representing the personification of darkness; for instance, Hesiod’s Theogony identifies him as one of the first five beings in existence, born of Chaos.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erebus
Elemental composition of the Human Body
I’ve spent many years referencing Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases whenever I have a hunch that a certain type of thinking is an official bias but I can’t recall the name or details. It’s been an invaluable reference for helping me identify the hidden flaws in my own thinking. Nothing else I’ve come across seems to be both as comprehensive and as succinct.
However, honestly, the Wikipedia page is a bit of a tangled mess. Despite trying to absorb the information of this page many times over the years, very little of it seems to stick. I often scan it and feel like I’m not able to find the bias I’m looking for, and then quickly forget what I’ve learned. I think this has to do with how the page has organically evolved over the years. Today, it groups 175 biases into vague categories (decision-making biases, social biases, memory errors, etc) that don’t really feel mutually exclusive to me, and then lists them alphabetically within categories. There are duplicates a-plenty, and many similar biases with different names, scattered willy-nilly.
I’ve taken some time over the last four weeks (I’m on paternity leave) to try to more deeply absorb and understand this list, and to try to come up with a simpler, clearer organizing structure to hang these biases off of.
https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.4ksyv6992
List of fictional colors
via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_colors
Because of the nature of onomatopoeia, there are many words which show a similar pronunciation in the languages of the world.
via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias
Many on the listserv are framing Angola’s Wikipedia pirates as bad actors who need to be dealt with in some way so that more responsible editors aren’t punished for their actions. This line of thinking inherently assumes that what Angola’s pirates are doing is bad for Wikipedia and that they must be assimilated to the already regulated norms of Wikipedia’s community. If the developing world wants to use our internet, they must play by our rules, the thinking goes. But people in developing countries have always had to be more creative than those for whom access to information has always been a given. A 20-year-old developer in Paraguay found a vulnerability in Facebook Messenger that allowed people to use Free Basics to tunnel through to the “real” internet. Legal questions aside (Angola has more lax copyright laws than much of the world), Angola’s pirates are furthering Wikipedia’s mission of spreading information in a real and substantial way.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-zero-facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating
Void pantographs work by exploiting the limitations and features of copying equipment. A scanner or photocopier will act as a low-pass filter on the original image, blurring edges slightly. It will also not be perfectly aligned with the directions of the document, causing aliasing. Features smaller than the resolution will also not be reproduced. In addition, human vision is sensitive to luminance contrast ratio. This means that if a grey region consists of a grid of very small dark dots the filtering will produce a lighter grey, while a region of larger dots will be affected differently (“big-dot-little-dot”). This makes it possible to see a pattern that previously was invisible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_pantograph
This list pertains to current, widely held, erroneous ideas and beliefs about notable topics which have been reported by reliable sources. Each has been discussed in published literature, as has its topic area and the facts concerning it. Note that the statements which follow are corrections based on known facts; the misconceptions themselves are referred to rather than stated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a ship with no living crew aboard; it may be a ghostly vessel in folklore or fiction, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a real derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste. The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, such as the Clemenceau (R 98).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_ships
Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks.jpg (922×852) (via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks.jpg)
WhereAreTheBots-1024x654.png (via http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/pasta-and-vinegar/2012/04/16/bot-activity-on-wikipedia-entries-about-global-warming/)
