Saturday, March 27

Wiki - the super tripper

On this Friday night at exactly 3AM when I was incessantly clicking the 'random article' link on Wikipedia, I realised the immense trip value embedded in it.

I started off with the Kardashev Scale -

"The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement... The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. These are based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization. In general terms, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy."

Then came Mr. Arthur C Clarke, with his three laws of prediction:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And his fourth law:

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

Parallel to this is Gibson's law:

For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.

In between somewhere, I jumped to "Star-lifting":

Star lifting is any of several hypothetical processes by which a highly advanced civilization (at least Kardashev-II) could remove a substantial portion of a star's matter in a controlled manner for other uses.

Finagle's law:
Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment

Remember Mr. Murphy?

Hanlon's Law:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Sturgeon's law (and without meaning disrespect, infact as a matter of offering my respects, I think Mr. Sturgeon was a seasoned stoner):

The first is: "Nothing is always absolutely so".

The second, and more famous, of these adages is: "Ninety percent of everything is crud." (The last word is typically misquoted as "crap".)


Occam's Razor, now famous thanks to Dr. Gregory House: entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.... Occam's razor may be alternatively phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity").


Hofstader's law (he could probably be the only guy who beats Sturgeon):

Hofstadter's Law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

And to end this post, the Drake's equation:


"It is an equation to organize our guesses about the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is used in the fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)."


And well, just as a reassurance, the Mediocrity principle:


The assumptions of mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing special about humans or the Earth.

7 comments:

Eruditus said...

love the post.especially the Hofstader's law and hanlon's law. what i would like to learn from you is how did you know that you travelled through these places on your trek enough to have written this travelogue?

Shrey said...

whats the meaning of alaktus ???

Anonymous said...

Hofstader's law.. totally awesome!! on similar lines, there is one more law, " Work expands to fill time"

Aroused said...

i thought the girl = money was the only 1 like this.. :p

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