Human assumptions?
November 22, 2013 3:27 PM Subscribe
Lists of assumptions?
There used to be a thing on the Steve Jackson GURPS forums about the assumptions that GURPS made of each individual character created in GURPS before character points were spent and attributes, skills, etc were created. I recall it being quite thorough. Examples of assumptions was stuff like "has 4 limbs" and "is human being" and "does not have any mental disorders".
Two parts to this question:
1. Where is it? I've not been able to find it before.
But more importantly:
2. Are there any other big, curated, thorough lists of assumptions people make, by default, a priori, not just in the GURPS character domain? Books, peer-reviewed journal articles, anything like that?
There used to be a thing on the Steve Jackson GURPS forums about the assumptions that GURPS made of each individual character created in GURPS before character points were spent and attributes, skills, etc were created. I recall it being quite thorough. Examples of assumptions was stuff like "has 4 limbs" and "is human being" and "does not have any mental disorders".
Two parts to this question:
1. Where is it? I've not been able to find it before.
But more importantly:
2. Are there any other big, curated, thorough lists of assumptions people make, by default, a priori, not just in the GURPS character domain? Books, peer-reviewed journal articles, anything like that?
I might be completely misinterpreting your question, but Wikipedia has the List of common misconceptions. It's more about history, science, and facts rather than standard human characteristics and anatomy, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for with this question. The "see also" section of that article has other potentially useful articles.
In the domain of computer programming, there's this list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, which chronicles the common, but not always true, assumptions made by computer system designers relating to human names. They range from the basic "People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space" to the more obscure "People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points" to the classic assumption that "People have names."
posted by zachlipton at 3:49 PM on November 22, 2013 [3 favorites]
In the domain of computer programming, there's this list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, which chronicles the common, but not always true, assumptions made by computer system designers relating to human names. They range from the basic "People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space" to the more obscure "People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points" to the classic assumption that "People have names."
posted by zachlipton at 3:49 PM on November 22, 2013 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: McKensie's list of falsehoods programmers believe about names is pretty much exactly what I want, with respect to names. However, it would be awesome if such things were ennumerated for every aspect of the human name: human bodies, human minds, etc etc! That's what I'm looking for. And the GURPS thing.
posted by curuinor at 3:56 PM on November 22, 2013
posted by curuinor at 3:56 PM on November 22, 2013
Are you looking at this for AI/knowledge-base uses? Maybe something like Cyc? Some of its ontology files are here, but I don't know how useful they are--I'm on a phone.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:40 PM on November 22, 2013
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:40 PM on November 22, 2013
Looking at more things along those lines, I see ConceptNet seems to have nice ontologies for your examples: human, mind, and body. It seems to be all free/open: here are the CC licenses it uses.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 5:00 PM on November 22, 2013
posted by Monsieur Caution at 5:00 PM on November 22, 2013
The Invisible Knapsack, which I also call the knapsack of privilege.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 5:32 PM on November 22, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 5:32 PM on November 22, 2013 [3 favorites]
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Aside from that, here's a list of assumptions that people make: List of cognitive biases.
posted by klangklangston at 3:49 PM on November 22, 2013