Nine Theses on Wikipedia: A Special Feature
I submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.”
My Blog
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On the “God of the Gaps”
If God exists, he knows all the physical explanations of all the phenomena. From his point of view, there is no “God of the gaps.” Hence our inability to explain something about the world is no reason to infer that God makes human-style arbitrary choices. In other words, for example, God’s mechanism for creating life…
4 comments on On the “God of the Gaps”2 minutes
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On the Burning of an LGBTQ Flag
Last summer, Adolfo Martinez, 30, of Ames, Iowa, stole the LGBTQ pride flag hung above the entrance to the Ames United Church of Christ, and burned it in front of the nearby Dangerous Curves Gentleman’s Club. He pled guilty to the crime—for which he was sentenced to 16 years in the state penitentiary. This surprising…
8 minutes
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A Response to Jack Dorsey on Decentralizing Social Media
Jack, Let me begin by telling you (and my blog readers) a personal history of decentralizing social media and content generally. Decentralizing social media It began in January when I decided to lock down my cyber-life. Among the items on my “to do” list was: “Quit social media, or at least nail down a sensible…
8 minutes
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Why Pedophilia Is Evil
However it is defined, pedophilia is wrong; but beyond that, it is evil. In a deeply disturbing trend in the last few decades, pedophilia apologists have tried to soft-pedal the condemnation of this horrible crime and criminal ideation. They are very wrong. Here is why. Prefatory notes, July 13, 2019—I wrote the first draft of…
39 minutes
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A Celebration of Winsor McCay
My favorite illustrator ever, Winsor McCay (1869-1934), worked for decades as a newspaper political cartoonist, illustrator, and animator. I learned about McCay while browsing through books in the 1990s, I think it was, in a shop in Seattle’s Fish Market, and I just stumbled upon a collection of his work titled Daydreams and Nightmares, which…
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Against Anti-Natalism
The arguments for anti-natalism are terrible. The claim that can be justified in giving birth only if new people consent to the risks involved in new life is incoherent. David Benatar and many anti-natalists are constantly found assuming not living is preferable to living, but it strikes me as not just (a) unsupported by the…
29 minutes
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A Theory of Evil
First posted Aug. 16, 2019. Revised and reposted Nov. 4. Good to read alongside “Why Be Moral.” For a long time, the nature of evil eluded me. But dark contemplation of the Jeffrey Epstein case and of the very existence of pedophile rings has clarified the nature of evil for me. Here, then, is a…
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Introducing the Encyclosphere
This is the text of a speech I gave yesterday (October 17, 2019) at TheNextWeb’s Hard Fork Summit in Amsterdam. For now, you can go to Encyclosphere.org to sign up for news of the project. We’ll also give you opportunities to get involved within the next week or two. Update: I’ve added a video (produced…
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Want to help build an open encyclopedia network—an “Encyclosphere”?
We are fed up. After ten years of domination by big social media—which might finally be in decline—we are tired of giant Silicon Valley corporations using us contemptuously. We still remember an Internet in which we charted our own destiny. It’s not just social media. It’s Wikipedia, too. If you want to participate in the world’s largest…
7 minutes
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/larrysanger- An open reply to Jimmy Wales. He's wrong: Grokipedia won't necessarily be biased; and, obviously, the Trump article is badly biased. First of a series of replies to Jimmy's remarks in this Reason exposé: https://reason.com/video/2026/02/23/can-you-trust-wikipedia/
- I invited my X peeps to ask me questions and then "like" the various questions, and I would upload the answers in video form. Here it is! Christian identity – 1:10 "Call no man teacher" – 9:25 Role of government – 15:45 Authority & resistance – 19:15 Wikipedia labor – 24:20 Net value of Wikipedia […]