I keep seeing intelligent people talk about this concept like it’s obviously useful and relevant, and to my layman mind it is, but the article sounds a little like it’s basically bunk now, with the opening summary ending this way:
it has been recognized by a respected authority on thermodynamics, Max Planck, that the phrase ‘entropy of the universe’ has no meaning because it admits of no accurate definition.[1][2] Kelvin’s speculation falls with this recognition.
The style, and the way these words are repeated verbatim down the page, makes me suspect the work of a single editor with strong opinions, and so I wonder. Just because of definition problems?
(I’ll admit my proximate reason for asking is kinda trivial: the claim sometimes comes up in Madoka fandom that appreciating Kyubey’s agenda requires trusting his civilisation’s greater understanding of physics, and I wanna say that no, the show isn’t making it up, that life ultimately running out of fuel is an idea that we humans have been considering seriously. But if I should mention “heat death” to someone who doesn’t know what it is, and they look it up and see that, the first thing they’ll say is “well this is disproven and there’s nothing to worry about”).
There is no reason, other than happy cultural accident, for any given Wikipedia article on a technical topic to be good. Technical subjects I know something about are generally treated very poorly. Wikipedia has no incentives in place for experts to correct things, and for non-experts to shut up.
When did you get this impression? I’m only asking because I’m given to believe that the situation on wikipedia with regards to experts and specialized subjects has improved substantially starting in about 2008 or so(?), at least in the humanities but possibly in other fields.
This was in fact prior to 2008 (my advisor asked me to change something in the Bayesian network article, and I got into a slight edit war with the resident bridge troll who knew a lot less than me, but had more time and whose first reflex was to just blindly undo any edits. These sorts of issues with Wikipedia are very well documented).
The horrible article on confounders is another good example. I brought it up before here, and got the “that’s like, your opinion” kind of reply. At least they cite Tyler’s paper with me now! Of course, this particular case might be more widespread than just Wikipedia, and might be a general confusion in statistics as a field. I went to a talk last week where someone just got this wrong in their talk (and presumably in their research).
I don’t doubt that there are isolated communities within Wikipedia that generate good content. For example, I know there are Wikipedia articles for some areas of mathematics of shockingly high quality. My point is, when this happens it is a sort of happy cultural accident that is happening in spite of, not because of, the Wikipedia editing model.
There has been quite a bit of experimentation online to incentivize experts to talk and non-experts to shut up, recently. I think that’s great!
Wikipedia is more comprehensive now than in 2008, but I speculate that its average article quality might be lower, because of (1) competent editors being spread more thinly, and (2) the gradual entrenchment of a hierarchy of Wikipedia bureaucrats who compensate for a lack of expertise with pedantry and rules lawyering.
(I may be being unfair here? I’m going by faint memories of articles I’ve read, and my mental stereotype of Wikipedia, which I haven’t edited regularly in years.)
Average article quality is almost certainly going down, but the main driving force is probably mass-creation of stub articles about villages in Eastern Europe, plant genera, etc. Of course, editors are probably spread mpre thinly even among important topics as well. A lot of people seem to place the blame for any and all of Wikipedia’s problems on bureaucracy, but as a regular editor such criticisms often seem foreign, like they’re talking about a totally different website. True, there’s a lot of formalities, but they’re mostly invisible, and a reasonably intelligent person can probably pick up the important customs quite quickly. In the past 6 months of relatively regular editing, I can’t say I remember ever interacting involuntarily with any kind of bureaucratic process or individual (I occasionally putter around the deletion nominations for fun, but that’s just to satisfy my need for conflict). Writing an article (for example), especially if it’s any good, is virtually never going to get you ensnared in some kind of Kafkaesque editorial process. Such things seem to operate mainly for the benefit of people who enjoy inflicting such things on each other (e.g., descending hierarchies of committees for dealing with mod drama).
It’s late, so hopefully the above makes some modicum of sense.
it has been recognized by a respected authority on thermodynamics, Max Planck, that the phrase ‘entropy of the universe’ has no meaning because it admits of no accurate definition.[1][2] Kelvin’s speculation falls with this recognition.
The fact that Max Planck is a respected authority can’t be easily disproved and he’s cited.
On the other hand he did write that more than 100 years ago.
The introductory section doesn’t contain any modern physics but 19th century views. If you would gather more modern sources, you might use them to update the article.
Markus Ramikin’s Semimonthly Dumb Question time. Since we seem to have both experts on physics and on editing wikipedia:
What do you think of the quality of the current Wikipedia article on heat death? Is it a fair treatment?
I keep seeing intelligent people talk about this concept like it’s obviously useful and relevant, and to my layman mind it is, but the article sounds a little like it’s basically bunk now, with the opening summary ending this way:
The style, and the way these words are repeated verbatim down the page, makes me suspect the work of a single editor with strong opinions, and so I wonder. Just because of definition problems?
(I’ll admit my proximate reason for asking is kinda trivial: the claim sometimes comes up in Madoka fandom that appreciating Kyubey’s agenda requires trusting his civilisation’s greater understanding of physics, and I wanna say that no, the show isn’t making it up, that life ultimately running out of fuel is an idea that we humans have been considering seriously. But if I should mention “heat death” to someone who doesn’t know what it is, and they look it up and see that, the first thing they’ll say is “well this is disproven and there’s nothing to worry about”).
There is no reason, other than happy cultural accident, for any given Wikipedia article on a technical topic to be good. Technical subjects I know something about are generally treated very poorly. Wikipedia has no incentives in place for experts to correct things, and for non-experts to shut up.
When did you get this impression? I’m only asking because I’m given to believe that the situation on wikipedia with regards to experts and specialized subjects has improved substantially starting in about 2008 or so(?), at least in the humanities but possibly in other fields.
This was in fact prior to 2008 (my advisor asked me to change something in the Bayesian network article, and I got into a slight edit war with the resident bridge troll who knew a lot less than me, but had more time and whose first reflex was to just blindly undo any edits. These sorts of issues with Wikipedia are very well documented).
The horrible article on confounders is another good example. I brought it up before here, and got the “that’s like, your opinion” kind of reply. At least they cite Tyler’s paper with me now! Of course, this particular case might be more widespread than just Wikipedia, and might be a general confusion in statistics as a field. I went to a talk last week where someone just got this wrong in their talk (and presumably in their research).
I don’t doubt that there are isolated communities within Wikipedia that generate good content. For example, I know there are Wikipedia articles for some areas of mathematics of shockingly high quality. My point is, when this happens it is a sort of happy cultural accident that is happening in spite of, not because of, the Wikipedia editing model.
There has been quite a bit of experimentation online to incentivize experts to talk and non-experts to shut up, recently. I think that’s great!
[deleted duplicate comment]
Wikipedia is more comprehensive now than in 2008, but I speculate that its average article quality might be lower, because of (1) competent editors being spread more thinly, and (2) the gradual entrenchment of a hierarchy of Wikipedia bureaucrats who compensate for a lack of expertise with pedantry and rules lawyering.
(I may be being unfair here? I’m going by faint memories of articles I’ve read, and my mental stereotype of Wikipedia, which I haven’t edited regularly in years.)
Average article quality is almost certainly going down, but the main driving force is probably mass-creation of stub articles about villages in Eastern Europe, plant genera, etc. Of course, editors are probably spread mpre thinly even among important topics as well. A lot of people seem to place the blame for any and all of Wikipedia’s problems on bureaucracy, but as a regular editor such criticisms often seem foreign, like they’re talking about a totally different website. True, there’s a lot of formalities, but they’re mostly invisible, and a reasonably intelligent person can probably pick up the important customs quite quickly. In the past 6 months of relatively regular editing, I can’t say I remember ever interacting involuntarily with any kind of bureaucratic process or individual (I occasionally putter around the deletion nominations for fun, but that’s just to satisfy my need for conflict). Writing an article (for example), especially if it’s any good, is virtually never going to get you ensnared in some kind of Kafkaesque editorial process. Such things seem to operate mainly for the benefit of people who enjoy inflicting such things on each other (e.g., descending hierarchies of committees for dealing with mod drama).
It’s late, so hopefully the above makes some modicum of sense.
Is that a “no”?
The fact that Max Planck is a respected authority can’t be easily disproved and he’s cited.
On the other hand he did write that more than 100 years ago.
The introductory section doesn’t contain any modern physics but 19th century views. If you would gather more modern sources, you might use them to update the article.