I ended up making a site that will let people submit facts. They will be fact checked by my till I have the filtering completed. Please check it out and let me know what yall think. It was made to be extensible
The Y2K issue was real, but a lot of people spent a lot of effort to fix it before it became a problem. The dire warnings were exaggerated, it was never going to end the world, but the problem really did exist and it really could have led to some pretty serious issues especially with financial institutions.
It’s kind of a fun idea, but as everyone has pointed out: every school is different, even of there is some centralized board of education, some times teachers just say dumb shit.
Also, when does a fact become a fact? Like, dinosaurs had feathers. It was theorized, then debated, then clarified, and now there are some reasonable consensus about it, but theropauds probably still aren’t presented as having feathers in some books. And what teachers know this?
Or you get common misconceptions that were never facts. Like you only use 10% of your brain. I don’t think science ever said that, but man the idea is/was really common.
There are also plenty of things in science that are taught that are technically incorrect, but give you a working model that you can build on later. The atomic model being a rather typical example.
Oh. Yeah. That’s a good point. When I taught a dead language, I would tell my students that all grammars lie to you, but some of the lies are useful.
The Wittgensteinian Ladder. The pedagogical expedient misinformation.
So many would say “Pluto” and I would cry.
Who wants to check the dictionary definitions that changed over time?
Anyone knows the changes to the definition of the “vaccine” in the past 4-5 years?
Exactly!
I would literally be irate at some of them
You’re such a Nimrod.
ITT: People misinterpreting the idea as “facts that your school taught wrong”, when it’s really saying, “things that have changed since you went to school” (either through a change in definition or by new research).
E.g. If you went to school before the early 2000’s, you were taught that Pluto is a planet, while that is no longer true since it was recategorized in 2006.
This is the wrong aporoach.
You should build a mockup site, use it to raise 2M$ for the startup behind it you just created arguing you’re about to collect personal data about the age, education level and place, curiosity, etc. with overinflated numbers on their real values.
Then you hire a bench of students, or better: launch a competition for the best “fact you were told that turned out wrong” with a 1k$ prize that you eventually give to some biz angel’s investrent adviser’s child.
Once data are acquired, claim the company is now worth 10M$ and raise that much in a new round.
Finally, sell the company for 20M$ either to a tech company that will enshitify, paywall and crater it.
You still don’t have your website, but now you’re rich and you no longer care about these things.
Everyones first friend, Tom had the right idea. Check-in and cash-out, how much do you really need to live a happy fulfilling life? He’s chilling on a tropical beach taking pictures of sunsets right now with no intention of going back to his old career.
The dumbest shit I’ve heard throughout my year was at uni, from a physics professor, no less. He, with a straight face, was telling us that highlanders live longer because oxygen content is lower at high altitudes, and since oxygen is an oxidant, it makes people corrode away(??) faster and causes aging.
The first two paragraphs are definitely wild, but I guess you’ve sorta nerd sniped me with the third paragraph.
It sounds like the professor was talking about the concept of work, in a physics sense. In this sense, work being done on an object is effectively just the difference in energy of that object between a start and end point. When you lift an object, it gains gravitational potential energy due to being higher up (it has farther to fall). If you lift it by the same amount, the amount of energy it gains is the same regardless of whether you do it quickly, slowly, or walk around the room and end up back in the same spot. The end result for the object is the same, so the amount of work done on it is considered to be the same. Obviously, in a common sense, some require more exertion than others–that’s just not part of what’s considered to be work on the object in that sense.
My physics professor discussed the difference between “work” in the physics sense and “work” in the common sense. As best I can recall (it’s been years now), his demonstration was basically that he held something out at arm’s length and said something like “it’s not moving and not gaining any or losing any potential energy, so as far as physics is concerned, no work is being done on it. But the muscles in my arm certainly don’t feel that way!” In both cases, you’re actively exerting a force to counter the force of gravity, with the end result being that the object doesn’t move, and so its energy stays the same. Thus, no work is done on that object as far as physics is concerned.
I’m not sure this extends to planking, though–your body is the object, in that case, and you’re expending chemical energy to maintain that position. It’s all a matter of what you include in the analysis, I guess.
You’ve had a great prof! Mine unfortunately wasn’t as good and just handed me the book and asked how much energy it would take to lift it. Myself, thinking of muscles as linear motors rather than solid structures, said something along the lines of: “Depends on how fast you want me to do it. Just holding it I have to exert something like 10 watts, give or take”, and he went absolutely wild, calling me names and saying that I’m dumb for even asking it, implying that it takes no energy to hold things, hence the plank challenge. Gotta admit, though, that I might have missed the topic of that particular lecture as I wasn’t paying as much attention to it as I was about writing everything down with perfect formatting in LaTeX, hoping to catch up before the exams… Which got me in trouble with another prof who denied me from even taking the exam because she thought I was playing games during her lectures (I was the only student who brought a laptop), and to get to her I had to deal with a yet another prof who thought I was an outlaw biker because she saw me wearing a leather jacket, and tried to humiliate me in front of the board. Still a step up from a different uni that had the audacity to post a price-list for the grades on the door to exam room… One is the top university in my home region and second is mid-tier in the capital, so this is basically the sad state of academia in Russia, and, by certain extent, CIS countries. Speaking of which, do you happen to know any good (and preferably free) online courses on maths and physics? I know about khan academy, but it’s a bit hard for me to chew through, and 3blue1brown who’s been absolutely invaluable in clearing some of the crucial concepts I needed both for work and for learning stuff in general. Even though I’m fairly well off without it, I’d like to someday figure out what’s the deal with quantum computing is, and not just that “a qubit is both 1 and 0 at the same time” which doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.
I was lucky to have very good professors through most of university (in the US). It makes a huge difference in the experience. I’m sorry you had to deal with all of that, it sounds frustrating as can be. Teachers at any level should be encouraging and helpful, never condescending. I’ve heard plenty of stories about professors that pretty much power trip over it and use it as a chance to talk down to others, though. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of them in your area!
Unfortunately I’m not really familiar with the online education space. Khan Academy was what came to mind for me, but mostly only because I’ve heard it mentioned by others quite a bit. I don’t have any personal experience with it or any other sites, so I can’t really recommend any specific one to you. I wish you the best of luck in your future education endeavors, though!
I’m also not really any more familiar with quantum computers than you are either. I do remember quantum mechanics being discussed a tiny bit in university, but it was never a focus in any of my classes. It wasn’t quantum computers specifically but I recall it being rather focused on statistics; the most specific thing I can remember being probability plots of where a particle might be at any given time (including the possibility that it might tunnel through its container). I never quite grasped it myself, either, but it was never an important part of my coursework so I never really had to.
Just searched for Chudinism and found nothing. Typo? I’m really interested in that shit…
It’s about the followers of this guy.
There’s barely information about him in English, but he basically wrote quite a few books “decoding” words off shitty photocopies of photos of historic artifacts. He was largely a laughing stock, but he did get a few followers, mostly elderly with early onset dementia, but also notably a few of high profile personalities, maybe even a couple of Putin’s advisors.
For laughs, here are some of the most famous examples of his “deciphering” works:
- Here’s the sun saying that it’s a church of Rurik of varyags
- This one says that Smolensk is actually Moscow
- Or that Pushkin was a house cat
- That 9/11 was a god’s punishment (and also that martians are apparently dyslexic and only know 3 words)
- Or that a bunch of photocopying artifacts tell how great Russian warriors were
Varies too much person to person to be valuable
Hold my fuckin beer friends i remember when tunguska was a ‘weird alien thing’ and when Ballard found Titanic
Public school book adoption is between 8-12 years (Texas). And they only have to meet 50% of the state learning objectives. I hope the point of this post of to encourage life long learning and developing critical thinking skills.
I knew I’d heard of a site that did this already. Couldn’t remember the name, though. Thanks!
That was fuckin’ awesome, thank you!!
Okay but should I put in the year I graduated or the year of our textbooks/curriculum? Because my U.S. history textbook had an assignment for the “present day” to write about the “ongoing” war in iraq under “current” president George W. Bush. Spoiler, I did not go to HS when bush was president.
I was in high school during that time
It’s really weird to see actually witness history becoming “history”
An even better idea: make your OWN list! Don’t expect someone else to tell you the truth if you’re not working to search for it yourself!
Curious how you would go about this process of creating a list of your own knowledge that is outdated.
By being a life-long learner! Seriously, learning is an active thing, it’s not something we have to be sitting in a room to receive. So as we read and learn more, we realize that some of the things we learned are different from what we thought. It’s something we should all be doing as we learn and reflect.
Right… And the suggestion in OP is for someone to create an efficient tool supporting life-long learning. One doesn’t imply lack of active learning in the other. So get of your condescending high horse.
I could throw a site together if the community is willing to help curate the data.
From what I read here are some keys to follow:
Year: Country: Fact:
I could throw a form together for submissions to feed this site. Thoughts?
You’d probably need to verify all submissions
Unless you throw an LLM into the mix
Or maybe there’s already some resources giving you all debunked facts with their dates
LLMs are not magic, otherwise one just have to request that any submission will have references to reputable sources.
You believe an LLM can be used to distinguish facts from fiction? I wonder up to which year that misconception was taught in school.
The whole point of LLMs is, to convince their users that the “facts” they generate are actual facts.
They can browse the web, and I never meant it would be 100 accurate just easier. Don’t think this is going to be a mission critical website
That just it, these “facts” won’t be on the web for stuff approximately 2005 and before. No where on the web is the racist and homophobic shit I was taught in the 80’s and 90’s listed on some wiki.
LLM’s are mostly useless anyways at distinguishing real information, they are just shit summary tools and poor search engines.
I would probably start out by proofing or approving them before they post to the site. It say I get a notification read it do a little reading over it and get to a point where I can use a large language model to siphon the submissions.
For America, you’ll also need to have a drop-down for states. I graduated from high school in California in 2009, and I’m currently working on a medical degree, so I’d be delighted to contribute to this. I’d especially like to help with a sex ed section for Americans.
I graduated from high school in California in 2009
Hey, me too
I’m not sure I’d want to get that granular because of the same fact was taught across the country there’s no need for the redundancy. Also trying to make this a global website helps removing that level of granularity from the states as well.
The differences in curricula across states mean that some states would have gotten the correct information while others may not have. I know the science and history classes in my state were pretty different from some other states.
Thats not just the case in the US though
Design it so that it can get that granular later(when someone else wants to do that work)
As long as it’s got the capability it can grow into that later. Assuming unexpected and explosive popularity/growth it would be great if wikifoundation acquired it someday as a dataset if nothing else, but having a structure that can be expanded globally at a granular scale baked into it from the beginning would be awesome
Sorry I’m not great with computers or i would offer more of a technical opinion not just design commentary
“When and where did you graduate”
Texas: 2024
“… How can you even read this?”
Because they used Texan hieroglyphics!
🥩 🤠 🥩 🐮 🔫 👢 🔫 🤠
So I’m super liberal overall, but I’m also Texan, so I do in fact love shooting guns and being on the ranch.
Though I don’t love cowboy boots. They’re just too uncomfortable and difficult to get on and off for something that costs what my first car did.
I sent the Twitter image to chatgpt to convert the image to text and then I put that text into websim which generated a website that does exactly that and it even handles if you graduated recently and it will link you to a timeline of debunked “facts” here’s the link, enjoy! https://websim.ai/c/GeEMLk9DuUC23jV9S
I got: “We only use 10% of our brains. Modern neuroimaging has shown that we use most of our brain.” In the 90’s I thought this was not in fact, but urban legend, the whole time.
Also: “Christopher Columbus discovered America. Indigenous peoples had been living in the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus arrived.” I didn’t realize that it was implied no one was here when he came.
Vikings discovered the North American continent long before Columbus. Fucker got credit for copying someone’s homework.
And yet, in the end, it was Amerigo Vespucci who the entire western lands were named after.
I think that brain one was from a game of telephone with the real fact that a large portion of our brain is dedicated to image processing and object identification. Another portion would be dedicated to sound recognition with a decent amount of circuitry going into the recognition and parsing of speech. Memory will also take up some of the capacity as well as mapping desired actions to sequences of signals for muscle activation. After all the things our brains need to do just to accomplish all these things we take for granted are accounted for, it doesn’t leave much capacity left over for thought.
Though, at least in my experience, the most powerful analysis the brain can do is in the subconscious. So many times I’ve faced a difficult problem where I’ve been unable to make any progress, take a break, then later return to a much easier problem. Or even with skill development, try doing something too hard for a bit, then sleep on it and try again the next day and it might suddenly be easier. This works best for dexterity skills, I’ve noticed it a lot in Beat Saber.
So it’s like you can take whatever was left over from the first paragraph, then take a small amount of that and that’s your conscious thought capacity and the rest is given to subconscious processing.
hmm I do this all the time for anything to do with solving problems, I work on the problem relentlessly until my head is clouded and clearly fried and then I come back later and try again
yeah the issue with “discovered” is cultural interpretation, not factual. If you assume that indigenous people don’t count, or if non-aristocrats going there doesn’t count as discovery, or if it was discovered by Asian peoples but not yet by Western peoples…
I dunno if a fact-checking website can get into it as it is figuratively and literally critical race theory (ooOOOOooOOOoh!) to have that discussion.
yeah idk how good the website it made really is but it sure is interesting that it could just do that on the fly
