/sci/ - Science & Math

The phenomena of stupidity in online discussion forums

There is so much, it's clear, in every topic. You don't have to know much about some topics to spot obvious wrong statements. How does an online community systematically seek out and remove them to avoid them tainting discussion? Are there any ways to enter the group of smart people or is it too exclusive, or is it rather that each individual is smart at some topics but yet they talk about others into which they have projected their intelligence, i.e. a form of feeling false confidence in one's knowledge of a topic. In other words, the Dunning-Kruger effect

We are effectively trying to measure the signal-to-noise ratio of text in terms of its explanatory power of reality. How does one do that programmatically? Can it be done through a syntactical analysis of the text of all of humanity or does it require an ability to perform experiments in the real world?

I guess this is empiricism vs rationalism

>>8739953

This is always a fun one.

Here is Stephan's Quintet. Four of these five galaxies are gravitationally entangled- that is they each orbit the other three. One is not. Can you tell which one is not entangled with the rest?
>+5 internetz available

It's time to play "Apply What You Just Learned!"

This is Stephan's Quintet. Only four of these five galaxies are interacting. Based on what you just learned about Seyfert's Sextet, can you tell which one is not gravitationally bound to the others?