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I don't know why, but I now expect every piece of world knowledge to be accessible, translatable and archived for near instant reference.I search for something and expect it to be there ready to be placed and used. (My case, A blurry remembrance of Eric Heath's flying toilet cartoons)
My logic tells
the previous desire is insane, there is no way the internet contains all known knowledge, a large proportion of people, myself included, are too lazy or don't give time.
But it would be nicely didactic to know a ball park percentage.
Annual Increase in Human Knowledge
Related [pocmloc, Dec 07 2020]
http://hmpg.net/
[pocmloc, Dec 09 2020]
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Could also be a points score for how well indexed the information is. I'm finding more and more interesting documents online which however are not properly tagged or described even at a general level, and so cannot be found by searching, only by browsing. For example I was recently trying to find an 18th century individual, and though I did get access to online scans from microfilm of parish records, they were written in scratchy near-illegible handwriting and not indexed or linked more generally than "Frogville parish records (1622-1904) page 2,597". I gave up at that point. |
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There could be a meta-discussion about whether all the information in those records is "known"; it certainly exists as data but then so does all of the fossils still buried in the ground, they exist as data but they are not currently known until they are dug up. And then if you take that further, the location, size, shape and weight of every grain of sand exists as data but is not known until each one is measured and described. So the logical conclusion of this is that 100% of the world's knowledge is online, since anything that is not online or accessible through online catalogues, is not really known, only potentially known. |
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//since anything that is not online... is not really
known//
Every library, university, museum (and other places too)
would take issue with that.
I would say the % of knowledge on-line is quite small
(although Google Books et al. are doing a good job);
however the % of cat photos and selfies would be
approaching 100%. |
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Sometimes ‘knowing’ something isn’t enough. You need the skills
and experience to be able to see the essential item of knowledge
from the mass of known facts. For example, in a game of chess, all
knowledge about the distribution of pieces on the chessboard and
their possible moves which is known to one player is also known to
the other and yet, of course, players fail to see things they should
see. |
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Also you can consider if the things in the library or museum are truly "known". For example, I doubt that any living human knows the varieties of cherry and plum trees that Keane FitzGerald cut the bark of in the late 1750s as part of his "Experiments on Checking the Too Luxuriant Growth of Fruit-Trees". Yet the specific varieties are given in his paper which is on Jstor and can be found by anyone with an internet connection in 30 seconds or so I guess. Is this information part of Human Knowledge or not? |
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Also consider the contents of peoples heads. I know which part of me is uncomfortably hot from being too close to the fire, but that information is not online and nor is it in a museum or library unfortunately. How do we quantify that as part of this proposed metric? |
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I think I'm limiting knowledge to publicized knowledge.Knowledge already in or has right to be in the public's light. Elon's Neuralink will eventually be both ways but it will be a personal choice of publishing. |
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I suppose all institutions or holders of Public records could give their percentage of completed. Which could be globally summed. And right, a metric for referencing is a smart inclusion. The Cartoon I was remembering would have been published in a morning paper or cartoon compendium. |
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[hippo] 'knowing' the future from logic rules which predict 100% but in reality have too many possibilities to calculate is a different type of pattern guessing knowledge. |
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A problem with knowledge is that knowledge is held as a compressed version. A picture is poor slice of reality. Getting facts out that were in the reality but not recorded, not publicized, is impossible. Logic may infer to infill facts but the factual connection has to be there. |
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Right but then you include all archaeological artefacts as yet undiscovered, since they were undoubtably at their point of creation part of human knowledge. |
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Unknown knowledge until dug up, brought into the public light. |
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Although, the artifacts could be inferred from frescos, if depicted. Achaeologists still have to publish. A fresco freshly documented by the discovery team is still not public. |
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OK but I'm still not getting how you define "published" so as to exclude a mural that was painted on a wall in ancient Rome 2000 years ago and therefore publicly visible until it was buried in a building collapse, from the description of fruit tree varieties published in an obscure technical paper 250 years ago and therefore publicly visible until it was buried in an archive and forgotten about. |
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And that is also a narrow definition of "knowledge", I am sure there is a lot of widely-shared knowledge that is not written down, especially to do with craft skills - embedded knowledge if you like - or written in ways that are limited circulation, such as internal company papers, or indeed interim archaeological discussion papers that are circulated to colleagues. |
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Oh dear I am getting too pedantic again. I think this is a great idea but as usual I am more interested in the raggedy edges where it all falls apart. |
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The solution surely is (as usual) to include error margins on the final quoted figure. We can start with a figure of (50±50)% and gradually refine it from there. |
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If the datum is inaccessible or actively hidden how can the public share in that knowledge? |
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If the Internet's resolution of that obscure knowledge is of a low percentage and the public want that mode of knowledge, I'm sure people will work on new and interesting internet representations to raise the percentage to 100%. Then the percentage changes and becomes whether all public examples of that mode of knowledge have been captured. |
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Disappointed. I thought this was going to be a browser add-on that displays the cumulative percentage of the internet that you have browsed so far. I feel like I am getting close to finishing the game but there are a few hidden areas & easter eggs that I may have missed out on. It would be nice to know how much more I still need to find. |
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Wait, we now have currently 2, count them 2, Dr.s in the
house. The original, and the newer. I have missed you greatly
Dr.B. Come back and play more often if you can. Your calm
and wise comments are always a good thing. |
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Thank you blissy. Now I am all embarrassed! <blushes>
I haven't been away. I check in on the 'bakery regularly. I just haven't commented much as most of my creative energy has been going into running my D&D campaign! |
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//running my D&D campaign// ooh, sounds exciting - I
ran a very short campaign for my (7 year old) kids
the other day - it didn't amount to much more than
rolling dice to off zombies, but they kind of got the
idea for 5 minutes before dashing off to pretend to
be rampaging zombies themselves. I might try again in
a year or few, Focus is not the 7-year-old's friend.
But it also meant I had an excuse to paint up some
miniatures, something I'd not done for a very long
time. |
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Yep. So much more fun than living in the real world. I am always available to talk D&D if you feel the need. |
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