Wikenigma – an encyclopedia of scientific questions with no known answers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34181165 - Dec 2022 (11 comments)
Wikenigma is an encyclopedia for topics with unknown answers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32210258 - July 2022 (72 comments)
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
It's a bit of a lottery which instance of a submission ends up 'winning' a frontpage position. The intention is to build some sort of aggregation mechanism that will involve karma sharing in the future. In the meantime, I guess it does at least even out in the long run if one keeps submitting articles (and thanks for doing that!)
Every time I see a bird up close I’m struck by how weird they are, but I didn’t realise they were quite so mysterious.
https://wikenigma.org.uk/content/computer_science/the_ravell...
(The URL really says "ravelling" and not "travelling". Maybe this article was hastily added)
> In 2002, during a press briefing about the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld famously divided information into four categories: known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns. These distinctions became the basis for the Rumsfeld Matrix, a decision-making framework that maps and evaluates the various degrees of certainty and uncertainty.
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns
It is difficult for anyone in any scientific field to know where the big knowledge gaps are. Yet I can plausibly imagine a method whereby LLMs could identify research gaps, particularly when supported by scientists in the field.
In a near world where human scientists and AI collaborate much more closely on semiautomated scientific knowledge production, finding and filling knowledge gaps might be an approach for guiding work.
take all knowledge of known things and imagine its a circle, the radius is touching known unknowns.
as known grows, the radius expands and touches more unknowns.
i don't think that will ever end.
I wonder if this might cause the perception coined by 'idiocracy', that people keep being 'dumber'. actually they know relatively the same but its better understood that its really not a lot thats known?
I think I need classes on Topology and Knots.
But I'm not super clear why it's a site of its own, rather than a list on Wikipedia?
Surely it's a list as serious as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
Or is there something less objective about it?
That Wikenigma aims to be about “known unknowns” and igniting curiosity. While Wikipedia is about gathering knowledge (“known knowns”). Possibly.
https://wikenigma.org.uk/curators_rationale
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
Although Wikipedia also has articles covering known unknowns.
I guess a reason for having Wilenigma is that it’s a place you can go and explore many different known unknowns without getting sucked into articles about known knowns. Possibly.
For example, both Wikenigma and Wikipedia have features for jumping to a random article. If you are looking specifically for known unknowns, it would be much better to use the link for random article on Wikenigma than on Wikipedia.
I am reminded of an animation I one time saw about a guy that was collecting questions. I can’t find it now, but if anyone knows which one I’m thinking of, please link it. I think watching that short animation illustrates a similar kind of idea to what seems to be the idea behind Wikenigma.
Of course both of these principles aren't strongly supported by evidence. They are still usually assumed because they keep cosmology sane and verifiable.
My only criticism I guess would be that this is unfalsifiable, so for the time being it's more productive to see if there's any possibility to explain that within the observable universe.
