Category: Theory
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How I chose an email hosting service to replace Gmail
I want to lock down my cyber-life. One basic constraint is that I want to replace Gmail, and when I do so, I never want to change my email address again. My biggest concern is that I never again want to be beholden to any major Internet corporation that has shown its contempt for privacy…
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How I’m locking down my cyber-life
Drafted Jan. 4, 2019; updated occasionally since then; most recently updated May 11, 2019 Three problems of computer technology My 2019 New Year’s resolution (along with getting into shape, of course) is to lock down my cyber-life. This is for three reasons. First, threats to Internet security of all sorts have evolved beyond the reckoning…
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Social media stupidifies and radicalizes us
Back when the buzzword switched from “Web 2.0” to “social media,” I started to get quite suspicious. When I was participating in online communities, I wasn’t propagating “media.” That is something that boring corporate media types did. What would those boring corporate media types, or rather their Silicon Valley equivalents, do with once-unconstrained, lively, frequently…
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I am informed; you are misinformed; and the government should do something about this problem
Poynter, the famous journalism thinktank, has published “A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world.” This sort of thing is mostly interesting not just for the particular facts it gathers but also for the assumptions and categories it takes for granted. The word “misinformation” is thrown around, as are “hate speech” and “fake news.” The…
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Is it time to move from social media to blogs?
This began as a Twitter thread. I’ve finally put my finger on a thing that annoys me—probably, all of us—about social media. When we check in on our friends and colleagues and what they’re sharing, we are constantly bombarded with simplistic attacks on our core beliefs, especially political beliefs. “This cannot stand,” we say. So…
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The Well-Ordered Life
The well-ordered life may be defined as that set of sound beliefs and good practices which are most conducive to productivity and therefore happiness, at least insofar as as happiness depends on productivity. The well-ordered life has several types of component: goals; projects, which naturally flow from goals, and which are essentially long-term plans; habits,…
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How to crowdsource videos via a shared video channel
I got to talking to one of my colleagues here at Everipedia, the encyclopedia of everything, where I am now CIO, about future plans. I had the following idea. We could create an Everipedia channel–basically, just a YouTube account, but owned by Everipedia and devoted to regularly posting new videos. We could invite people to…
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Could God have evolved?
1. How a common argument for the existence of God failed—or did it? As a philosophy instructor, I often taught the topic of arguments for the existence of God. One of the most common arguments, called the argument from design or teleological argument, in one formulation compares God to a watchmaker. If you were walking…