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π Tunnels and Trolls
Tunnels & Trolls (abbreviated T&T) is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and is suitable for solitaire, group, and play-by-mail gameplay.
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- "Tunnels and Trolls" | 2020-07-20 | 21 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Warren Abstract Machine
In 1983, David H. D. Warren designed an abstract machine for the execution of Prolog consisting of a memory architecture and an instruction set. This design became known as the Warren Abstract Machine (WAM) and has become the de facto standard target for Prolog compilers.
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- "Warren Abstract Machine" | 2023-05-12 | 29 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Warren Abstract Machine" | 2020-03-12 | 55 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Hofstadter's Law
Hofstadter's law is a self-referential adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter in his book GΓΆdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979) to describe the widely experienced difficulty of accurately estimating the time it will take to complete tasks of substantial complexity:
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
The law is often cited by programmers in discussions of techniques to improve productivity, such as The Mythical Man-Month or extreme programming.
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- "Hofstadter's Law" | 2016-03-21 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Hofstadter's law" | 2011-02-25 | 94 Upvotes 18 Comments
π Perverse Incentive
A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result that is contrary to the intentions of its designers. The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentionally rewards people for making the issue worse. The term is used to illustrate how incorrect stimulation in economics and politics can cause unintended consequences.
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- "Perverse Incentive" | 2024-05-25 | 18 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Jonbar Hinge
In science-fiction criticism, a Jonbar hinge or Jonbar point is the fictional concept of a crucial point of divergence between two outcomes, especially in time-travel stories. It is sometimes referred to as a Jon Bar hinge or change-point.
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- "Jonbar Hinge" | 2021-05-28 | 15 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Beatrice the Sixteenth
Beatrice the Sixteenth: Being the Personal Narrative of Mary Hatherley, M.B., Explorer and Geographer is a 1909 feminist utopian novel by the English transgender lawyer and writer Irene Clyde, about a time traveller who discovers a lost world, which is an egalitarian postgender society.
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- "Beatrice the Sixteenth" | 2020-09-22 | 55 Upvotes 36 Comments
π Wikipedia Abuse Filter
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- "Wikipedia Abuse Filter" | 2024-04-14 | 26 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Wikipedia: Vector 2022
Vector 2022 is a desktop skin developed between 2019 and 2023 by the Wikimedia Foundation Web team with the goal of making the interface more welcoming and usable for readers and maintaining utility for existing editors.
It introduces changes to the navigation and layout of the site, adds persistent elements such as a sticky header and Table of Contents, and makes changes to the overall styling of the page. Currently (early January 2023), the skin is the default on more than 300 projects of various sizes, accounting for about 1.5 billion page views per month. Before the deployment, on English Wikipedia, it was the most popular non-default skin, with more active editors using it than any other non-default skin (Monobook, Timeless, etc).
The skin was ready for deployment to English Wikipedia after completing the changes specified by the consensus of the Request for Comment. Today (January 18, 2023), the skin was turned on as the default on the desktop site. Users of non-default skins (Monobook, Timeless, etc.) will not see any changes.
If you decide to try it out, we, the Web team, suggest trying it for at least one week prior to deciding whether to switch to one of our older skins. It usually takes a few days to begin feeling comfortable with the new interface. That said, if you are unsatisfied, you can switch to any of our other skins at any time.
π Illusory Superiority
In the field of social psychology, illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.
The term illusory superiority was first used by the researchers Van Yperen and Buunk, in 1991. The phenomenon is also known as the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, the sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect, and the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the fictional town where all the children are above average. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a form of illusory superiority shown by people on a task where their level of skill is low.
A vast majority of the literature on illusory superiority originates from studies on participants in the United States. However, research that only investigates the effects in one specific population is severely limited as this may not be a true representation of human psychology. More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture. Some studies indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in order to improve themselves and get along with others.
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- "Illusory Superiority" | 2023-07-19 | 24 Upvotes 48 Comments
π Mary Kenneth Keller
Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M. (December 17, 1913 β January 10, 1985) was an American Roman Catholic religious sister, educator and pioneer in computer science. She and Irving C. Tang were the first two people to earn a doctorate in computer science in the United States.
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- "Mary Kenneth Keller" | 2020-12-27 | 32 Upvotes 6 Comments