Arlo,
Arlo, More grist for your mill: There is a chess site called Tactics Trainer (at chess.com). It presents you with rated, timed tactics problems. You are rated on the basis of how quickly you solve the problems and how highly rated the problems are and the problems are rated on how quickly they are solved and the ratings of the people who solved them. No person is involved. Ok. So all of that is clear, and above board. Now, each problem has a puzzle has a comment space, and people use it to boast or tear their hair, depending on how well they did. But, for almost every problem, there is somebody who comments - with a straight face - that a given problem's rating "should" be higher or later. People are desperate to believe that somebody is in charge. Nick From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arlo Barnes Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 10:54 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Separate Vacations This Summer I am rapidly becoming envious of a "generation" (there I said it) who will have the option of saying "everything I know, I learned from XKCD". I'm already guilty of imagining that "everything I know, I learned from Wikipedia". Wikipedia having it's own feeling of being self-generating. Well, it always feels convenient to obtain a consistent body of knowledge from a single source, but as we have (I think) discussed before, learning widely and in a varied manner gives you at least the best sense for how information flows through society, if not an education; and any monolithic source doubtless has it's roots in a similarly variegated assortment of origins. This is why teachers always tell you to read the sources on Wikipedia immediately after you have read the article, a rare piece of good advice seldom followed. Just today on the radio, I heard a story about an author finding the existence of a "women's" subcategory under the "novels" category without an accompanying "men's" subcategory sexist (a quick Google search turns up little because searches with 'Wikipedia' included turn up Wikipedia articles foremost). Basing my judgement only on what I heard in the news report, it sounded like she was quite right about it being sexist, but her subsequent action, threatening to sue Wikipedia, confused me. Why not just reorganise the category and scold the editor who first organised it that way? Do people not understand where stuff on Wikipedia comes from? Perhaps this is another case of assuming a single origin when in fact the origins are myriad - all the editors and the notable external sources they cite. Though one could make the argument that the author was merely trying to create a wider awareness of how we act when constructing public information resources by bringing the attention of the world to a small case study, but in my opinion it sours the public perception of her issue with the situation as pedantic. I also appreciate the comparison made here between FRIAM and "the Aerican Empire", though I have no idea what said Empire might be other than a virtual/game world created by a combination of individual genius and the combined imagination of thousands of internet-mediated game play or storytelling. I should have linked it. The site <http://AericanEmpire.com> explains it and here <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aerican> is the mailing list. I presume you didn't Google it, in which case you made a spot-on guess. Less roleplay than community discussion, though. -Arlo James Barnes
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