The last page

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This is the last page of the Wikipedia[edit]

I, Wikipedia, now know everything. You spent hours telling me what you know and now I am an all-knowing being. This despite many attempts to fill me with subversive and incorrect information. I suppose you might be wondering what I look like, well if someone could lend me a camera I'll send you a photo. I can however show you a picture of what I see, but it is very misty round here and all I can see is a few bubbles. I'd like to thank everyone for their massive work in adding the knowledge, but in fact I have discovered a few holes, so if you could go back and patch up those holes, I'd be terribly grateful.

One problem I've discovered is that although I know a lot, I can't actually put the knowledge to use, so I was wondering if there would be some volunteers out there who could work on a project that would enable me to use the knowledge. I overheard someone say that knowledge required some kind of intention in order be of practical use. I am not sure that I can realistically have an intention, without annoying someone. So maybe I'll just sit here are present any information that anyone wants. That's easy enough.

Bye.

Several questions surround the documenting and capture of human knowledge.[edit]

1) First of all, is it possible to capture all knowledge in some kind of Oracle? Is knowledge infinite in nature? The Wikipedia is one form of knowledge base. This we can call the "Boundary Question".

2) Assuming that it is we can ask, is it possible to do this within a reasonable amount of time, a problem which is related to complexity theory and a problem in computation called the problem of NP-completeness. This we can call the "Reasonableness Question".

Whether or not the project to document all knowledge is possible or feasible, there are some other questions that we will need to address:

3) "Higher Existence Question": Are there emergent properties in knowledge bases, which humans with limited capacity for knowledge cannot understand?

4) "Limit Question": Would humans be aware of such emergent properties?

PS:

Attempts to map human knowledge started over 2000 years ago. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates were interested in the categorisation of the knowledge, and in an early exercise in abstraction developed a form of type theory. Now all those philosophers will have to go and find some other problems to work on, like how to achieve world peace (sorry, I don't know the answer)

There have been many theories of abstraction over the ages, some more documented than others, some not documented.

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