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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Our “curriculum”: update about the boys (August 2011)
Help Screen Options WordPress 3.2.1 is available! Please update now. Dolly’ll never go away Add New Post Blog posts options Post image*: Publish Preview Status: Draft Edit Visibility: Public Edit Publish immediately Edit Move to Trash Categories All Categories Most Used Citizendium Education Latest Post Other Weird Stuff Publishing Theory Communication Knowledge Privacy Uncategorized Wiki…
9 comments on Our “curriculum”: update about the boys (August 2011)28 minutes -
See a ReadingBear demo and volunteer to help finish the job!
Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been spent most of this year developing a free reading tutorial. We were calling it WatchKnow Reader, but now it’s called Reading Bear. I need you to help to finish it (see below to volunteer!). First let me show you a demo. It’s unfinished and undesigned, but…
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Reply to Nathan Jurgenson on anti-intellectualism
Thanks to Nathan Jurgenson for a thoughtful critique of “Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?” I wish I had more time to respond, especially since it is so earnestly intellectual itself. The following will have to do. Jurgenson provides a definition (which he says is based on Hofstadter’s discussion in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), which combines anti-expertism,…
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Should we teach math in elementary school?
From the anti-intellectualism department, arguably: An emeritus psych professor, Peter Gray, has made the argument in Psychology Today that we should not teach math in elementary school (K-6). (Hat tip, BrillKids Forum.) Well, I flatter Prof. Gray in calling it an “argument.” Maybe he has an argument elsewhere, but there isn’t much of one in…
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Update about the boys (June 2011)
I’ve changed quite a bit of what I’ve been doing with H. For many months, I was following a schedule according to which I assigned specific subjects to specific meals (we read, or do something else educational, at almost all meals). So, for example, at breakfast on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we did history, and…
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Geek anti-intellectualism: replies
My essay on “geek anti-intellectualism” hit a nerve. I get the sense that a lot of geeks are acting–quite unusually for them–defensively, because I’ve presented them with a sobering truth about themselves that they hadn’t realized. Consequently they’ve been unusually thoughtful and polite. This is quite new and startling to me–I mean, there’s something about this…
21 minutes -
Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?
This essay can be read in my 2020 book, Essays on Free Knowledge. Perhaps ironically, it is no longer free. UPDATE: I’ve posted a very long set of replies. UPDATE 2: I’ve decided to reply below as well–very belatedly…
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Is college a waste of time?
More from the anti-intellectualism dept.: I admit this is news to me: a “Thiel Fellowship” has been set up by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, which encourages tech entrepreneurship by under-20-olds with the requirement that the recipients not go to college for two years. Peter Thiel, as it happens, has B.A. and J.D. degrees from Stanford,…
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The value of knowledge – the anti-intellectualism problem versus the philosophers’ problem
I need to complain about my fellow philosophers. But maybe I’m confused. Maybe some philosophers out there can set me straight, somehow. In recent years, as my interests have turned away from encyclopedia-building and toward education, I have become increasingly interested in the whole social phenomenon of people appearing to devalue academic knowledge. This is…
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On Robinson on Education
This very striking video has been circulating, and I’m inspired to reply to it: First, let me say that the video design is very cool. Moreover, Sir Ken Robinson is quite an excellent public speaker. Finally, I agree with him entirely that standardization is the source of a lot of our educational difficulties. But much…
13 minutes
Support the Knowledge Standards Foundation:
/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 […]