Talk:Logarithmic timeline

message: Err ... why this page?  Charles Matthews 13:06, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems like this article should actually be logarithmic timeline. -- Decumanus 17:31, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: What do you mean? Try to add. I'll review latter. Kenny sh —Preceding undated comment added 09:59, 28 March 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Old text

message: May be to unify Events and Inventions / Discoveries ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenny sh (talk • contribs) 20:57, 11 July 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved to end of discussion. This has been proposed & discussed previously - read the comments. 
The stated criterion - "as progress toward the current state of human civilization" - is inherently pov. As such it stimulates thought, whereas, a bland appearances vs dissapearances is Ho-hum. Extinction of the dinos was bad for them, but where would we be if it had not happened? So although my initial reaction a while back was similar to yours, now I'd have to disagree. Thinking is good for the brain :-) -Vsmith 13:02, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Unifying

message: User:MyRedDice deleted the "Outside context problem" column with the comment rm OCP - Iain Banks is not a scientist - out of place here.
 
This seems like a spurious criterion to me: after all, "robot" and "robotics" were coined by science fiction writers. But let's be generous and assume that MyRedDice meant something like "this term is not in widespread use in the scientific community and so not appropriate for an encyclopedia". But that doesn't mean that the material in the column is wrong, perhaps just that the header could be improved.
So what would be a better column heading? Gdr 15:58, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC)
: I don't think OCP (with the Banks meaning) is an appropriate term for what is listed in that column. It's meant to be something so totally beyond present experience that civilisation is unable to cope. So famine in the 11th century isn't an OCP, because everybody knew about famine. A better term might be "crises", or "potential crises". Roget suggests words like "danger", "critical time", "emergency", and "difficulty", among others. --AlexG 21:41, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The 9/11/2001 disaster in the U.S. POV was an OCP because it lay beyond the imagination of those in power. "failure to connect the dots". Ancheta Wis 01:37, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, 9/11 did not have enough impact to be classed as an OCP. An outside context problem fatally undermines the basic assumptions of a civilisation - like the example of the island whose inhabitants believe it to be the only place in the world, their society being shaken by the arrival of technologically advanced outsiders revealing it to be just one of many, comparatively minor, islands. The discovery of the stars in Isaac Asimov's Nightfall is similar. In Iain Banks' Excession, the appearance of the big black sphere is an OCP because it demonstrates that it is possible to travel to infinitely many nested universes (meaning that existence is no longer limited by the Big Crunch) and that there are civilisations vastly more powerful than the Culture. It could also be considered OCP because the Culture's reaction to it reveals that they are not as serene and democratic as they hold themselves to be. In any case, what should the column heading be? Any advance on "Crises"? --AlexG 18:19, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: The column could be the negative of Inventions/Discoveries (in the progressive sense) so that the sum of the Inventions - the sum of the 'crises' = net progress of civilization. Hopefully not not negative and not zero. If always zero, then there is some kind of conservation law in play. Ancheta Wis 21:49, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I like this idea; for the titles, how about "progress" or "development" as set against "regression"? These are also general enough to allow a wider range of information to be put in the table. --AlexG 23:57, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: Sounds good. Ancheta Wis 00:16, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I have done the deed. --AlexG 20:58, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Better name for "Outside context problem"

message: Paleolithic belongs with Pleistocene, and holocene started (not ended - it's the current period) 10k years ago --Random|832 18:44, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed that problem, I think :-) -Vsmith 15:36, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  10k 

message: Surely it would be more intuitive and convenient to use a scale based on powers of five in the second chart?  102/3 is, after all, about 4.6.  --ᓛᖁ[ ᑐ] 20:06, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  10<sup>2/3</sup> scale 

message: #Keep the page length about one screen. Readers should see logarithmic timescale clearly.
#Write only most important info in each row. 
#All other events could be in periodical subpages.
:: Well, which is more important — history or the logarithmic scale?  I don't think it's helpful to arbitrarily limit the table to one page, especially since there is likely to be some disagreement about what should be included.  Timeline of invention does well enough without subpages, and it's like 20 pages long.  ‣ᓛᖁ[ ᑐ] 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've originated this table to be first of all observable. Observability is much more important than comprehensiveness. There a lot of very detailed and long timelines. See :Category:Timelines, Timeline of evolution, Geologic timescale, List of themed timelines. If you like very long lists, please contribute there. Conan 18:22, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Guidelines for Logarithmic timeline

message: # Progress and Regression is NPOV violation and maker harder to read.
(Conan 09:56, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Doubts about the page

message: I spent months on this 1000-line logarithmic timeline:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/science/logarithmic.html
I propose redoing it as a (partial) index to Wikipedia, if anyone wants to help.
(maybe break it into ten 100-line pieces?) --robotwisdom 16:08, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logarithmic index to Wikipedia? 

message: I don't really think the current emphasis is right.  The singularity business is secondary, and that graph isn't really a logarithmic timeline, imho.  I only see two natural forms of log timeline-- the 'inverse' where the pov is from the big bang forward, and the usual where the pov is from the human ego backward.  If a singularity occurs, it will screw things up because the log sequence will change after the singularity. --robotwisdom 11:16, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview 

message: Digg linked this future-timeline this morning-- can we use it to rough out a log timeline that starts now and looks forward?
I think it's impossible to choose the right scaling-factor until you know how dense the events are, eg:
*next ten years
*next 1,000 yrs
*next 100,000 yrs
*next 10M yrs
*next 1B yrs
*next 100B yrs? --robotwisdom 13:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Present-looking-forward 

message: Just wondered, if there is any kind of template that can automatically extract from the current events portals e.g. the first news story, and place it in the first row, last column box of the looking backwards table?  --gejyspa (talk) 14:42, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Automatic updating of the past few days row? 

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