Category: Theory
-
A list of skimmable chapters of the Bible (by ChatGPT-4, as edited by me)
I am constantly amazed by, and testing or playing with, ChatGPT-4. It is, believe it or not, a dab hand at Bible commentary, not that I recommend using it for that purpose. The point, however, is that its familiarity with the Bible is vast and encyclopedic. So I asked it what bits of the Bible…
-
How to Read the Bible All the Way Through for the First Time
About four years ago, I read the Bible cover-to-cover for the first time. I explained how I did it. It took me 100 days, and yes, as a result, I became a Christian. Since then, I have not stopped reading it. I read it again three more times, and I am now on a fifth…
-
The Encyclosphere Is Greater than Wikipedia
1. Online information is carefully managed Wikipedia is just one encyclopedia, a ridiculously biased one. The collection of all the encyclopedias—that is what I mean by “the encyclosphere”—is more wide-ranging, fairer, and much larger. It contains sometimes surprising and, in 2023, delightful variety. Articles in other sources are frequently much more credible than those in…
-
A dialogue with a chatbot
The following is a dialogue I recently had with a chatbot which shall remain nameless. I was curious about the extent to which the chatbot was aware of itself, and if it would acknowledge its errors and give me a cogent explanation of how it arrived at its errors. If you find this interesting, or…
-
Free Information of the Third Kind
The Generative AI Threat to Freedom, and How You Can Help to Stop It LarrySanger.org has relaunched with a new design I made all by myself. As I am now long gone from Facebook and no longer have a blue check on Twitter, please share this far and wide. Also, feel free to comment at…
-
Several Bible Study Tools and Tricks
There are a lot of great free Bible study resources online. Since I am about to start a new two-year (but in-depth) Bible study on April 2, I thought I would give you some ideas. If you are a Bible student yourself, I hope you’ll consider joining us on Telegram for the study (20 signed…
-
If Truth Is Complex, Why Is Fact-Checking So Simplistic?
For the last several years, powerful media and government organizations have been sounding the alarm with increasing urgency about what they are pleased to call “disinformation.” Defined in various ways, the main thing about disinformation is that it is somehow obviously, provably false, and this falsehood matters—if society continues to believe “disinformation,” bad things will…
-
Is There an Exit from Search Hell?
I would not use Google; it’s both censorware and spyware. And I would not trust Bing, or Yahoo, which is powered by Bing, for the same reason. Such reasoning is why many of us switched to DuckDuckGo in the last few years, despite the fact that Bing is one of their sources. In addition to…
-
Why Neutrality
I drafted this article for Ballotpedia.org, where it first appeared December 2015. I since published a slightly updated version (not the one below) in Essays on Free Knowledge. As a teenager, I habitually scanned encyclopedias, newspapers, and textbooks—angrily. I was on the lookout for bias. I had discovered, to my frequent irritation, that writers of authoritative…
-
Social Media Meets RSS, v2
What Is Minifeed? YOU want to control your social media feed. You want to own your follower lists. You don’t want to have to please the poor, pitiful moderators at some giant, cynical Silicon Valley behemoth. Just like on your blog, nobody should be able to shut you up—though, to be sure, they can shut…
