Wikenigma – an Encyclopedia of Unknowns
46 comments
·January 25, 2025dang
doener
I also posted it 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42783625
dang
Ah yes - and a couple others did in the last week, too. I wonder why!
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!)
mastersummoner
I'm glad you're thinking about this. It's always strange to search for a topic, and find a dozen hits, most with one post max, and one which went absolutely viral.
In a world where karma/upvotes/etc actually does contribute to reputation, it seems unfair and arbitrary.
mattkevan
Hit the random button a few times and every article was bird-related.
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.
null
financetechbro
I must’ve hit the random button 10 times and haven’t seen any bird related mysteries
omoikane
I wonder why Travelling Salesman Problem is included but not other NP-hard problems.
https://wikenigma.org.uk/content/computer_science/the_ravell...
(The URL really says "ravelling" and not "travelling". Maybe this article was hastily added)
ruined
other np-hard problems are not included because you haven't added them to the wiki
rerdavies
To add them to the "wiki", you'd have to be able to edit the wiki. You cannot. I rather wanted to edit the "Liar Paradox" (sic) page, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do so.
encomiast
Maybe they meant to add the np-complete version, in which case, do you really need more than one?
bigdict
Does it have an entry for what we don't know we don't know?
khnorgaard
Well dude. We just don't know.
trevithick
sangeeth96
TIL there is a name for this.
> 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
IshKebab
Apparently philosophers don't know what holes are:
mr_toad
That’s funny because the concept of a gap or void as a fundamental part of the universe has been around for thousands of years.
speerer
Mathematicians, meanwhile, have multiple answers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ymF1bp-qrjU
slashtab
Never would have thought Holes getting so complicated.
I think I need classes on Topology and Knots.
dr_dshiv
I was thinking about this concept yesterday, in the context of AI automation in the sciences.
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.
tomcam
The “random article” link is irresistible
legrandmag
Seems like the server is down. Or OP has reached their bandwidth, hence the website not accessible
jl6
I wonder if there is an ethical limit to some categories of knowledge. There are surely some sociological phenomena which are currently unexplained, but could potentially be explained by, say, incredibly invasive monitoring of peoples’ lives, but which we would probably rather remain unexplained than go down that route.
ninjanomnom
Get a large enough population and you'll be able to get volunteers for any conceivable experiment.
jl6
I’m not sure. Imagine you want to answer the research question of how people come to adopt certain beliefs. You can probably answer that robustly by monitoring absolutely all their cultural inputs - including throughout childhood where these inputs likely have high impact, but where consent for such an experiment is likely impossible. Every book they read, every website they visit, every person they listen to. I think if you constrain this experiment to a more reasonable level of information gathering, you’ll miss important details.
ninjanomnom
You could get permission from the parents to install the recording devices, but until the child is grown up the data could be kept locked away somewhere completely inaccessible. Then when the child is old enough to grant permission you unlock that data for use. This sort of pattern should work for all studies involving children.
Honestly though, most of these kinds of studies would probably just stop at getting permission from the parents.
pavel_lishin
I was surprised to find out that we apparently don't have a definitive explanation for how hangovers work: https://wikenigma.org.uk/content/medicine/diseases/g-l/hango...
crazygringo
This is super fun!
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?
codetrotter
The “curator’s rationale” page maybe sheds some light on that, indirectly.
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.
oguz-ismail
> why it's a site of its own, rather than a list on Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is too politic for the casual reader and begs for money all the time.
xandrius
If even Wikipedia is too political then I've got a bad news for you...
FergusArgyll
Wikipedia being too political is a hard problem to fix but the ads and begging for money has an easy solution; Make an account, got to preferences -> banners and uncheck fundraising and whatever else you don't want to see.
An account is useful in many other ways too
ggm
We just don't know is what I think Feynman was getting at in his criticism of physics teaching and how it tries to leverage the nth layer and n-1th layer to explain actions in the n+1 layer.
Related:
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)