User:Quercus solaris/Thoughts that seemed interesting when I jotted them down for later development

Too late for an RCT

As has often been pointed out before by others, it is already too late not to have all of human life on Earth be an experiment that has no control arm, no IRB approval, and no preregistration. As for what to do with that epistemic fact, and what cannot or should not be done with it: ponder at your leisure.

Update: Today it occurred to me that the above train of thought must be wrapped in an appropriate context wrapper to be true (logically sound) on all parametric levels, or, that is, to retain true/valid status across parametric level shifts: it is written from the human viewpoint, as that viewpoint currently exists so far. Which is to say, it is true only so far as we humans (1) know and (2) know how to detect or verify or test for. But don't forget that the best kind of RCT is a multiply blinded one, and some species are blinder than others.

Many of the people who delete things from Wikipedia have pedagogic imbecility

Meaning that their pedagogic talent and skill are low. Notwithstanding that some of them may be savants of other kinds, in other ways (idiot or otherwise).

Recursive instance

If there had been a steamship named the S.S. Steamship (hey, it could have happened, which is to say, it wasn't not happenable), and that ship had been decommissioned and scrapped, and then they had decided to name a new U.S. Navy vessel after the storied commercial predecessor (and they've named vessels after stupider things and people), would it have been called the U.S.S. S.S. Steamship, which is to say, could it have been called the U.S.S. S.S. Steamship, and would anyone in 1918 have objected, and would anyone in 2022 object if such a thing were to happen now, and are those two answers different, and if so, what is the significance of that difference, if any, and does it bear any relation to the Boaty McBoatface outcome? But more importantly, why would anyone care whether it could have (done), or whether they would have (done), or whether anyone would now (do)? You may be wondering why I've called you all here today. And that's a fair question. And I have a few of my own. And we'll all have a nice refreshment. Thank you. That is all.

Worthy of an article but I lack time to develop it

• You're not allowed to list it at William Wise > Companies, because DAB pages are restricted as to the precise circumstances in which a red link is acceptable.
• You're not allowed to list it at List of English-language book publishing companies, because even though list pages aren't forbidden to contain a few red links within a mostly blue field, this particular list page warns you in the editor screen that it is not allowed to contain even a single red link (as for "according to whose whim?", the WARNING does not tell us).
• In both cases (above), the idea is that if the topic warrants an article, then you should develop the article first and only then is the entity allowed to be mentioned at the DAB page or the list page.
  • This is reasonable as a necessary method of enforcing WP:Notability, but it does have a logical weak point: ontology has a valid need to work from the outside in rather than the inside out (approaching the umbrella from a distance before getting under it), which means that the way humans approach the universe is to learn a one-line upshot about any given entity even if no one has time to delve into its trivia (neither the asker nor the answerer), and even if it is notable only in certain contexts or for certain purposes. Alas.
• Here is the one-line upshot, with useful references:
  • William H. Wise and Company (1888–1982), an American publisher of books