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The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

christianheilmann.com

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Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#91

Post by mistermann »

Planktonne wrote: post #28
emptyfile wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so infuriated by your link I'm at a loss for words. EDIT: This is an UNIVERSITY newspaper? I thought it would be some kind of british tabloid or something... depressing

The article makes an important point. Astrology isn't meaningful or rational. However, the level of contempt shown for people who are believers in astrology is wildly out of proportion. There are lots of equally dumb things that don't get the same level of vitriol. It's valid to dismiss astrology, but that doesn't mean that all dismissal of astrology is based on high-minded scientific ideals. A lot of it is based on…

It seems to me that epistemically indeterminate ideas (astrology, religion, health (viruses), politics, etc) do something strange to the human mind. It's hard to miss what they do to the minds of believers, but it's very easy to overlook what they do to the minds of non-believers. I wonder if this has something to do with the increase in polarization among the public, where some people cling ever harder to religion, while other people increasingly cling to science. The mind seems to seek "certainty" (correct or otherwise) first and foremost, but epistemic soundness shows up much further down the list, if at all.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#92

Post by ReactiveJelly »

VHRanger wrote: post #90
grumbel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The irony here is that Youtube videos from ten years ago are still alive and well. As Youtube makes a much better places for publishing and archiving content than the rest of the Web. With Youtube you don't have to worry about URLs changing or domain names expiring or anything like that. You just publish your video once, get a unique video-id and don't have to worry abo…

> The irony here is that Youtube videos from ten years ago are still alive and well. They're not, though. Because Youtube re-encodes videos every couple of years, with new "better" lossy compression algorithms. And each time the videos get successively worse. Watching a 2008 Youtube video will not only look grainy because it's 360p, but it'll look actively *worse* than it did in 2008 because of all the lossy compress…

YouTube has definitely kept the original videos for as long as I can remember, so any transcodes you see are only one generation after the original (plus maybe one more for if they didn't launch with this feature)

And yes the new codecs really are better. Same quality at lower bitrate.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#93

Post by trinsic2 »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #6

IMO the worst side effect of current web of knowledge is what I'd call the illusion of knowledge. When it was more difficult to access and publish information, that imposed a much higher bar on what was being consumed. These days, people watch a 10-minute YouTube video or read a reddit comment or twitter thread and believe (perhaps unconsciously) that makes them knowledgeable in said topic. They will then, in an abso…

Id say it's gone the other way too. Expert opinion echo chambers are rampant on the internet preventing paradigm shifts in science.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#94

Post by denton-scratch »

nonameking2026 wrote: post #24

Interesting article until: "Use snopes.com to check if the shocking thing you just read is real." Mind baffling that this article could end with this.

Well, if you read something surprising, then you should probably check it somewhere, unless it's trivial. Snopes might be a reasonable first check.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#95

Post by seydor »

> The web we have these days is in a sorry state

The web is one of humanities greatest inventions, right up there with Gutenberg or even more. It's a shame that people focus on politics and miss the rest of the web. There are two webs, one is a medium of mass manipulation, just like all media before it, the other is the library of all human knowledge, ever, everywhere.

The printing press precipitated major societal changes, but the internet has yet to. We still follow the rules set 400 years ago, voting some humans to rule us every 4 years, and have not questioned the system under the current situation , where everyone can create and access information everywhere, instantly. The internet will take us to new politics , we just have to invent it.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#96

Post by denton-scratch »

bee_rider wrote: post #13
Lammy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Historically, I bet you could find trends based on which seasons certain developmental landmarks were hit. I'm sure it isn't a coincidence that Leos are attributed all the heroic traits, when they are mostly gestating in the Summer, and get their first couple months of life in the Fall harvest season. Nowadays I guess it would line up to school seasons. If you are born in August your parents can arrange for you to be…

> when they are mostly gestating in the Summer

Leos gestate throughout the year, depending on where they are located. Perhaps that remark was US-centric?

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#97

Post by [deleted] »

ricardobeat wrote: post #11
nicbou wrote: post #5

It has never been easier to share knowledge, and thus there has never been a greater time to be curious. Encyclopaedia Britannica is still there, and it's great . But there's also an army of content creators are there to teach you just about anything. If one source doesn't do it, you have more to choose from. Yesterday, I read an article about North Africa that mentioned in passing Qaddafi's underground river. A few…

I’m not sure you and the author are talking about the same thing. He mentions the fact you can’t even read the news from 10 years ago, the content has simply disappeared. No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The problem is not “everything, everywhere” or a lack of filters but the extreme commercialization of all content available, closed networks, the short life of URLs…

[deleted]

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#98

Post by bee_rider »

denton-scratch wrote: post #96
bee_rider wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, I bet you could find trends based on which seasons certain developmental landmarks were hit. I'm sure it isn't a coincidence that Leos are attributed all the heroic traits, when they are mostly gestating in the Summer, and get their first couple months of life in the Fall harvest season. Nowadays I guess it would line up to school seasons. If you are born in August your parents can arrange for you to be…

> when they are mostly gestating in the Summer Leos gestate throughout the year, depending on where they are located. Perhaps that remark was US-centric?

Wouldn't it be northern-hemisphere-centric? Which makes sense -- I mean, there isn't like a uniform standard for astological signs. Even within the northern hemisphere there are different labels. The trend I'd look for is an association between strength and being born near the beginning of the local harvest season, or so. But this stuff is all ad-hoc folk observations and the practitioners are motivated to add extra history, to give it the appearance of "ancient wisdom." So I'm not motivated enough to gather the data to back it up, haha.

Edit: It also would be the case, I guess, that summers being generally pleasant-ish would be regional, right? Like some hotter regions can have pretty lean summers I think.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#99

Post by llaolleh »

Part of why the web is shit is low barrier to entry. More often than not, if you read classics or older books, it's information dense. Every prose and sentence constructed had some economy baked in.

Now everyone and their mom, as well as bots and marketers,can spam right on over.

We either need a search portal with aligned incentives, or perhaps a new internet with none of this crap.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#100

Post by mikewarot »

arcbyte wrote: post #88
mikewarot wrote: post #87

If we all had the Memex that Vannevar Bush proposed[1,1*], many of the losses we all discuss in these threads may have been avoided. We now have massive local storage, and should be able to freely share data by hosting our own stuff on our own machines. We could have done what the editor of the magazine implored us to do: "As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordin…

Is it ironic that I can read the article you posted because it's behind a paywall?

I was lazy... thanks for prodding me to do better.
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