The Big Here Quiz

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-big-here-quiz/

by sni • 4 years ago

49 20 4 years ago

FooHentai• 4 years ago

24 on the main quiz, 27 including the bonus questions. It helped that the full moon was last night, the sun only just set, and I live almost directly on top of a fault line to the point that the park down the road has a prominent ridge with a sign on it indicating it as such.

The latitude question had me stumped since there's basically nothing latitudinally or longditudinally projecting out from here. Eastern Russia, Middle Argentina, the top of Tasmania.

stavros• 4 years ago

I saw the "before your tribe lived here" question and realized this quiz wasn't for me, I don't know what people ate 6000 years ago.

uniqueuid• 4 years ago

This is a great tool to explain how unaware we usually are of the environment that has so many implications for us.

But I'd like to see this go one step further: How about we measure this continuously to see whether awareness drops?

That might show that (a) humans are getting more or less aware (I guess we grow more aware since information diffusion has grown immensely) and (b) the world gets more complex and thus harder to be aware of (pretty sure on this one, see reflexive modernity)

strstr• 4 years ago

Pretty sure this is something specific to “modern” places. I’m on vacation for a few days in the middle of nowhere Alaska and most of these questions are easier to answer for this spot than where I live.

A few are harder “After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?” (What’s rain? It’s -30f here…). Also the invasive species questions (Do any of them survive?)

jsmith99• 4 years ago

Surprisingly easy for religious Jews. Sunset today? It's Friday so that's around candle lighting time. Full moon? We are just over halfway through the Adar I lunar month. North? Easy if you pray towards the east.

I also live in a city (London) whose y and z coordinates are both approximately 0, which keeps things simple, although it's quite possible that the answer to 'where does your waste go' is the Thames.

nisegami2• 4 years ago

The watershed questions stumped me, but I feel like I had a rough idea of most of the others.

hammock• 4 years ago

Where do you live?

nisegami2• 4 years ago

Trinidad (Caribbean island)

Jensson2• 4 years ago

9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?

Seems focusing on colonizers. Most people don't live in places with a clear separation between the previous tribe and the current tribe.

Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.

Is it really that common for a new exotic species to get introduced every 5 years? Animals and plants are mostly adapted to the biomes they originated in and usually don't survive well if you take them elsewhere, not much survives in temperate forests/taigas that doesn't already live there.

cobbzilla• 4 years ago

A more charitable way to say “focused on colonizers” is that no tribe is “primordial” to its region; everyplace, everywhere has predecessor tribes.

Or more simply: We are all colonizers. No matter who you are or where you live, a different culture existed there before you. What can you learn about them?

Jensson2• 4 years ago

You mean your ancestors? Couldn't it just say "how did people survive before modern technology", that way it would be clearer. Otherwise you could say "they lived by working in factories", which doesn't seem to be the point. Europe used to be covered by a kilometre thick ice sheet, people didn't survive there then.

denton-scratch2• 4 years ago

I passed on seven of the first 30, so 23. Some of them depend on assumptions that don't apply here, or are unreasonably difficult (the Thames watershed is huge; Britain has fractures everywhere, and microquakes daily; I don't live near the ocean).

My "tribe" is a mixture of anglo-saxons, normans and celts. The celts, in particular, have been here since before recorded history. Who knows who preceded them; some celtic legends would suggest they were preceded by giants and "little people". Giants are said to grind human bones to make bread.

bibinou• 4 years ago

The Thames watershed is pretty small, you've left it if you've ever gone north of Luton.

denton-scratch2• 4 years ago

Well, it reaches from Kent and Essex in the east, to the borders of Wiltshire in the west, and as far as the South Downs. It includes the Chiltern and Cotswold hills. It's more than half the width of England, and I guess 100 miles north to south. I'm not sure that "pretty small" is fair.

I didn't know it stopped north of Luton, but I'm not surprised - I think three big rivers emerge at The Wash.

I think I guessed 30M for the population of the Thames watershed, based on 8M for London, maybe a dozen towns of more than 500,000 in the home counties, and loads of suburban sprawl and smaller towns. 30M is about 1/3 of the population of Britain, which seems about right. But even with a map of the watershed, it would be hard to estimate without a list of the populations of towns.

Perhaps I've overestimated the number of towns of over 500,000; I live in the largest conurbation in this county, and it's population is just 140,000.

Anyway, my point was that the watershed is big enough (and complex enough) that unless you happen to know the answer, estimating its population is pretty challenging.

casion• 4 years ago

It's interesting how many of these are geologically or geographically presumptive, or will be immediately obvious to people in certain areas.

I was able to answer all but ~5 questions because I'm a pretty simple area and I think most people would be able to answer most.

Does that mean I'm attune to nature or environmentally aware? Not at all. I would say much less so than the average person in the world since I almost never have to consider nature at all here.

josephcsible• 4 years ago

30) How many days till the moon is full?

This question seems like the odd one out, since unlike the rest of them, it's the same for everyone no matter where you live.

TigeriusKirk• 4 years ago

These are fun questions to ask people in casual conversation. Start with the simple ones like "Which way is north?" or "What phase is the moon in?"

shlurpy• 4 years ago

This is fun, but I do get the sense this is another iteration of "Persom who is an expert in X thinks its important for everyone to know more about X", where X can be basically any field.

ryanklee• 4 years ago

It's not clear to me what the expertise is that you seem to see. These appear to be multi-disciplinary questions that converge on the notion of place.

cafard• 4 years ago

"Watershed" is open to interpretation. Is it the Rock Creek, Potomac River, or Chesapeake Bay watershed I should answer for? (I think of Atlantic as a "drainage", for no good reason I can think of just now.)

The Big Here Quiz

Related Stories