Goldkin's Journal: Musings of the Shiny Lizard

While writing on another topic, I came up with an idea that I feel deserves a post of its own. I call it: the Internet Cat Test.

The formula is, for any given collection of elements:
[Information Content] = 1 - ( [Elements with Cat Photos] / [Size of Collection] )

Yielding: decimal percentages between 0 and 1, where 0 indicates minimal information, 1 indicates maximum information.

While this measure is just applied silliness, what it offers is a heuristic for how information rich a feed is, as an inverse proportion of information to cats. If the majority of content is images that create small, endorphin-rich feedback loops in the brain (ie, pictures of cats), that's far less exciting, mentally stimulating, and rewarding for long-term growth than content that's about just about anything else. Including Advice Animals.

Of course, we can teach computers to identify cats with at least 74.8% accuracy, so relying on meta information to identify cat images isn't strictly necessary. This is nothing more than a simplification of concepts like entropy theory and information density as they apply to the human brain, distilled into a small test you can try at home. Plenty of extension can be made, as we attain a better grasp of how information is encoded within the realms of human psychology and neuroscience.

I'm surely not the first person to observe this, but I figured I'd write it up for humor's sake, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. Happy catting!



Extra Credit: get this accepted as a topic in a major scientific journal.

The victory fanfare plays. Ditties string in the background, signaling accrued experience, levels gained, and spoils acquired. The lights fade to black as the fanfare abruptly cuts out. From the orchestra pit, the haunting tune of the overworld theme begins to play.

Squaresoft RPGs would be so much more interesting as stage directions.

22:19 <Shiveneve> so you shared this Snargar the Friendly Dragon thing
22:19 <Shiveneve> from the onion
22:19 <Shiveneve> you must now have someone draw it

I like this idea. Is there anyone out there I can bribe to make this a reality?