(Roughly) Daily

… or, as Confucius would have it, “real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” Happily Wikenigma is here to help…

Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.

Listing scientific and academic questions to which no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer. [949 so far]

That’s to say, a compendium of so-called ‘Known Unknowns’…

Consider, for example…

How do marine turtle accurately migrate thousands of kilometers for nesting?

Can Beal’s conjecture be proved?

Can one solve the “envelope paradox”?

Do “naked singularities” exist?

What is the etymology of the word “plot” (which appears only in English)?

What were the purposes of “Perforated Batons,” man-made historical artifacts formed from deer antlers, dating back 12,000-24,000 years and found widely across Europe?

What are the function, importance, and evolutionary history of human “inner speech”?

One could– and should– go on: Wikenigma, via @Recomendo6.

* Richard Feynman

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As we wonder, we might spare a thought for a man who embodied curiosity, Marvin Minsky; he died on this date in 2016.  A biochemist and cognitive scientist by training, he was founding director of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Project (the MIT AI Lab).  Minsky authored several widely-used texts, and made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics.  He holds several patents, including those for the first neural-network simulator (SNARC, 1951), the first head-mounted graphical display, the first confocal scanning microscope, and the LOGO “turtle” device (with his friend and frequent collaborator Seymour Papert).  His other inventions include mechanical hands and the “Muse” synthesizer.

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