econ

After crawling out of the primordial ooze we send explorers in all directions. (Usually groups) As they get further from the source they spread out thinner. Someone will have to find the gaps eventually and they might even find things close to the source. If you add dimensions of exploration they might travel far leaving many large gaps back home.

I love the effort trying to squeeze wine from a mountain. I wonder if the generalisation also remedies unpopular topics as they are now reduced to simple data points. It should be fine to map forbidden grounds as long as you don't go there.

There is a difference between paying and forcing someone to do it. The later might kill you.

Linking to something from the wiki is considered irrelevant as it doesn't prove anything.

If an editor is an expert in a field and you can verify it it would be most useful to the encyclopedia to treat them as such. This is not actually a special privilege but how people normally do things.

I can gather citations and glue them into an article but someone with actual expertise knows which parts are important, what isn't and what is missing.

Wikimedia is of course free to have an encyclopedia project to entertain children with to much time on their hands but they will continue to lose good editors. You can't have both.

If you disarm the man before throwing him into the alligator pit he won't survive but it will be great for the alligators.

An example would be a minority view on something. Even experts may strongly disagree if it should be included.

Editors are still not allowed to have credentials. The absurd argument is that credentials can never be validated.

I don't know how scientific journals manage to exist but technically it could be as simple as a link to the user page on the university professors profile page.

If the source doesn't agree with my world view you may not use it.

My favorite version is when topics are stuck decades ago and newer sources are rejected as an attempt to make the topic look real

More generally, if there are two incompatible versions of an article to be had and editors can't write a neutral article (could have various reasons) initially the largest group "wins" which may be overruled by so called established editors which at times works out even worse. If the topic is actively propagandized or insulting to one or more people the thing may drag out for years.

If you can ban one thing just for easier taxation there should be many other things that could also be banned for the same purpose.

You could ban Apple pie and extract more tax from the slaves.

For paper gold you don't even need gold.

And then "ideas are cheap" becomes the dumbest thing. I always knew people would laugh at us 1000 years from now just not why.

When it fundamentally changes? It's hard to imagine something else while living in this. The Chinese formula might be different enough since so few in the west can even superficially understand what they are doing. Over there wealth and power are trying to be two separate things.

I believe it is the ratio of people who collectively do constructive things vs those who don't. Constructive deeds require things like vision, planning, curiosity, knowledge, experience, networking, tools, resources and empathy too

People who lack enough of those req will actively get in the way.

Things like building a house for little Jimmy in it self isn't hard at all. You can also give him some [digital] textbooks, answer his questions and create a position as an apprentice wizard. There is nothing hard about doing that.

Sure, some people will try to get in the way but one unmotivated saboteur vs an army of millions isn't going to change anything.

Sometimes constructive is to preserve and protect. Don't argue with those trying to stop sensible efforts and don't pay them to get out of the way. You put them in cages or otherwise ruin their everything until they get out of the way.

But if you fail to do that and their numbers grow there is no alternative but to wait until they've destroyed enough of the good stuff for them to become miserable enough to change sides. It might take a thousand years but we will build a new glorious civilization and it will sit there waiting for people to stop caring again.

We are of course far over that hill already but destroying everything takes quite a bit of time.

Plenty of people pay the bills with work they hate doing.

I had visions of large automated warehouses full of chemical and biological components hooked up to science machines to do everything from mixing, boiling and printing to spectrograph and robotic assembly. Smart computers and humans would pick the experiments to brute force with exact billing.

I had a rather obese 50 year old coworker once who ate quite frequently. After stuffing his face he would immediately brush his teeth (no toothpaste), chewing the last bite by the sink with the brush in his hand. His teeth were absolutely perfect. Never visited a dentist. He said it wasn't as good as cleaning with some kind of tree. In his home country/Village a lot of people did it like that but they also had people who cleaned their teeth less frequently. The later all lost their teeth as they aged. No exceptions. He held up a kiwi, acid and sugar what do you think will happen?

I also know a guy who eats carrots all day every day. He is 80 something. Most of his teeth are still there and bright white.

Could still be genetic or considered anecdotal but to them it is completely obvious.