@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Collapse of our civilization is a concerning scenario in which basic structures
There is a [reddit](reddit.md) community for discussing the collapse at https://reddit.net/r/collapse. [WikiWikiWeb](wikiwikiweb.md) has a related discussion under *ExtinctionOfHumanity*.
Collapse of civilizations has been a repeated theme throughout [history](history.md), it is nothing new or exceptional, see e.g. Maya empire collapse, Bronze age collapse, the fall of Rome etc. It usually comes when a civilization reaches high complexity and becomes "spoiled", morally corrupt and socially divided -- just what we are seeing today.
Collapse of civilizations has been a repeated theme throughout [history](history.md), it is nothing new or exceptional, see e.g. Maya empire collapse, Bronze age collapse, the fall of Rome etc. It usually comes when a civilization reaches high complexity and becomes "spoiled", morally corrupt and socially divided, which may also be "helped" by technological advancement (e.g. the Bronze age collapse is speculated to have been partially caused by the new technology of iron which has broken the old established structures) -- basically just what we are seeing today. Economic interdependence is especially dangerous, and since we are currently living under extreme form of [capitalism](capitalism.md), we are extremely subjected to this threat: everyone is hyperspecialized and so practically no one is self sufficient, people don't know how to make food, build homes, make tools, factories are unable to produce anything without dozens of other companies providing material, technology and services for them; everything depends on highly complex and extremely fragile production chains. Besides dependence on economy, an equal or even greater danger may be our **absolute dependence on computer [technology](technology.md)**: nothing works without computers and [Internet](internet.md), even that which could and should: factories, traffic, governments, hospitals, even many basic tools ("[smart](smart.md)" ones, "tools as a service", ...). It is extremely likely we'll sooner or later sustain a blow that will paralyze the Internet and computers, be it a natural disaster such as coronal mass ejection, an economic disaster (supply chains collapsing, ...), political disaster (war, cyber attacks, ...), unintentional or intentional "accident" ("oops, I just turned off all computers in the world that are running Windows" --[Microsoft](microsoft.md) employee), simple unsustainability of [maintenance](maintenance.md) of the exponentially growing complexity of computers or anything similar ([AI](ai.md) taking over the internet? :]). Thinking about it deeper, it seems like a miracle we are still here.
In technological world a lot of people are concerned with the collapse, notable the [collapse OS](collapse_os.md), an operating system meant to run on simple [hardware](hw.md) after the technological supply chain collapses and renders development of modern computers impossible. They believe the collapse will happen before 2030. The chip shortage, financial, climatic and energetic crisis and beginning of war in Europe as of early 2020s are one of the first warnings showing how fragile the systems really is.
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ Great nerds read encyclopedias linearly from start to finish just like a normal
**Similar terms:** encyclopedias, which also used to be called **cyclopedias** in the past, are similar to **dictionaries** and these types of books often overlap (many encyclopedias call themselves dictionaries); the main difference is that a dictionary focuses on providing linguistic information and generally has shorter term definitions, while encyclopedias have longer articles (which however limits their total number, i.e. encyclopedias will usually prefer quality over quantity). Encyclopedias are also a subset of so called **reference works**, i.e. works that serve to provide [information](information.md) and reference to it (other kinds of reference works being e.g. world maps, tabulated values or [API](api.md) references). A **universal/general** encyclopedia is one that focuses on human knowledge at wide, as opposed to an encyclopedia that focuses on one specific field of knowledge. **Compendium** can be seen almost as a synonym to encyclopedia, with encyclopedias perhaps usually being more general and extensive. **Almanac** is also similar to encyclopedia, more focusing on tabular data. **Micropedia** is another term, sometimes used to denote a smaller encyclopedia (one edition of Britannica came with a micropedia as well as a larger macropedia).
**What is the best letter in an encyclopedia?** If you are super nerdy, you may start to search for your favorite starting letter -- this if [fun](fun.md) and may also help you e.g. decide which volume of your encyclopedia to take with you when traveling. Which letter is best depends on many things, e.g. the language of the encyclopedia, its size, your area of interest and so on. Assuming [English](english.md) and topics that would be interesting to the readers of [LRS wiki](lrs_wiki.md), the best letter is most likely C -- it is the second most common starting letter in dictionaries, has a great span and includes essential and interesting terms such as [computer](computer.md), [C](c.md) programming language, [cat](cat.md), [communism](communism.md), [capitalism](capitalism.md), [chess](chess.md), [christianity](christianity.md), [collapse](collpase.md), [CPU](cpu.md), [color](color.md), [culture](culture.md), [copyleft](copyleft.md), [compiler](compiler.md), [creative commons](creative_commons.md), [cryptography](cryptography.md), [copyright](copyright.md), [car](car.md), [cancer](cancer.md), [cellular automata](cellular_automaton.md), [consumerism](consumerism.md), [cosine](cosine.md), [Chomsky](chomsky.md), [CIA](cia.md), [cybernetics](cybernetics.md), [cracking](cracking.md), [chaos](chaos.md), [carbon](carbon.md), [curvature](curvature.md), [chemistry](chemistry.md), [censorship](censorship.md) and others. As close second comes S, the most frequent letter in dictionaries, with terms such as [Stallman](rms.md), [science](science.md), [shader](shader.md), [semiconductor](semiconductor.md), [silicon](silicon.md), [software](software.md), [sound](sound.md), [socialism](socialism.md), [state](state.md), [selflessness](selflessness.md), [speech recognition](speech_recognition.md), [steganography](steganography.md), [square root](square_root.md), [sudoku](sudoku.md), [suicide](kys.md), [speedrun](speedrun.md), [space](space.md), [star](star.md), [Sun](sun.md), [sine](sin.md), [Soviet union](ussr.md), [schizophrenia](schizo.md), [set](set.md), [suckless](suckless.md), [shit](shit.md), [sex](sex.md) and others. { This is based on a list I made where I assigned points to each letter. The letters that follow after C and S are P, M, A, E, T, L, R, F, D, G, I, B, H, U, N, W, V, J, O, K, Q, Z, Y, X. ~drummyfish }
