Fucko's Pendulum Part II: Downswing
People online are a diverse group much like real life, but unlike real life internet space is essentially there for the taking for anyone who wants it. There are fewer filters or quality controls in place. As Plato himself said; "Every idiot has a right to his opinion, and a Geocities page to host it on". A lot of people say there's a lot more stupid people online - but I just think they're far better represented. Let's face it, the only reason we know about the sorts of people who wear tin-foil helmets to stop the CIA stealing their thoughts is we read their online webpage about it. In real life, we'd need to be in the very same shaopping mall that they wander around screaming in to hear their conspiracy theories. And we all shop online now anyway.
So, the curse of online communities is most of them are filled with people too insane or creepy to be involved in real-life communities. An advantage is that these online communities are, at least, quickly searchable. And because they tap into the entire WORLD of the Internet, you're usually guaranteed greater numbers of community members, even if most of these are bona fide idiots.
One thing I've always been interested in is cryptography. Secret code making, but especially code breaking. I've read books on the subject, and studied it at University. I'm a member of the American Crytpographical Association. It's fair to say it's a hobby of mine. Every now and then I search online for new pages/communities on the subject and occasionally find gold (such as the ACA, which I then joined), and occasionally I find, well, 'pyrite' would probably be the most fitting comparison.
The Beale Codes are a mystery from America's past involving secret codes and buried treasure. It's worth a quick wikipedia read the next time you're on a coffee break. I've been interested in it as a code-breaking exercise, and while searching for the same I came across a net community that had claimed to have made steps to solving the Beale codes. In fact, they said it had been solved. I decided to have a look.
The warning bells really started going off when I realised that this was a "treasure hunter" website. For those of you yet to encounter this type of community, let me talk to you briefly about money. Despite being the richest country in the world, Americans are surprisingly bad at using money. I'll let you research your own numbers, but approximately half of all American adults spend a collective $45 billion a year buying Lotto tickets. Over 20 million spend $1000+ a year on state Lottery tickets alone. The distribution of wealth is less than optimal anyway, but 82% of the Lotto revenue comes from 20% of regular players and most of them are minimum-wage earners who can afford the LEAST to play the Lotto.
Now, people can usually invest 2 different ways in a personal project, they can invest money or they can invest time. A quick example is buying a sweater versus knitting a sweater. Of course not every aspect of producing a sweater is captured solely in the price - grandmothers don't knit sweaters for their grandchildren because they can't afford to buy a $15 sweater, but typically a person will minimise their total cost by deciding whether to spend money or time on a project (which is why businessmen don't knit their own sweaters). The same actually holds for Lottery tickets. Some people are willing to invest a buck and get on with their lives. Others, and this includes the treasure community, are willing to invest their time in finding buried treasure and retiring to a golden mansion. Well, not retiring - to retire, you need an actual job in the first place. Relocating to a golden mansion from their trailer, shall we say. The long and the short of it is, whilst most people who dream of insane amounts of money are willing to invest $1 and keep working their regular jobs, treasure hunters would rather spend several hours researching possibilities of buried treasure rather than spend the $1. Which gives you an idea of how valuable their time really is.
The "insane treasure hunter" phenomenon reared its ugly head several years back in the 90's when some newspapers ran a story on Fermat's Last Theorem and how there was essentially a million dollar prize for anyone who could mathematically prove it. All of a sudden, crackpots who hadn't burdened themselves with finishing their high school educations were writing up mathematical papers and mailing them into University professors and demanding their cheques. One professor who copped the brunt of the tidal wave of incomprehensible papers (his name was published in the article) came up with the neat idea of carefully noting the name and address of whoever had previously sent him some garbage (say, Mr. X) and then replying to the next would-be solver (say, Mr Y) with "Dear Mr Y, Thank you for your paper. Unfortunately I am not well enough experienced to deal with this proff, but there's an expert called Mr. X who you might like to contact at his address with your further correspondence".
So the moral is people who aren't too bright are good at making claims at having solved brilliant problems in the pursuit of untold riches. Tune in next time to find out just how this affects research for Beale codes, and what I've done about it.
So, the curse of online communities is most of them are filled with people too insane or creepy to be involved in real-life communities. An advantage is that these online communities are, at least, quickly searchable. And because they tap into the entire WORLD of the Internet, you're usually guaranteed greater numbers of community members, even if most of these are bona fide idiots.
One thing I've always been interested in is cryptography. Secret code making, but especially code breaking. I've read books on the subject, and studied it at University. I'm a member of the American Crytpographical Association. It's fair to say it's a hobby of mine. Every now and then I search online for new pages/communities on the subject and occasionally find gold (such as the ACA, which I then joined), and occasionally I find, well, 'pyrite' would probably be the most fitting comparison.
The Beale Codes are a mystery from America's past involving secret codes and buried treasure. It's worth a quick wikipedia read the next time you're on a coffee break. I've been interested in it as a code-breaking exercise, and while searching for the same I came across a net community that had claimed to have made steps to solving the Beale codes. In fact, they said it had been solved. I decided to have a look.
The warning bells really started going off when I realised that this was a "treasure hunter" website. For those of you yet to encounter this type of community, let me talk to you briefly about money. Despite being the richest country in the world, Americans are surprisingly bad at using money. I'll let you research your own numbers, but approximately half of all American adults spend a collective $45 billion a year buying Lotto tickets. Over 20 million spend $1000+ a year on state Lottery tickets alone. The distribution of wealth is less than optimal anyway, but 82% of the Lotto revenue comes from 20% of regular players and most of them are minimum-wage earners who can afford the LEAST to play the Lotto.
Now, people can usually invest 2 different ways in a personal project, they can invest money or they can invest time. A quick example is buying a sweater versus knitting a sweater. Of course not every aspect of producing a sweater is captured solely in the price - grandmothers don't knit sweaters for their grandchildren because they can't afford to buy a $15 sweater, but typically a person will minimise their total cost by deciding whether to spend money or time on a project (which is why businessmen don't knit their own sweaters). The same actually holds for Lottery tickets. Some people are willing to invest a buck and get on with their lives. Others, and this includes the treasure community, are willing to invest their time in finding buried treasure and retiring to a golden mansion. Well, not retiring - to retire, you need an actual job in the first place. Relocating to a golden mansion from their trailer, shall we say. The long and the short of it is, whilst most people who dream of insane amounts of money are willing to invest $1 and keep working their regular jobs, treasure hunters would rather spend several hours researching possibilities of buried treasure rather than spend the $1. Which gives you an idea of how valuable their time really is.
The "insane treasure hunter" phenomenon reared its ugly head several years back in the 90's when some newspapers ran a story on Fermat's Last Theorem and how there was essentially a million dollar prize for anyone who could mathematically prove it. All of a sudden, crackpots who hadn't burdened themselves with finishing their high school educations were writing up mathematical papers and mailing them into University professors and demanding their cheques. One professor who copped the brunt of the tidal wave of incomprehensible papers (his name was published in the article) came up with the neat idea of carefully noting the name and address of whoever had previously sent him some garbage (say, Mr. X) and then replying to the next would-be solver (say, Mr Y) with "Dear Mr Y, Thank you for your paper. Unfortunately I am not well enough experienced to deal with this proff, but there's an expert called Mr. X who you might like to contact at his address with your further correspondence".
So the moral is people who aren't too bright are good at making claims at having solved brilliant problems in the pursuit of untold riches. Tune in next time to find out just how this affects research for Beale codes, and what I've done about it.