Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - Timcast IRL - James O'Keefe BANNED On Twitter, Will SUE w-Wikipedia Ex-Founder Larry Sanger

00:00:00.000 you you

00:00:41.000 they finally got him James O'Keefe, they got him!

00:01:03.000 He's banned off Twitter.

00:01:04.000 He's still on Instagram.

00:01:05.000 But Twitter has permanently banned James O'Keefe.

00:01:08.000 They recently permanently banned Project Veritas.

00:01:12.000 And now they've come for James himself.

00:01:14.000 And this is where it gets interesting.

00:01:16.000 I think James is doing the right thing here.

00:01:18.000 He's announced he's going to be suing Twitter for defamation.

00:01:21.000 Why?

00:01:22.000 Twitter claims the reason he got banned was for operating multiple fake accounts, or something to that effect.

00:01:29.000 And James says, I didn't do that.

00:01:31.000 That's a false statement of fact, and now he's suing.

00:01:34.000 And I wonder why no one's done this before?

00:01:36.000 And it made me question some of these other individuals.

00:01:38.000 There have been people, very prominent, who have been banned from Twitter, and then Twitter says they run fake accounts.

00:01:43.000 And then I'm like, okay, sue them, because they're clearly lying, right?

00:01:46.000 And then these individuals are like, oh, well, you know, I'm not gonna sue.

00:01:50.000 So it makes me wonder.

00:01:50.000 This time, James is like, nah, I'm suing.

00:01:53.000 So I believe that James is telling the truth. 0.94

00:01:55.000 This is a ridiculous ban.

00:01:56.000 I don't think he was doing anything untoward on Twitter, but they banned him. 0.79

00:02:01.000 So here we go.

00:02:02.000 Interestingly, we have more James O'Keefe news because he announced he's going to be suing CNN as well.

00:02:07.000 So the dude is, look, Veritas is going above and beyond their scope of work, and it's good.

00:02:14.000 They're literally fighting the good fight.

00:02:16.000 They are not only exposing the media for their lies, they're actually taking the fight to the courts.

00:02:21.000 And in one of their recent legal victories, the New York Times, the judge ruled that if the New York Times wants to claim they're writing fact-based news, but then they inject opinion, it stands to reason they should be informing their Readers, and thus, Veritas won, defeating a motion to dismiss.

00:02:36.000 I gotta say, watching all this stuff, James O'Keefe might be, like, one of the only prominent leaders, in my opinion, when it comes to conservatism, actually doing something, winning battles, and challenging the system.

00:02:47.000 So, my respect.

00:02:49.000 We're gonna talk about all this, but we actually have interestingly perfect timing.

00:02:53.000 It's just so weird.

00:02:54.000 This happens all the time.

00:02:55.000 We try to book guests, and we'll be like, what's a good date?

00:02:59.000 And so we have the ex-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.

00:03:03.000 Would you like to just give yourself a quick introduction, Larry?

00:03:06.000 Sure.

00:03:07.000 Well, what should I say?

00:03:10.000 I grew up in Alaska.

00:03:13.000 All three of my degrees are in philosophy.

00:03:18.000 My claim to fame or infamy is starting Wikipedia.

00:03:24.000 I've worked on a long series of non-profit and educational projects and now I am the president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation.

00:03:37.000 We'll talk about that I guess.

00:03:39.000 Ex-founder of Wikipedia.

00:03:40.000 So suffice to say you're not happy with the way things went with Wikipedia.

00:03:44.000 Yeah, no, I'm also one of Wikipedia's leading critics now.

00:03:50.000 Interesting.

00:03:51.000 I'm not happy with how it's gone.

00:03:55.000 The reason I say it's interesting timing is that there's an overlap in the space of how Wikipedia operates, how fake news manipulates information, how big tech companies are banning people.

00:04:05.000 So we'll get into all that.

00:04:05.000 Larry, thanks for hanging out.

00:04:06.000 We got Ian, he's chilling.

00:04:08.000 You do have Ian Crossland, and welcome to my psychoactive experience, otherwise known as Timcast IRL.

00:04:15.000 Magnets.

00:04:15.000 And I want to tell you about the magnetic monopole.

00:04:17.000 If you're not familiar, it's a theoretical or hypothetical magnet that's not found in nature, but it only has one pole.

00:04:24.000 And so it has the magnetism facing in one direction.

00:04:27.000 I think if we can master the magnetic monopole, we'll have levitation.

00:04:30.000 Now, Ian is a co-founder of Minds.com as well.

00:04:34.000 Yes.

00:04:34.000 So this should be good.

00:04:36.000 We'll talk a lot about the censorship and the fake news.

00:04:38.000 And of course, we got Lydia.

00:04:39.000 She's chilling.

00:04:39.000 I am in the corner.

00:04:40.000 I'll just be nodding along tonight because this is way out of my wheelhouse, but I'm really excited to learn about all this stuff.

00:04:46.000 My friends, before we get started, head over to TimCast.com and become a member to get access to exclusive members-only segments of the show.

00:04:54.000 Yesterday was a hoot.

00:04:55.000 We had Jack Murphy and Seamus Coghlan from Freedom Tunes, and at one point Jack Murphy said he loved Ian.

00:05:01.000 Oh, thank you, Jack.

00:05:03.000 Now, if you want to see that, you've got to go to TimCast.com, sign up, and we're working on the site.

00:05:07.000 We're making it better.

00:05:08.000 You can see now, right at the top, there's a members area.

00:05:10.000 You can just click it.

00:05:11.000 We made it easier for everybody to find, and we're building things out because we're going to be rolling out a bunch of new content.

00:05:15.000 We're bringing in a news editor, a paranormal subjects matter editor.

00:05:18.000 It's going to be a lot of fun content, new shows.

00:05:20.000 We've got a vlog already produced.

00:05:22.000 We're going to upload it, make the new channel.

00:05:23.000 It's gonna be fun.

00:05:24.000 With your support, it'll get even better.

00:05:26.000 So do that. 0.56

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00:05:40.000 Let's jump into this first story.

00:05:42.000 So, definitely we're gonna get to, I wanna, you know, get into the nitty gritty of Wikipedia because I have ragged.

00:05:46.000 I was basically ragging on Wikipedia and then you tweeted at me and then I was like, yes, let's talk about, you know, Wikipedia.

00:05:51.000 But we do have some breaking news that I want to get into first.

00:05:54.000 From the rap, Twitter permanently suspends Project Veritas' James O'Keefe. O'Keefe says he plans to

00:06:00.000 sue the platform for defamation following the suspension.

00:06:03.000 Twitter permanently banned James O'Keefe Thursday. The Project Veritas founder spent the

00:06:08.000 preceding days posting videos taken of a CNN employee without that employee's knowledge, in

00:06:12.000 keeping with his organization's practice of covertly recorded content, but in violation of

00:06:20.000 Twitter's policy. O'Keefe, who had over 900,000 followers at the time of his suspension, told

00:06:26.000 the rap that he plans to sue the social media platform. Quote, the account you

00:06:31.000 referenced, James O'Keefe the third, was permanently suspended for violating the Twitter rules on platform

00:06:36.000 manipulation and spam, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed.

00:06:40.000 As outlined in our policy on platform manipulation and spam, you can't mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts.

00:06:47.000 And you can't artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.

00:06:54.000 That's an interesting statement to make.

00:06:56.000 Because now James could sue for defamation, assuming it's not true.

00:06:59.000 The rep declined to elaborate on the claim that O'Keefe was running multiple fake accounts, including how many he was running or how they were used in his statement.

00:07:07.000 O'Keefe said, I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I, James O'Keefe, operated fake accounts.

00:07:13.000 This is false, this is defamatory, and they will pay.

00:07:16.000 Section 230 may have protected them before, but it will not protect them from me.

00:07:21.000 The complaint will be filed Monday.

00:07:23.000 That reminds me of Watchmen.

00:07:25.000 Have you guys seen the movie Watchmen?

00:07:27.000 Yeah, I have.

00:07:27.000 Or read the comic at all?

00:07:29.000 I think I did once.

00:07:30.000 A little bit of it, anyway.

00:07:32.000 It just reminds me of when Rorschach is in prison and he's like, I'm not trapped in here with you!

00:07:37.000 You're trapped in here with me!

00:07:39.000 And it's not a good one-for-one analogy, but basically They started a fight with somebody who was looking for a... Well, I shouldn't say James was looking for a fight, but ready to win a war.

00:07:47.000 Yeah, he only goes to war when he's gonna win.

00:07:50.000 That's what I've learned about James O'Keefe.

00:07:51.000 He's been going to war.

00:07:52.000 He's been going to battle, I should say, to win this war.

00:07:55.000 So, you may have heard he sued the New York Times.

00:07:57.000 Oh, yeah.

00:07:58.000 Now he's also gonna sue CNN.

00:07:59.000 So, here's the next bit of this story, which will get us into the talk of censorship and fake news and things like that.

00:08:05.000 According to Newsweek, James O'Keefe, to expand his war on CNN with lawsuits, more video, Controversial undercover journalist and scourge of the left, so saith Newsweek, James O'Keefe appears to be waging a full-scale war on CNN that includes not only the undercover videos he's known for, but also a series of planned lawsuits against the news network and its anchors over issues that may not even involve him or his non-profit organization.

00:08:29.000 O'Keefe told Newsweek he will soon sue CNN and two of its journalists, Brian Stelter

00:08:34.000 and Anna Cabrera, for defamation in a report about Twitter permanently banning Project

00:08:38.000 Veritas.

00:08:39.000 The February segment featured Cabrera accusing Veritas of promoting misinformation and calling

00:08:45.000 a group of conservative actionists activists, none of which O'Keefe says is true.

00:08:50.000 Twitter reportedly banned Project Veritas over an anti-doxing policy after the group confronted

00:08:55.000 a Facebook executive outside of his home.

00:08:58.000 In the same February segment, Stelter claimed Project Veritas violated multiple rules.

00:09:03.000 Meanwhile, O'Keefe posted video of CNN, so this I think most people are familiar with.

00:09:07.000 Here's a statement from James.

00:09:08.000 He said, We are suing CNN, Brian Stelter, and Anna Cabrera, and we are going to represent others in defamation suits against CNN.

00:09:16.000 We are going to launch a division for lawsuits, O'Keefe told Newsweek.

00:09:21.000 I wonder where he got that idea.

00:09:22.000 I like that idea.

00:09:23.000 I believe we brainchilded that here on the show.

00:09:26.000 Well, his is a little different, but when he was on the show, we talked about the People's Defamation Defense Fund or something to that effect.

00:09:33.000 So when these news outlets start writing fake stories, there is an advocate to protect you from the media, the smears.

00:09:41.000 As we get into this space where everyone's a public figure, it becomes harder and harder to sue.

00:09:47.000 For instance, Nicholas Sandman in the Covington Catholic case, they argued he was an involuntary public figure because someone filmed him standing on stairs and now he was in the public spotlight.

00:09:57.000 It's insane we've come to that point where basically no one is protected anymore.

00:10:02.000 If Project Veritas is doing it, I'm stoked.

00:10:04.000 This guy's, you know, wins the battles.

00:10:07.000 There's a huge need for it, and I can only say that they eventually helped give the same treatment to Wikipedia, frankly.

00:10:22.000 There's been so many people who have been defamed by Wikipedia, and there hasn't been any recourse I remember back in 2006, I think it was, or 7, something like that, John Siegenthaler Sr., the father of John Siegenthaler Jr., I believe he's a co-founder of USA Today or something like that.

00:10:51.000 And the Tennessean, he was the publisher or the editor.

00:10:55.000 Anyway, very distinguished gentleman.

00:10:58.000 Elderly, retired.

00:11:00.000 And he, you know, they had essentially defamed him by saying that he had, you know, gone to live in the Soviet Union back in the day or something like that.

00:11:16.000 And it was bad and it was totally false.

00:11:19.000 And he basically criticized me over the phone back then, and I felt bad.

00:11:27.000 I really did.

00:11:28.000 It's like I took personal responsibility, and that's one of the things that made me realize that, you know, real people are harmed by this sort of thing.

00:11:39.000 When did you... So look, I guess in the context of James and all this, I think he's someone who has seen the lies and the smears firsthand for a very long time.

00:11:50.000 Sure.

00:11:51.000 So I went to Wikipedia and I looked up Project Veritas, and it says definitively they produce deceptively edited videos.

00:11:58.000 And I'm like, what's the source for this?

00:12:00.000 And I click it, it actually links to like 24 different articles.

00:12:03.000 The problem is the word deceptive is an opinion.

00:12:06.000 Not a statement of fact, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia supposedly showing you the facts.

00:12:12.000 So I think for James, he just finally was sick of it and said, let's go to war and start fighting back, which he is.

00:12:18.000 I'm curious.

00:12:20.000 I mean, that story about this guy from yesterday, that was, that was the first moment you realized that, you know, defamation was occurring or?

00:12:27.000 Of course I knew that there was defamation going on before that, but he really brought it home to me because he was actually a victim, and he was a distinguished old Southern gentleman, and he was criticizing me personally.

00:12:46.000 So that's what really made it hit home.

00:12:49.000 It didn't matter at the time that I was actually starting a competing website.

00:12:54.000 I still took responsibility for Wikipedia.

00:12:59.000 I don't understand why James hasn't launched a nuke against Wikipedia right now.

00:13:03.000 It says on Wikipedia, Project Veritas, Purpose, Disinformation.

00:13:09.000 Wow.

00:13:10.000 Outright.

00:13:11.000 Yeah, if there's a far-right activist group, the group produces deceptively edited videos.

00:13:18.000 So I think this is... That materially damages his reputation.

00:13:23.000 And the thing is, Wikipedia does that to a lot of people.

00:13:27.000 Now, right?

00:13:29.000 And they're hiding behind Section 230.

00:13:32.000 They're hiding behind that protection.

00:13:36.000 There is absolutely no recourse that anybody has due to the legal framework in which Wikipedia operates.

00:13:44.000 I've known about this for a long time, you know, and I just...

00:13:49.000 I have wondered, you know, what's it going to take to change?

00:13:56.000 And maybe it's somebody with relatively deep pockets and lots of rich friends actually going after them in a big way.

00:14:05.000 You don't seem particularly—well, I haven't known you that long, but you don't seem particularly biased, right?

00:14:11.000 I think you tweeted in defense of James O'Keefe about him getting suspended.

00:14:18.000 Sure.

00:14:19.000 Well, in defense of him being suspended.

00:14:22.000 I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

00:14:22.000 In defense of his, of him, in relation to the suspension, saying James should not have been suspended.

00:14:28.000 Well, absolutely, yeah.

00:14:30.000 I think he shouldn't have been suspended.

00:14:33.000 Just recently on Twitter?

00:14:34.000 But I mean, I wouldn't agree that I'm unbiased.

00:14:38.000 Well, what I mean to say is, we all have our biases, but you don't appear to be a tribalist, like staunchly defending the conservatives for any reason.

00:14:47.000 No, absolutely not.

00:14:48.000 So that's why I think it's important to make the distinction.

00:14:50.000 We're talking about what Wikipedia was supposed to be.

00:14:52.000 I can only imagine what your original vision for it was and how it strayed from that.

00:14:59.000 That's my opinion.

00:15:01.000 Can you tell us about it?

00:15:02.000 When did you start it?

00:15:03.000 How many of you were there and what was the vision?

00:15:06.000 Right, well, I don't know, how long do you want me to go into this?

00:15:11.000 Because it's a long story.

00:15:14.000 I'm thinking about it when you're 17, like, where did it come from?

00:15:17.000 Okay, well, I won't go into too much detail, but I'll give you, because this is a big enough platform, probably a lot of people who are listening to this have not heard the story.

00:15:28.000 So I'll just tell it again.

00:15:31.000 Basically, I got to know Jimmy Wills in the mid-1990s.

00:15:35.000 He ran a discussion group for fans of Ayn Rand.

00:15:41.000 Really?

00:15:42.000 Oh yeah.

00:15:43.000 Wow.

00:15:44.000 Well, he used to be a hardcore objectivist slash libertarian.

00:15:51.000 And, well, we can talk about that later.

00:15:53.000 Whatever.

00:15:54.000 And I actually got to know him a little bit.

00:15:58.000 I wouldn't say that we ever became friends, but we were good acquaintances and we were friendly.

00:16:05.000 And I actually met him in person a couple of times back in the mid-1990s.

00:16:09.000 And then about, I guess, at the end of 1999, early 2000, I was deciding what I was going to do with this website

00:16:20.000 that I had called Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports.

00:16:25.000 Oh wow!

00:16:26.000 Yeah, and I made some proposals and sent it out to different acquaintances.

00:16:34.000 He was one and he said, Why don't you come to work for me?

00:16:38.000 I want to start this free, public, contributed encyclopedia built on the model of Linux, so open source, except it's not open source, it's open content, and he gave me stuff to read, and I said yes.

00:16:57.000 I actually have, to answer your question, dreamed about things that I could do with a philosophy degree if I didn't want to become a professor, which eventually I decided not to do back in like 1996.

00:17:16.000 And one of them was an encyclopedia editor.

00:17:19.000 And here somebody is offering me the opportunity to start my own encyclopedia.

00:17:24.000 Yeah, it was really cool.

00:17:26.000 So that was my job, basically, to start something.

00:17:29.000 He had the domain name, it was called Newpedia, and I organized a group of hundreds of PhDs.

00:17:39.000 It was almost like organizing a whole college, really, because there were different departments and there were quite a few different people in the different departments and so forth.

00:17:49.000 But I sort of worked with these people, and being academics, they like things being very regimented and top-down, and that's the system that we ended up with.

00:18:03.000 Negotiating with them, we ended up with a system that had seven steps, and it was a lot of work to get an article through that system.

00:18:11.000 So, in the end, we realized, actually I shouldn't say in the end, close to the beginning actually, we realized, we were well agreed that there needed something, we needed something to make it a lot easier for people to contribute.

00:18:31.000 Just the average person.

00:18:33.000 So, I cast around different ways of allowing other people to contribute.

00:18:39.000 And I eventually, a friend of mine, and this was January 2nd of 2001, he told me about WikiWiki software.

00:18:55.000 The WikiWiki web, that's the original wiki.

00:18:58.000 Portland Pattern Repository.

00:19:00.000 It's a repository of software programming patterns.

00:19:06.000 And then that same concept of a sort of like a public bulletin board anybody could write anything they want and edit anything and yet somehow magically it works okay and he explained how and why it could work and I said wow this actually might be a way we should try this out because the software was free

00:19:31.000 So that same evening I went back, and I think Ben Kovitz is the name of my friend.

00:19:39.000 We had a Mexican dinner in which he explained all this to me.

00:19:44.000 I went back to my apartment and wrote out a one-page proposal to Jimmy Wales and said, can you guys install the software for me to use?

00:20:01.000 So a couple of days later that was done, and so I just went to work describing what a wiki encyclopedia would be like.

00:20:11.000 And it changed the culture.

00:20:15.000 WikiWikis had been around for six years before that, so there was already a sort of internet culture surrounding wikis.

00:20:22.000 So we had to sort of change that and reappropriate Not just the software, but also the culture for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia.

00:20:37.000 And I was just amazed that after the first month, Despite a lot of people being very skeptical about it possibly working, especially the relatively straight-laced PhD editors of Newpedia, they didn't like the idea at all and sort of Jimmy Wales himself was kind of in their corner in the beginning.

00:21:09.000 And I said, well, okay, we're going to have to relaunch this, because originally it was going to be the Newpedia wiki, right?

00:21:16.000 It was a different source of content for Newpedia.

00:21:25.000 That's what it was supposed to be.

00:21:28.000 And I said, OK, well, if you guys don't want it associated with the Newpedia brand, then we'll just relaunch it under its own domain name.

00:21:36.000 And I came up with Wikipedia.

00:21:39.000 We registered that.

00:21:41.000 Originally, it was wikipedia.com because the whole enterprise was started by Bomis.

00:21:47.000 Bomis Inc.

00:21:48.000 doesn't exist any longer.

00:21:50.000 And they were a startup of the old dot-com boom of the late 1990s, and they were well-funded through ads, and then basically the funding disappeared, even as Wikipedia was taking off, even in that first year.

00:22:11.000 So basically, in that first year, everyone was amazed at how well it was working.

00:22:20.000 Even just like a month into it, people were just excited to participate and We observed after a few months how Google would spider all the articles, the new articles in Wikipedia, and there was a sort of like a stair graph of the growth of Wikipedia after the Google spider hit the site.

00:22:52.000 There would be a bump In both activity on the site and just new people working on the site.

00:23:02.000 And so it looked like a positive feedback loop.

00:23:06.000 And I thought, that's just, this can't be true.

00:23:08.000 It's like too good to be true.

00:23:10.000 But it was truly a viral phenomenon.

00:23:14.000 Um, yeah.

00:23:15.000 The more articles that get written, people search for things.

00:23:18.000 There's a one-stop shop that has that subject.

00:23:21.000 So Google probably favored Wikipedia as the parent domain.

00:23:24.000 And then whenever something got searched for because Wikipedia existed,

00:23:27.000 it treated it probably like a news source.

00:23:29.000 Yeah.

00:23:30.000 You know, you got it exactly.

00:23:31.000 That's pretty much how it worked.

00:23:34.000 I don't know, perhaps at some point Google made some special decisions that increased the overall ranking of the Wikipedia articles.

00:23:47.000 The page rank algorithm was simpler back then.

00:23:53.000 Who knows?

00:23:53.000 It doesn't really matter.

00:23:55.000 I think in the beginning it was just a lot of excitement about the whole idea.

00:24:00.000 So, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, I guess?

00:24:03.000 Very optimistic?

00:24:04.000 For sure.

00:24:06.000 I've been staring at this Project Veritas Wikipedia page.

00:24:09.000 Completely dumbfounded.

00:24:11.000 It has their address.

00:24:13.000 Why is the address for Project Veritas publicly listed with their mailbox number?

00:24:21.000 That's on Wikipedia.

00:24:23.000 Yeah.

00:24:23.000 That's insane.

00:24:24.000 That's weird.

00:24:25.000 Yeah.

00:24:26.000 I suppose they probably list locations for other corporations too, but it's very clear what they're doing.

00:24:30.000 They add methods, hidden cameras, video manipulation funded by donors trust, a disinformation NGO.

00:24:39.000 It's very, the whole thing is just smearing Project Fairchild.

00:24:42.000 And I'll let you guys in on some new information.

00:24:46.000 Project Veritas has been, I'll call it an upgrade, upgraded by NewsGuard from proceed with caution, right exclamation point, to under review.

00:24:57.000 Good.

00:24:58.000 That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get deemed credible by NewsGuard, but I can tell you this.

00:25:03.000 Project Veritas produces videos where you can see someone's mouth moving.

00:25:09.000 There you go.

00:25:11.000 The New York Times says, trust our source.

00:25:14.000 We won't tell you who it is.

00:25:15.000 You can't see him.

00:25:15.000 You have no idea who said this.

00:25:17.000 And I love it when they say sources familiar with so-and-so's thinking.

00:25:22.000 It's like, oh yeah, I'm familiar with the president's thinking too because I watch CNN.

00:25:25.000 Does that make me a credible source?

00:25:27.000 Apparently to these people.

00:25:28.000 Yeah.

00:25:29.000 So I look at Wikipedia and it's become, it's very obviously a political machine at this point.

00:25:36.000 Politicians in Congress edit it.

00:25:38.000 You can go in and see the IP addresses.

00:25:40.000 There's companies called reputation management firms that you can hire.

00:25:44.000 Anyone, you can go hire.

00:25:46.000 If you want a Wikipedia page, let's say you're a senior level manager at a company and you're like, man, I want people to know who I am.

00:25:53.000 You got five grand?

00:25:54.000 Just contact a reputation management firm.

00:25:56.000 They'll do everything that needs to be done from editing Wikipedia to getting the new sources created to then be credible and make it look like there's a grassroots effort to defend you if someone tries to get your page deleted.

00:26:08.000 And they'll win.

00:26:09.000 Because when you've got an army of unpaid Wikipedia editors versus a massive corporation getting paid, guess who's likely going to win?

00:26:18.000 So at what point did you notice those things, Larry?

00:26:23.000 It was very gradual to tell the truth.

00:26:26.000 I mean, we didn't...

00:26:28.000 Let's put it this way.

00:26:29.000 We knew when, I think his name is Virgil Griffith, basically published the identities of people, of organizations behind IP addresses that had edited Wikipedia.

00:26:49.000 This is back in like, I don't know, I want to say 2005.

00:26:55.000 And the CIA was among them, right?

00:26:59.000 And there were all kinds of politicians' offices.

00:27:02.000 So we knew back then, a long time ago, that because Wikipedia was already in the top 50 or whatever it was, that they were going to start doing that.

00:27:17.000 I think I didn't really get an idea of just how much the whole procedure might be controlled by various powerful forces until just in the last, like, I'd say five years, because it really has turned from

00:27:47.000 A well-meaning public service aimed at the neutral point of view, as it was called, as it still is called, but now cynically, to a slightly left-leaning reference, that was like in 2005 or so, and then a clearly biased but still reference work in like 2010, and then Basically, in the last four years or so, it's just been nothing but propaganda.

00:28:22.000 I mean, at least when it goes into political topics and anything that has any sort of socio-political aspect to it.

00:28:33.000 And I want to add this also to support what you're saying.

00:28:40.000 If you just think about it, and this is not to say we don't have evidence that this is the case also, but it just makes sense.

00:28:48.000 Look, it's like ranked 13 by Alexa.com, the website ranking service.

00:29:01.000 It used to be in the top five, so they've dropped a little bit, but it's still huge, right?

00:29:07.000 And why wouldn't, given that so much of warfare and spying that goes on is digital now, right?

00:29:25.000 It's silly to think that people would not be plowing enormous amounts of money into

00:29:33.000 it, figuring out the way that the Wikipedia game is played, and just manipulating it.

00:29:39.000 And the thing is, it's all, it's a black box.

00:29:43.000 Even to people who are thoroughly familiar with how the system actually works.

00:29:48.000 There are lots of decisions that are made between the power players in the system that we have no way of knowing about because the people involved are anonymous and the decisions are not being made on the website.

00:30:04.000 My favorite way to prove the Brokenness, the failed state of Wikipedia, is with, by going to the article man.

00:30:14.000 So I am not showing you these articles in any way to make a statement about the politics of gender identity or gender ideology.

00:30:22.000 I am simply showing this because.

00:30:24.000 There is a contentious political issue in the area of transgender spaces and gender ideology between conservatives and liberals and progressives.

00:30:34.000 I'm not going to make an assessment on that for the purpose of this segment.

00:30:36.000 I'm going to show you Wikipedia being broken, quite simply.

00:30:39.000 The first article we have is man.

00:30:42.000 Wikipedia defines man as an adult male human.

00:30:46.000 They say prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy.

00:30:50.000 They do make exceptions for gender later on in this paragraph, but it says definitively opening statement.

00:30:55.000 A man is an adult male human. 0.85

00:30:59.000 Let's go and see what male means. 0.99

00:31:02.000 Male, according to Wikipedia, is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete known as sperm.

00:31:08.000 A male gamete can fuse the larger female gamete or ovum in the process of fertilization. 0.95

00:31:14.000 A male cannot reproduce sexually without access to at least one ovum from a female.

00:31:19.000 Now, I'd like to show you trans men.

00:31:22.000 Trans man, according to Wikipedia, definitively opening statement.

00:31:25.000 A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth.

00:31:29.000 The word man in this article, trans man, links you back to the first article which says a man is an adult male human.

00:31:37.000 Now, I am not saying any of this, again, about the politics in any way of transgender, but how can Wikipedia simultaneously claim that a trans man is a man, but that a man produces sperm, while admitting or acknowledging a trans man does not?

00:31:54.000 So it's a broken feedback loop of an illogical assessment.

00:31:59.000 What happened is, On Wikipedia, there are various genres, I suppose.

00:32:05.000 The science editors are adamant about controlling their space in science.

00:32:08.000 You will likely not find a hard biological evolutionary biologist or biologist who's going to tell you that male means anything other than gamete sperm or something to that effect.

00:32:21.000 However, because of the way that impacts political ideologies, you then have political ideologues and activists who dominate the other space, which would involve gender ideology. 1.00

00:32:33.000 They then assert, a trans man is a man, a trans woman is a woman.

00:32:37.000 However, the science portion of Wikipedia does not agree, and will not, but because there's more science editors in that space, the activists can't change that article.

00:32:49.000 If you have four activists and six science writers, the six science writers will dominate the discussion.

00:32:55.000 But in the activist space about transgender ideology, the inverse is true.

00:32:59.000 And thus, you create an encyclopedia that contradicts itself.

00:33:03.000 That's the easiest way to point out, in my opinion.

00:33:06.000 And I only use the issue of transgender ideology simply because It is prominent in today's news space, and there is a hot political conflict over this.

00:33:16.000 And again, I understand a lot of people say there shouldn't be.

00:33:19.000 That's not the point.

00:33:20.000 The point is, if you want to call conservatives transphobes, well, then you've got transphobes who are editing Wikipedia in contradicting the posts by these individuals.

00:33:29.000 How can you have an encyclopedia that tells you two different things or makes an illogical statement?

00:33:35.000 Well, that's because it's collaborative, basically.

00:33:38.000 It's made by, as you say, different groups of people.

00:33:43.000 You explained it beautifully.

00:33:45.000 I think that's absolutely right.

00:33:47.000 Well, so then the issue becomes, when you look at someone like James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, Wikipedia is allowing unreliable sources and conjecture to be used as encyclopedic fact.

00:34:01.000 Right, right.

00:34:02.000 Well, they bless certain sources as, you know, pre-approved.

00:34:07.000 I mean, they include all kinds of stuff that is, by any objective measure, pretty far left.

00:34:16.000 And they ban all sorts of stuff that is merely on the right and not even very far right.

00:34:25.000 And it's...

00:34:27.000 Yeah, basically they have selected the sources.

00:34:31.000 Let's put it this way.

00:34:33.000 I wrote an article for my blog and it's been cited a lot in the last few months.

00:34:43.000 I think it's called Wikipedia is biased or something like that.

00:34:49.000 I can't remember.

00:34:49.000 Simple enough.

00:34:52.000 And it's really, it's very clear that Wikipedia takes sides in the culture war now.

00:34:59.000 Didn't used to.

00:35:01.000 But any topic that you can think of that is important to the culture war, you know, from topics like abortion, to subjects like religion, to figures like Hillary Clinton or Ronald Reagan, To, you know, philosophies and everything else.

00:35:26.000 Anything that has a connection to the culture war, Wikipedia now takes the left side of the dispute.

00:35:39.000 Even five years ago, it wasn't so clear.

00:35:43.000 It was biased five years ago, but at least they allowed the other side a say, right?

00:35:51.000 Even if it was biased.

00:35:54.000 Fifteen years ago, it was still running off the original steam of real neutrality.

00:36:04.000 Striking back then, to me, to compare Wikipedia to things like CNN, or for that matter, Fox News of the time, you know, where you could go there and you could really learn in depth about different competing sides of all these different issues.

00:36:22.000 That is no longer the case.

00:36:23.000 If you go and you look at about the issue, one of the issues that I found was the

00:36:31.000 adoption of, well, adoption in generally by gay couples.

00:36:41.000 That's an issue that is somewhat controversial.

00:36:46.000 There are different points of view on that, and you wouldn't know that from the Wikipedia article.

00:36:54.000 You mentioned the black box of Wikipedia and the power players that kind of run, if not, you didn't say run the site.

00:37:01.000 I don't want to put words in your mouth there, but it sounded like they're making the decisions.

00:37:05.000 And you said they're not people that work for the company, but who are they?

00:37:10.000 That's a good question.

00:37:11.000 I don't know.

00:37:16.000 Some of them work for PR firms, right?

00:37:20.000 And companies that specialize in the management of reputation via Wikipedia.

00:37:31.000 Okay.

00:37:33.000 I think there's got to be a fair number of people who work for spy agencies, not just like the CIA and FBI, but all around the world, probably, you know, doing battle with each other to make sure that the articles are Reading the right way.

00:37:52.000 I think there's a lot of corporate shills.

00:37:55.000 There must be, again.

00:37:57.000 There has to be.

00:37:59.000 They would be irresponsible, frankly, given the nature of the system, not to, you know, spend some money and just make the truth as represented by Wikipedia.

00:38:13.000 Reflect what they want it to be.

00:38:16.000 And you said that you thought a solution might be to get people to have their real IDs in order to be able to be an editor on Wikipedia.

00:38:24.000 Well, that's not a proposal that I'm making about Wikipedia.

00:38:30.000 I think it's a good idea.

00:38:32.000 It's never going to happen.

00:38:33.000 But at the very least, what they could do, and this is more conceivable only under Great public pressure.

00:38:41.000 Will they even do this much?

00:38:43.000 They need to at least identify by real names and identities the people who are making the important editorial decisions for Wikipedia.

00:38:54.000 So the administrators, the check users, and the bureaucrats, as they are called in the system.

00:39:02.000 Can you describe what the check users are really quick?

00:39:04.000 The check users, if I remember right, are the people who have the ability to look up the IP address associated with any account.

00:39:13.000 If you just go there and you make an edit and you're not logged in, which is still possible on Wikipedia, then your edit will be credited to an IP address.

00:39:24.000 Everybody can see that.

00:39:26.000 Thank you.

00:39:26.000 But if you simply make an account, then you can have your IP address hidden from people,

00:39:31.000 except for the check users and people who are above them.

00:39:35.000 Thank you.

00:39:36.000 It just seems like the people in power, they're biased.

00:39:42.000 They're part of the cult.

00:39:43.000 They're part of the leftist tribe.

00:39:46.000 And you talk about changes that need to happen, but I just don't see that being possible.

00:39:52.000 I don't see at any point the New York Times shifting back to reality, because the people who control the New York Times are either deferential to or part of the cult.

00:40:01.000 Yeah.

00:40:02.000 I'm not really quite sure what you mean by cult.

00:40:05.000 I'm just being offensive.

00:40:06.000 I'm poking them on purpose.

00:40:08.000 I'm talking about the ultra-woke tribal leftist establishment types.

00:40:13.000 Right, right.

00:40:14.000 They're definitely part of the establishment now.

00:40:18.000 Cult, I basically mean establishment.

00:40:19.000 The very idea would have been absurd to us back in 2001, 2002.

00:40:26.000 I mean, Wikipedia was part of a counterculture, partly because we were willing to represent all different points of view, partly because we were not beholden to any sort of corporate interests and so forth.

00:40:44.000 And even now, Wikipedia, even though it gets big donations from Google, so it kind of looks like the Wikimedia Foundation is beholden to Google and maybe some others with deep pockets.

00:40:57.000 Nevertheless, they say they're not responsible for the editorial decisions.

00:41:02.000 And I think that's true, probably, that the Wikimedia Foundation people there are not really responsible for the vast majority of editorial decisions on Wikipedia.

00:41:13.000 So it doesn't really matter necessarily that they're giving money to the Wikimedia Foundation.

00:41:19.000 It doesn't matter.

00:41:21.000 Those people still have ways of getting money to the people who are making the decisions on Wikipedia.

00:41:28.000 Not only do we have some evidence of that, you know, individuals coming and saying that, and PR firms saying, well, yeah, that's what we do, but it's obvious, right?

00:41:40.000 I mean, why wouldn't they?

00:41:42.000 That's what PR is, right?

00:41:45.000 You use all available avenues that affect your client's reputation.

00:41:56.000 That's what it's about.

00:41:57.000 Wikipedia is hugely influential, so of course it's happening.

00:42:00.000 Why wouldn't it be?

00:42:01.000 So Wikimedia is outsourcing the burden of editorialization.

00:42:06.000 It's kind of like when the government outsources their technology programs to private corporations, they can't get FOIA requests because they're not the ones working on it.

00:42:14.000 So we can't sue Wikimedia because they're not the ones that are doing this, maybe getting paid or bribed by Alphabet or Google.

00:42:22.000 Well, that's certainly what their defense would be.

00:42:25.000 Yeah.

00:42:27.000 And you actually would have to.

00:42:29.000 Right now, Wikipedia is known as a platform and not a publisher.

00:42:33.000 Is that right?

00:42:34.000 the people who are responsible for defamation using Wikipedia,

00:42:40.000 and they don't want to cooperate with that at all.

00:42:42.000 Right now, Wikipedia is known as a platform and not a publisher.

00:42:46.000 Is that right?

00:42:47.000 You were saying?

00:42:47.000 There's no legal distinction anyway. So like, it's irrelevant.

00:42:50.000 No, that's irrelevant.

00:42:51.000 No, that makes no distinction.

00:42:54.000 Really?

00:42:54.000 It doesn't matter if you're a platform or a publisher.

00:42:57.000 wouldn't then you know that makes no distinction really yeah the issue is

00:43:00.000 whether or not the speech came from Wikipedia or from its users it doesn't

00:43:03.000 matter if you're a platform or a publisher you could be a plumbing

00:43:06.000 company and if you have a comment section on your website and someone

00:43:09.000 comments that's something defamatory you can't but if But if they edit their user's comments and they're overseeing and making sure they're allowed, then aren't they then a publisher?

00:43:18.000 If it was an employee of Wikipedia that made a statement, then you could sue Wikipedia.

00:43:24.000 But what if it was an employee that oversaw a statement and said, that's okay to be on our website?

00:43:29.000 Nope.

00:43:30.000 I don't think you're actually disagreeing here.

00:43:32.000 I think that just what it means to say that they have Section 230 immunity is just to say that the editing activity that's going on is not being done by the Foundation, it's being done by the users, and therefore the Foundation can't be sued for the work of the users.

00:43:54.000 So, in the instance of James O'Keefe suing Twitter, Twitter publicly stated James O'Keefe did X. They're claiming that James was running multiple accounts.

00:44:02.000 Because they said that, James can sue Twitter.

00:44:06.000 What someone tweets, you can't sue someone for.

00:44:08.000 So a blue checkmark journalist can lie about James O'Keefe and he can't sue Twitter for it.

00:44:13.000 Wikipedia is the exact same.

00:44:16.000 It's the users who write the pages, not Wikipedia.

00:44:21.000 However, I think you still need to start suing.

00:44:25.000 And I think the issue is, the only way you actually can get through these suits is with case law.

00:44:31.000 Times v. Sullivan, which set the standard, was a lawsuit which set the standard.

00:44:34.000 So the only way to break through is to start suing until you have the appropriate argument.

00:44:41.000 You argue.

00:44:42.000 Wikipedia is a publishing platform where they make statements of fact as an encyclopedia.

00:44:48.000 They call themselves an encyclopedia, which means users are to infer that Wikipedia is a place where facts are being discussed.

00:44:54.000 If a user posts something and is agreed upon by a plethora of users, then I would argue that Wikipedia must either include, this is the opinion of our users in every page, otherwise Wikipedia is asserting it's a fact.

00:45:06.000 So my argument would be, by putting the free encyclopedia on every page, here we have Andy Ngo, the encyclopedia makes the average person believe they are reading facts.

00:45:16.000 It does not say, on this page, this page was written by a group of users who do not work for Wikipedia.

00:45:23.000 How is the average person supposed to know the inner workings of Wikipedia?

00:45:28.000 So you have to think about the intricacies of big tech infrastructure.

00:45:32.000 Most people know that when a tweet appears and it says Ian Crossland, it's a picture of you, and then it says something like, You know, I made a new loaf of bread with honey in it today.

00:45:42.000 That statement came from Ian Crossland, because Ian's name is on it.

00:45:46.000 But forward-facing Wikipedia pages do not say that.

00:45:49.000 You have to view the history in a different page.

00:45:52.000 The page that is produced, I would argue, is actually published, a statement from Wikipedia, and not a statement from its users, because the statements from its users are visible only in a different page called the View History page.

00:46:03.000 If a bunch of users come together, and imagine it this way.

00:46:07.000 If a bunch of people tweet things.

00:46:10.000 Let's say I tweet, Ian Crosland made kombucha.

00:46:13.000 Lydia tweets, Ian Crosland made bread.

00:46:16.000 And then Twitter...

00:46:18.000 Posts with a Twitter logo, Ian Crossland made bread and kombucha.

00:46:21.000 That is a statement from Twitter, not from us.

00:46:25.000 And it's up to them to verify whether or not your opinions, your facts, were real.

00:46:30.000 Well, there's still the actual malice standard, where Twitter could then argue that we believe this to be true based on the statements of Ian's friends, which a judge would probably find fair.

00:46:40.000 And many states have what's called anti-SLAPP legislation, which would knock this out immediately, making it very difficult to sue.

00:46:47.000 The issue is, you need to sue until you win.

00:46:55.000 You state that argument very well, and I want to see it tested in court.

00:47:04.000 I would just make more, because I'm not a lawyer, I'm not going to try to pretend to be able to mount legal cases or anything, but I am a philosopher, so I'm going to talk about the philosophical aspects of it.

00:47:19.000 The current legal situation in which there is no legal recourse under the current case law and the current statutory framework that is supposed to govern Wikipedia, it makes it possible for people to be It's grossly defamed by Wikipedia, and there is no recourse for that.

00:47:47.000 It's an incredibly unjust situation.

00:47:52.000 It just introduces all sorts of evil into the world that should not be permitted in a civilized society.

00:48:04.000 So, basically, there has to be some way to force a legal recourse.

00:48:17.000 And I don't know precisely what it is.

00:48:19.000 Maybe it's changing the law.

00:48:21.000 But I think there's got to be a judge out there who's going to say, look, John Siegenthaler Sr., or whoever, Cheryl Atkison is another good example.

00:48:35.000 I've talked to her a lot about her problems with Wikipedia.

00:48:41.000 and a lot of other people.

00:48:45.000 All of these people need some way to be able to correct Wikipedia.

00:48:54.000 They need to be able to set the record straight, because there is a record.

00:48:59.000 It's taken to be factual, just as you say.

00:49:02.000 That's absolutely right.

00:49:04.000 Well, if it said every citation showed the user who said it, then I would say that's a user's comment.

00:49:11.000 But if a user makes a comment and then Wikipedia puts it all into a page, I don't see that as a user comment.

00:49:17.000 I see that as Wikipedia making a statement.

00:49:20.000 Here's another part of an argument, perhaps, and this is more perhaps a legal argument.

00:49:27.000 This wasn't the case back in 2001, but it is now.

00:49:30.000 Wikipedia has a reputation It's a very important reputation, because if something appears on Wikipedia, a lot of people just assume that it's factual, right?

00:49:40.000 And, well, what are people supposed to do when lies, really damaging lies, occur in that sort of situation?

00:49:54.000 Well, they could try suing the Wikimedia Foundation, but the Wikimedia Foundation is going to cite Section 230.

00:50:04.000 They can try to sue the user, but how are they going to find out who the user is if the user is anonymous?

00:50:13.000 So, they could sue, there could be a class action lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation to the following.

00:50:21.000 by all these people who are harmed by the Wikipedia system, which basically allows all of these anonymous people to say damaging things that have no recourse.

00:50:39.000 That's itself a damaging situation for all of those people.

00:50:44.000 It's a perfect class action lawsuit because it's a whole class that is affected by the situation.

00:50:54.000 Do you think it would force Wikimedia to shut down if they were sued like that?

00:50:59.000 Probably not.

00:50:59.000 I mean, something had happened, I hope.

00:51:02.000 I know they ask for donations every year.

00:51:04.000 It seems like they're bootstrapped.

00:51:06.000 I don't know if they're actually getting funded by Google.

00:51:09.000 They probably got enough money, but you still gotta fund them.

00:51:10.000 They've got a lot of money, and they've got a huge endowment.

00:51:14.000 They're not hurting for money in any way, shape, or form.

00:51:18.000 I had some smear pieces written about me.

00:51:22.000 I mean, it happens periodically, but I don't get it nearly as much as some other people, which is really fascinating to me.

00:51:27.000 So, you know, I pulled up Andy Ngo's Wikipedia, and boy, is it in-depth.

00:51:32.000 Like, these people write about everything the guy does.

00:51:35.000 My Wikipedia is, like, kind of barren, and they're like, why won't anybody write about this guy?

00:51:38.000 I guess no one really cares.

00:51:40.000 But when I had articles written about me that smeared me, I remember I called a lawyer.

00:51:45.000 I called some friends, some people with legal experience, and I was told this news article First, if an academic writes an opinion piece and then a news outlet says, a new study says Tim Poole does X, you can't sue the news outlet, they're referencing a study.

00:52:02.000 Now, the study will claim that they just analyzed information and are giving an expert opinion, you can't sue them either.

00:52:08.000 So, okay, so what do you do when an academic who's an ideologue for the, for what do they call it, the humanities, asserts something to be a scientific fact when it's just their absurd opinion?

00:52:18.000 Nothing!

00:52:20.000 Well, when a news outlet actually smeared me definitively as the writer, I had talked with a lawyer.

00:52:25.000 And they said, you can't sue.

00:52:26.000 And I said, why?

00:52:27.000 And they were like, the things they're saying about you are opinions.

00:52:30.000 And I was like, but this is a news article!

00:52:33.000 They're saying Tim Pool did this!

00:52:35.000 And they're like, yeah, but that's an opinion.

00:52:36.000 And I was like...

00:52:39.000 I'm flabbergasted by this.

00:52:41.000 I think you need a new lawyer.

00:52:43.000 No, no, no.

00:52:43.000 I've talked to many lawyers, and they are correct.

00:52:46.000 I talked to lawyers for 10 years about copyright infringement, manipulation, lies, and smears.

00:52:53.000 I'm not going to pretend to be as well-versed as a lawyer.

00:52:56.000 But I've been through this many times.

00:52:58.000 The problem was, if they read an article that says Ian Crosland is a white supremacist, neo-nazi, who associates with neo-nazis, those are all opinions.

00:53:08.000 You can't sue them.

00:53:10.000 Well, James O'Keefe sued because the New York Times said they were deceptively editing or something to that effect.

00:53:17.000 And this is when we got new precedent, or at least something you could reference so far, where the judge said, if you are writing a fact-based news article or an article that's purporting to be fact, stands to reason, if your employees are injecting or interjecting their opinions, you must inform your readers of that.

00:53:36.000 This is what brings me to the argument I'm making about Wikipedia.

00:53:40.000 Same exact argument made by that judge.

00:53:42.000 If Wikipedia is asserting two things, that their articles are cited with reliable sources, and the articles are not opinion pieces.

00:53:51.000 This is an encyclopedia, right?

00:53:52.000 Encyclopedia means fact.

00:53:54.000 It's the facts about the issue.

00:53:56.000 But they're not showing the user posts.

00:54:00.000 Nor are they putting, this article was authored by, and a list of every single person who wrote it.

00:54:04.000 Then Wikipedia itself is making this statement.

00:54:08.000 So it's a very similar argument I'm looking at.

00:54:10.000 This is what's changing the game.

00:54:11.000 And it's only possible because Project Veritas decided to sue.

00:54:15.000 Even though many lawyers probably said, you can't win.

00:54:18.000 They said, we're gonna sue anyway.

00:54:21.000 I've talked to way too many lawyers.

00:54:23.000 I've talked to James about this on the show.

00:54:24.000 We've talked about this.

00:54:25.000 And it's very difficult.

00:54:27.000 James O'Keefe, up on his website, check this out.

00:54:29.000 Over at ProjectFairTask.com, they have a donation page.

00:54:33.000 Donate to support our lawsuit against the New York Times.

00:54:35.000 They're trying to raise $1 million.

00:54:36.000 And you know what?

00:54:38.000 I'm willing to bet it's going to cost them more than a million dollars to sue the New York Times.

00:54:41.000 So when you're a small YouTuber, Or Twitter personality.

00:54:46.000 Or maybe you've got 100,000 followers. 0.93

00:54:48.000 And then a news outlet that has a 24-year-old far-left extremist who writes articles for them, writes mangled garbage saying Ian Crossland is a white supremacist. 0.67

00:54:59.000 How are you supposed to have a million dollars to sue a major news organization? 0.94

00:55:04.000 That 22- to 24-year-old psychopath has the powerful institution at their back and they can say whatever they want.

00:55:11.000 You can't.

00:55:12.000 So this is why we talked about this with James of the People's Defamation Defense Fund.

00:55:16.000 We're entering territory where everyone is a public figure.

00:55:20.000 A kid standing on the stairs at the Lincoln Memorial, they tried arguing he was an involuntary public figure.

00:55:26.000 You got a Twitter account, they'll argue he's a public figure.

00:55:28.000 She's a public figure.

00:55:29.000 Therefore, the actual malice standard applies.

00:55:32.000 How is somebody who is just like a social media user supposed to compete with the New York Times?

00:55:37.000 It's a scary thing.

00:55:39.000 Project Veritas got passed a motion to dismiss.

00:55:43.000 And they're well-funded.

00:55:45.000 I think they're a multi-million dollar operation.

00:55:47.000 You can look at their 990s, their tax forms, because they're a 501c3.

00:55:52.000 And they have good money, but they don't make nearly as much as the New York Times does.

00:55:56.000 The New York Times is bringing in, what, like $50 million a month or some ridiculous number from subscriptions?

00:56:01.000 The New York Times can just say, OK, everybody halt this month.

00:56:03.000 We're going to dump $50 million to nuke James O'Keefe.

00:56:06.000 And what do you do?

00:56:06.000 It's called lawfare.

00:56:08.000 So James has gotten pretty far, and it's amazing.

00:56:11.000 This guy, you know, the right, conservatives, moderates, the anti-establishment, whatever you want to call this faction, has very few active personalities.

00:56:20.000 Has very few individuals willing to go to war.

00:56:23.000 The left? 0.79

00:56:24.000 Every single person on the left, for the most part, is willing to go nuts.

00:56:29.000 They even throw bricks through windows and risk jail time.

00:56:32.000 But people on the right don't do that.

00:56:33.000 It makes me think of David and Goliath, this whole story that Goliath is the large, unstoppable warrior guy and David's this little guy that has no chance in the eyes of the masses of winning.

00:56:44.000 But because he actually has a chance, he knows he has a chance, and he has precision strike, he's able to throw a rock into the eye of Goliath and then blind him and then take him down.

00:56:55.000 But he really had the ability to do it.

00:56:57.000 If you have no ability, Don't try. 0.87

00:56:59.000 You're gonna get killed.

00:57:00.000 But James has righteousness on his side, I believe.

00:57:03.000 These people are doing the wrong thing.

00:57:04.000 New York Times.

00:57:06.000 It seems like they are defaming.

00:57:07.000 Twitter seems like they are defaming.

00:57:10.000 You are correct, but you have to recognize, David still needed the rock and the sling.

00:57:13.000 Yes.

00:57:14.000 So there's a lot of people with righteousness on their side, or a better way to phrase it is, the truth on their side, but do they have the sling and the rock?

00:57:22.000 Which is the money, the fundraising.

00:57:24.000 Exactly.

00:57:24.000 To be able to pay the lawyers.

00:57:26.000 And if you're a random beggar on the street seeking to defeat Goliath, and people are like, I don't know you, and you're walking around begging, you're not going to get the resources you need.

00:57:33.000 Well, I like this People's Defamation PDF.

00:57:37.000 P-D-D-F? 0.50

00:57:39.000 P-D-D-F? 0.50

00:57:40.000 Yeah, like basically an open community fund that will help people sue for defamation against these large corporations.

00:57:46.000 I think Wikipedia needs to be sued.

00:57:49.000 You know, let me tell you something.

00:57:51.000 I remember when Cassandra Fairbanks sued over being defamed because someone claimed that she flashed a white power hand gesture.

00:57:59.000 When she was just making the okay sign, it's not, but sure, whatever, the media just kept saying it was because 4chan said it was and congratulations, now it is.

00:58:07.000 I wonder when I see a lot of these lawsuits, I'm very curious, like, why the arguments tend to be so weak.

00:58:13.000 And, you know, typically I just assume I must not know enough about the law, you know, to frame a proper legal argument, but then invariably these lawsuits fail.

00:58:23.000 And I'm like, These judges are people. 0.98

00:58:26.000 They're not morons. 0.99

00:58:28.000 Have you tried explaining to them in basic terms instead of just making these ridiculous arguments? 0.99

00:58:33.000 Why don't you just say, like, take a look at your honor, what do you think?

00:58:36.000 And then you might lose, I guess.

00:58:38.000 There's good lawyers and there's bad lawyers, I suppose, one way to put it.

00:58:41.000 But I'm wondering, why is it that I'm sitting here and I can see what Wikipedia is doing and I can break down for you exactly what I see is wrong with this?

00:58:52.000 And it's what I said.

00:58:53.000 When you go to Twitter and Larry tweets something, we know it came from you.

00:58:58.000 But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it doesn't list its users in the article.

00:59:02.000 Even if you go to the New York Times, the New York Times puts a byline so you know who wrote it.

00:59:07.000 I'll be honest.

00:59:09.000 I can't tell you who wrote anything on my Wikipedia page.

00:59:12.000 You know why?

00:59:13.000 I'd have to go through three or four hundred pages to look at every single individual to figure out what user this actually came from.

00:59:20.000 Even then you're only going to get IP addresses.

00:59:21.000 Some of them, yes.

00:59:23.000 So it's not even an issue of coming from users, it's just random garbage splashed into a background that Wikipedia then publishes it under its own name.

00:59:32.000 Nowhere on Wikipedia does it say, does it say in the article, this article is written by an amalgam of users, here are the users, here's how many there are.

00:59:41.000 They're gonna need to buy wikopinion.com.

00:59:43.000 It is wikopinion.

00:59:44.000 It basically is.

00:59:45.000 That's all it is.

00:59:46.000 It's wikopinion.

00:59:47.000 I'm sure they earned that.

00:59:49.000 But, you know, so to summarize your point and the point that I was making then, Wikipedia has this total, how do you put it?

01:00:06.000 It has its reputation, it's asserting, putting its reputation behind the claims, the factual claims that are in the articles.

01:00:15.000 That's on the one hand.

01:00:16.000 On the other hand, they are not taking responsibility for the anonymous contributions, and yet it is precisely the system of anonymous contributions that they're putting their reputation behind.

01:00:35.000 So they're responsible for the anonymity.

01:00:40.000 They're, on principle, they're responsible for the anonymity, and therefore, insofar as that is the cause of the problem, they bear the burden.

01:00:57.000 I wonder.

01:00:58.000 I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

01:01:00.000 My page on Wikipedia is locked right now, meaning users can't edit it without special permissions.

01:01:06.000 I mean, that sounds like— You have to have a certain number of edits, I believe, in order to— Well, that sounds like a job criteria.

01:01:14.000 What's the difference between the New York Times saying you have to have approval from the editor or Wikipedia saying you have to have approval from our editors?

01:01:21.000 Yeah, well, I mean, they've got standards, but the standards are supposed to be enforced only by the volunteers.

01:01:30.000 So it's a volunteer community.

01:01:32.000 That's what they're going to say.

01:01:33.000 If Jane Doe writes an article for the New York Times saying Ian Crossland punched a dog.

01:01:40.000 Oh, Jane, I'm coming for you.

01:01:41.000 And it's a false statement of fact.

01:01:44.000 You could sue.

01:01:45.000 The crazy thing is, even in that case, there's still actual malice and anti-slab legislation, but the idea is, you could sue the New York Times.

01:01:54.000 James O'Keefe sued the New York Times because I think two reporters made statements about him.

01:02:01.000 The New York Times as an organization is responsible for publishing the speech of these individuals.

01:02:05.000 Why?

01:02:06.000 They're just users on a website.

01:02:08.000 Why is the New York Times able to be sued over what users wrote?

01:02:13.000 Because they're in the pay.

01:02:15.000 Because they're employees.

01:02:16.000 That means I should be able to publish articles on TimCast.com as statements of fact and say whatever I want about anybody and I can't be sued for it.

01:02:26.000 If Wikipedia can do it, why can't I?

01:02:29.000 Wikipedia has its masthead.

01:02:32.000 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

01:02:35.000 And then it has all of these statements that are written by who?

01:02:38.000 I have no idea.

01:02:39.000 Yeah, I don't think it should just be because they're paid employees of the New York Times, and that's why New York Times is liable.

01:02:44.000 I think because, like, a social network that has unpaid users, if the social network masks that and just posts the user's comments as, like, mine's, if mine's was to do that.

01:02:53.000 And this is mine's statement.

01:02:55.000 That would also be equally suable, I would think.

01:02:58.000 So this should mean that I can open up membersoftimcast.com to submit articles That I choose which will appear and just say, I didn't write it.

01:03:07.000 It was a user on my website who submitted it.

01:03:09.000 I just chose to have it published under my brand name, like Wikipedia does.

01:03:13.000 And you can click the source and see only in the backend, a list of different people who contributed to it.

01:03:19.000 And IP, only an IP address.

01:03:21.000 We have no idea who wrote this IP.

01:03:23.000 Sue me.

01:03:23.000 What are they going to do?

01:03:24.000 You know, maybe that's what I should do.

01:03:26.000 Maybe I should clone the Wikipedia model, because what will happen is, if someone sues and wins, I'll go, oh no!

01:03:33.000 Then I'll turn around and sue Wikipedia for everything.

01:03:36.000 If they're committing war atrocities against your people and you start committing war atrocities against theirs, it's not necessarily the best tactic.

01:03:44.000 I see your point.

01:03:45.000 Just to prove a point, like, look how horrible this is.

01:03:48.000 No, I'm saying we can write our opinions about people.

01:03:52.000 Look, if Wikipedia is issuing opinion pieces and asserting their fact, then why can't I?

01:03:59.000 I think you legally can right now.

01:04:01.000 You know what I'll do?

01:04:02.000 I'll have users write articles, and I'll call it The Encyclopedia from TimCast.com, and then I'll define encyclopedia, and then people can write whatever they want.

01:04:12.000 At least make a movie about it, like a short five-minute ridiculous dystopian nightmare.

01:04:17.000 And then I'll just say, Section 230, you can't sue me over what my users said.

01:04:22.000 And they'll say, yeah, but you're the one who's choosing what's get published.

01:04:24.000 I'll be like, so is Wikipedia.

01:04:27.000 Twitter bans people.

01:04:28.000 They choose what's acceptable on their site.

01:04:30.000 I am simply moderating for hate speech.

01:04:33.000 All right.

01:04:34.000 Yeah, I just got to make sure we don't get hate speech.

01:04:38.000 Actually, the Wikimedia Foundation is doing that to a certain extent.

01:04:42.000 They've actually announced a few months ago that they're adopting new policies along those lines.

01:04:51.000 So that's interesting.

01:04:53.000 Banning hate speech?

01:04:55.000 We should start talking about solutions now.

01:04:59.000 Legal solutions.

01:04:59.000 So you were at Wikipedia up until when did you leave?

01:05:03.000 I was just there at the beginning, basically.

01:05:06.000 2001-ish?

01:05:07.000 2002, at the beginning of 2002.

01:05:09.000 I was there for the first 14 months, or you could say the first a little over two years if you include the Newpedia part.

01:05:19.000 The Newpedia part is important because Wikipedia couldn't have taken off as fast as it did if Newpedia weren't behind it.

01:05:26.000 Well, when you left, had you seen something going awry at the company?

01:05:30.000 Is that why you left?

01:05:30.000 Or did you just have... Well, sort of.

01:05:33.000 I made an ultimatum to Jimmy Wales.

01:05:38.000 First, I left because they stopped paying me, because they're a source of funding.

01:05:44.000 I was the last of the new hires to be laid off.

01:05:48.000 Okay, fine.

01:05:48.000 And I needed to spend my time actually making money.

01:05:53.000 But then I permanently distanced myself from the Wikipedia project at the end of 2002, the beginning of 2003, and I made Jimmy Wales an ultimatum.

01:06:07.000 I basically said, you need to do something about the problem users that are driving away all the good people, and you need to give some way some sort of role, even if it's very almost nominal, that academics, experts, can have in the system.

01:06:30.000 Maybe approving, on a different website, official versions of articles.

01:06:40.000 And he basically rejected both out of hand.

01:06:45.000 It's like, I don't see the problem that you're seeing, is what he told me.

01:06:48.000 I could see like a switch that you would flip in the upper left if you wanted to create an overlay that was like the academic overlay of any given Wikipedia page or something like that so you don't have to bounce off the web.

01:06:57.000 That's actually what Citizendium does.

01:06:59.000 Oh, so what is Citizendium?

01:07:01.000 So Citizendium, and like I stopped working on it over 10 years ago now, so and I'm no longer even the owner.

01:07:11.000 I gave ownership of that to someone else and I'm sure she'll be announcing it when the time is right.

01:07:22.000 But the principles, the following principles are still true.

01:07:30.000 There's still a commitment to being more cordial toward good writing, to actually having a coherent narrative that pulls the article into a single coherent whole.

01:07:45.000 And the other thing is that there needs to be real names.

01:07:51.000 So there has to be real-world consequences for making your claims.

01:07:55.000 And the third thing, or is it fourth, is you have to agree to a sort of statement of principles when you're given an account.

01:08:07.000 So it's not hard to get an account.

01:08:10.000 Actually, you can make an account for yourself, but it becomes sort of official after somebody reviews the account.

01:08:19.000 This was like a project that you started after you left Wikipedia?

01:08:23.000 Yeah, well in 2006, it really got a big start.

01:08:27.000 In 2007, there was like front page news and all kinds of newspapers.

01:08:33.000 There was a big AP feature story with a sidebar and there's a lot of reporting about it.

01:08:40.000 And then it kind of petered out after a year or two, mostly because Wikipedia had its greatest growth curve at the time.

01:08:53.000 So, I wish Citizendium all the best, but the system is too similar to Wikipedia, frankly.

01:09:06.000 People who want to work on that sort of thing tend to go to Wikipedia.

01:09:14.000 I think actually when they do a sort of relaunch of the website, I don't know when that's going to happen, perhaps this year, there's going to be a lot of renewed interest in Citizendium.

01:09:31.000 There's another alternative to Wikipedia that has been around for a while.

01:09:35.000 It's called Conservopedia.

01:09:37.000 Have you ever seen it?

01:09:38.000 Oh yeah.

01:09:39.000 Have you ever seen it?

01:09:39.000 No.

01:09:40.000 So, first, let me just pull up regular old Conservapedia, and it says The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.

01:09:47.000 Sure.

01:09:47.000 And if you go to conservapedia.com, you can see a feature on Conservapedia, over 800 million page views, 1.5 million edits.

01:09:56.000 You've got popular articles like Second Amendment, Satan, Gun Control, Chess, Bible, George Patton.

01:10:02.000 All right.

01:10:02.000 Well, let's jump over to Equal Rights Amendment.

01:10:06.000 That was one of the featured articles.

01:10:07.000 What does Conservapedia say about it?

01:10:09.000 It was a proposed amendment to the U.S.

01:10:10.000 Constitution passed in Congress 1972, sent to the states for advocation.

01:10:14.000 Okay, blah, blah, blah.

01:10:14.000 We get the point.

01:10:15.000 It's got numerous citations, very similar to Wikipedia.

01:10:19.000 All right.

01:10:20.000 This is a .gov citation.

01:10:23.000 It seems this article is pretty good on Conservapedia.

01:10:26.000 Well, let's see what it says about Joe Biden.

01:10:29.000 Joseph Robinette Joe Biden Jr.

01:10:31.000 is the current occupant of the White House.

01:10:34.000 His right-hand henchman, Chief of Staff Ron Klain, has tweeted that 68% of Americans are correct in their... I'm not even going to read this stuff.

01:10:43.000 And it's got a picture of Joe who looks freaked out.

01:10:45.000 And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, I'll tell you this.

01:10:50.000 Conservapedia is more biased than Wikipedia is, and Wikipedia is pretty bad.

01:10:55.000 I think Wikipedia is definitely giving them a run for their money.

01:10:58.000 I mean, it's almost a parody of itself now.

01:11:03.000 There is another, even more instainly left source out there called Rational Wiki, and they're just the worst of the worst of the Wikipedia conspiracy site.

01:11:17.000 Well, of leftist flavor, yes.

01:11:21.000 Look, it's because conservatives don't do anything.

01:11:23.000 Sorry, that's just the reality.

01:11:25.000 They're sitting in their houses, minding their own business.

01:11:28.000 They want to be left alone.

01:11:29.000 That's what conservatism is.

01:11:30.000 I mean, it's all about, like, wanting to be left to your own devices and to basically preserve the order.

01:11:40.000 And, you know, like, causing a lot of noise is interrupting the order that you want to exist.

01:11:47.000 They're not preserving the order.

01:11:49.000 Yeah, no, it's like if you're sitting in your chair, actually have to fight now, unfortunately.

01:11:53.000 So right now, what we see is Wikipedia was dominated at the institutional level by left, you know, leftists, tribalists.

01:12:00.000 They're all about the tribe, nothing else.

01:12:03.000 Media institutions, same thing.

01:12:05.000 Corporations, digital marketing and conservatives have just sat back and watched it happen.

01:12:09.000 Yeah.

01:12:11.000 So then I guess in the long term, you lose.

01:12:13.000 That's right.

01:12:14.000 So can I talk about my new project?

01:12:17.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:12:18.000 What's the solution?

01:12:19.000 So the solution that I have been advocating for for a few years now and that I've finally been able to start working on is, well, I now call it the Encyclosphere.

01:12:36.000 So the Encyclosphere is not a website.

01:12:40.000 It's not an app.

01:12:43.000 It's not even a particular kind of software.

01:12:47.000 It will be, when it exists in all of its glory, it will do for encyclopedias what the blogosphere does for blogs.

01:12:58.000 It's going to be a network of encyclopedias.

01:13:00.000 So what ought to exist is the ability to find the latest and greatest articles from any source, that isn't articles that are encyclopedia articles, to surface the best very quickly, even if they were just written a couple of days ago.

01:13:22.000 They should be able to leapfrog over the lame stuff that's on Wikipedia, That appears there only because Google happens to push it at people, because it's on Google.

01:13:36.000 Are you familiar with cytogenesis?

01:13:38.000 Sure, yeah.

01:13:39.000 You've heard of this?

01:13:40.000 Oh yeah.

01:13:40.000 So this is, I believe it was an XKCD comic that coined the phrase, is that it?

01:13:44.000 Yeah.

01:13:44.000 So what happens is someone will randomly edit, correct me if I'm wrong, someone randomly edits a Wikipedia page with fake information.

01:13:51.000 Yep.

01:13:52.000 And then a writer at The Huffington Post will be like, I need to write about Larry Sanger.

01:13:56.000 So they pull up the wiki and it says he was an Air Force pilot in World War II.

01:14:02.000 Yep.

01:14:02.000 And then they go to write their article and say, Larry Sanger, an Air Force pilot from World War II, is also a co-founder of Wikipedia.

01:14:08.000 Publish.

01:14:09.000 Then someone on Wikipedia says, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is this?

01:14:13.000 What is this they're claiming this guy was an Air Force pilot in World War II?

01:14:16.000 He's not that old.

01:14:17.000 And then someone will go, ah, it's right here from Huffington Post.

01:14:19.000 And then they add the source.

01:14:20.000 And now it gets cited in Wikipedia.

01:14:23.000 And Cytogenesis references that Wikipedia fake information is used by journalists and then becomes the source for itself.

01:14:30.000 So gross. 0.93

01:14:30.000 It's like eating your own poop. 0.93

01:14:32.000 So how do you solve for that in your solution?

01:14:36.000 Well, you mentioned jumping over Wikipedia, for instance.

01:14:38.000 So I'm like, how do you get past things like that?

01:14:40.000 Okay.

01:14:40.000 Well, that's an issue about quality.

01:14:44.000 And what I propose is if we're already defining technical standards for the publishing of encyclopedial articles, in the same way that RSS and Adam are technical standards for defining the publishing of blog posts, right?

01:15:05.000 So if we're already doing that, then we ought to be able to add to those standards some standards for evaluating articles, for allowing people to post their ratings of articles.

01:15:24.000 So, a sort of decentralized, centerless, leaderless system for allowing people to declare what their rating of the various contents of the encyclosphere is.

01:15:39.000 And by the way, the encyclosphere is not like a new encyclopedia.

01:15:41.000 It's not an encyclopedia.

01:15:43.000 It's a collection of all the existing encyclopedias, or it will be, plus any new stuff that is added.

01:15:49.000 I have a solution.

01:15:51.000 Yeah, okay.

01:15:51.000 Those still exist, right?

01:15:52.000 buy some Funkin' Wagnalls or Britannica. Those still exist, right?

01:15:56.000 Sure.

01:15:58.000 No, but what about the paid encyclopedias? I mean, those could be an easy path or are those institutions biased as

01:16:05.000 well?

01:16:05.000 Well, a little bit. Not nearly as bad as Wikipedia.

01:16:11.000 Dated, I suppose.

01:16:13.000 That doesn't solve the problem.

01:16:16.000 They're relatively small, and people go to Wikipedia.

01:16:21.000 The reason that Wikipedia took off in the first place is that it's got all kinds of information that can't be found in other sources, and unfortunately that's still the case.

01:16:29.000 It's fortunate that it exists, right?

01:16:31.000 So don't get me wrong about that.

01:16:33.000 I've never denied that Wikipedia is very useful.

01:16:36.000 It is.

01:16:38.000 But it's unfortunate that that's the only easily findable source of information.

01:16:45.000 But if there were simply a way to get that information easily in front of people from many different sources, as if it were all in one source, Then, well, I think people would actually use that rather than Wikipedia.

01:17:02.000 It's kind of like what we're working on with the Fediverse.

01:17:05.000 Are you familiar with the Fediverse?

01:17:06.000 Yeah, well, it decentralizes encyclopedias.

01:17:10.000 So the Fediverse decentralizes social media.

01:17:16.000 I'm wondering when you do ratings on encyclopedia articles, so if you want a grand user rating system, so you want to put the best stuff to the top, if you get one article with 100 ratings, 98 of them are 4 or 5 stars, 2 of them are 1 star, would then you look at that user that put the 1 star and look across their scope of ratings and see if they've often given ratings that are counter to the mass and then downgrade their value as a rater?

01:17:43.000 Well, you're thinking about this from the point of view of an app developer, which is fine, but if you really want a decentralized system, you can't think in those terms.

01:17:53.000 What you want to do is simply create the technical infrastructure, the architecture as it's called, for getting the ratings out there and associating them with an identity, a real trustworthy identity.

01:18:11.000 So if a rating of an article about epistemology, say, claims to be from me, somebody can prove that it is actually from me.

01:18:22.000 So you need to solve those sorts of technical problems.

01:18:25.000 And then, once the data is out there, just like once all of the blogs are out there, or once all of the encyclopedias are out there, using the same standard, then there can be a zillion different apps that are built on top of that.

01:18:40.000 And you don't have to agree on whose ratings are worth What if the solution is actually kind of simple?

01:18:48.000 the rest of that. There can be a bunch of different algorithms for deciding what the

01:18:54.000 most reliable article is.

01:18:57.000 What if the solution is actually kind of simple? Remake Wikipedia, but require real identities

01:19:03.000 For everyone.

01:19:03.000 That's what Citizendium did.

01:19:05.000 Oh, really?

01:19:06.000 Yeah.

01:19:06.000 There's also peer identity, which is interesting because rather than me having to give you my driver's license and my identification so I'm centralized in some database somewhere, if I get enough people, another peers to acknowledge that this is me, They see that I like dogs.

01:19:21.000 I like cocker spaniels.

01:19:21.000 I love the number four.

01:19:22.000 I'm a big fan of the color green, just so you all know.

01:19:25.000 And then they can be like, yeah, that's Ian.

01:19:27.000 And then so all these peers across the network, also anonymous, can verify that they think that's me.

01:19:32.000 And then you go to each of these people and they seem legit because other people have verified that they think that's them.

01:19:36.000 You have a system of.

01:19:38.000 you know, value. I don't think that change is just requiring someone to use their name. It enables

01:19:42.000 anonymous personalities. Oh right, but you still have a verified identity but not your real identity.

01:19:49.000 Yes. Well, not your person. Yeah, let's put it this way.

01:19:53.000 Whatever the identity system looks like, I just want to make sure that it's not actually owned by

01:20:01.000 the U.S. government.

01:20:02.000 government or by Google or Apple or the U.N.

01:20:08.000 or any other sort of giant organization that is not responsible to the people.

01:20:16.000 It really needs to be a standard, a specification, a technical standard that just gets the information out there and then allows people to, you know, to come up with their own systems of, in this case, identity.

01:20:35.000 I agree.

01:20:36.000 The problem is my identity is based on the U.S.

01:20:39.000 Government has given me my identity, gave me my social security number.

01:20:42.000 That's one source.

01:20:43.000 Put a name on my birth certificate.

01:20:45.000 So, like, I am a product of this government right now.

01:20:47.000 My parents, my identity.

01:20:48.000 Yeah.

01:20:50.000 That's just a datum, though, all right?

01:20:52.000 We want a system of identity that is truly independent of that.

01:20:56.000 Basically, if you allow the government to own your digital identity, and that's what it's called, digital identity.

01:21:04.000 It's super important.

01:21:05.000 It's going to be one of the hottest, most important issues in, basically, internet politics of the next several years.

01:21:15.000 If it's owned by the government or if it's owned by Google or whatever, then they, in a certain way, they own you. Like there's all

01:21:24.000 kinds of things you won't be able to do if they decide to shut you off. So you have to be able

01:21:30.000 to own your own, not just your own data, but also your own identity. And right now there's fighting

01:21:39.000 going on.

01:21:40.000 It's very low-key, it's very polite, but it's real.

01:21:44.000 Fighting going on at the W3C.

01:21:47.000 I know one of the people who is doing the fighting, actually, between corporate interests who want a system that can be controlled, where you don't, in fact, own your own identity, that corporate interests do.

01:22:05.000 versus a system where you can own your own identity, and you can lay claim to anonymous identities.

01:22:14.000 That doesn't force other people to accept them.

01:22:18.000 I want to bring up this story real quick.

01:22:20.000 This is from the Daily Mail.

01:22:21.000 Pfizer's CEO says a third COVID vaccine dose will be needed as soon as six months after someone receives two shots, and then people will be vaccinated annually.

01:22:33.000 The reason I bring this up is first they said, you know, it's two shots.

01:22:36.000 They say it's three.

01:22:37.000 First they said one mask, then two.

01:22:39.000 Fine.

01:22:39.000 Whatever.

01:22:40.000 My point is not necessarily the amount of shots you have to get, I guess, once a year.

01:22:44.000 The issue is the vaccine passports and the private requirements for you to carry around some form of digital identity that will allow you access and carry around your private records.

01:22:54.000 If they're coming out now saying, well, you need three, what happens if you get your vaccine and you're like, great, back to normal?

01:23:00.000 Now you have your vaccine passport.

01:23:01.000 We've normalized this.

01:23:03.000 Then the CEO of a massive private corporation comes out and says, Actually, you need three.

01:23:08.000 Well, now all the other private corporations, the Walmarts, the stores, the cruises, the airlines, are going to be like, well, the CEO of Pfizer said it, so we have to update our rules because they're the experts.

01:23:19.000 Now you are forced to go back in.

01:23:21.000 This is why we can't allow this kind of thing to be normalized.

01:23:24.000 But I bring this up because the larger point you're making about a digital identity owned by the government is For one, you're completely correct.

01:23:34.000 We can't allow the ownership of our identities, but I think it's going to be private corporations that do this.

01:23:39.000 There's going to be a consortium of sorts that says, we should have a standard, like a blockchain thing, and then you have your private key.

01:23:47.000 Won't everyone like this?

01:23:49.000 Yeah.

01:23:50.000 It's decentralized because it's on the blockchain.

01:23:53.000 Right.

01:23:54.000 Most blockchain projects are not decentralized.

01:23:56.000 I'm here to tell you, folks, they're not really decentralized.

01:24:00.000 Not in the sense in which the DNS system and email and the blogosphere and Usenet, if you remember that, and many other things, the backbone of the internet, Is decentralized.

01:24:10.000 Blockchain ain't decentralized in that way.

01:24:13.000 This is why I think Bitcoin is actually a really great risk to freedoms.

01:24:19.000 And I've said this for a long time.

01:24:21.000 It'll be worth a lot of money because I think there's powerful interests that realize the power of Bitcoin and being able to track everything you do.

01:24:28.000 It's beautiful.

01:24:29.000 The artificial intelligence, the fact that the blockchain is public, they can track you.

01:24:34.000 If you are using Bitcoin, you have started publishing your digital identity to a certain degree.

01:24:39.000 Again, Bitcoin's very valuable.

01:24:41.000 I have some.

01:24:42.000 It's been skyrocketing in value, I think, for obvious reasons.

01:24:44.000 It's useful for governments.

01:24:46.000 But I remember going back, way back in the day, when Bitcoin was first gaining some prominence, and I had some anarchist left friends, some anarchist right friends, and it was really, the anarchist left weren't really paying attention to this stuff.

01:24:57.000 The Libertarian and ANCAP people I knew were like, this is amazing!

01:25:02.000 We can have a system of value to exchange.

01:25:04.000 The government can't track it.

01:25:05.000 And I was like, dude, this is the most easily tracked thing ever.

01:25:09.000 What are you talking about?

01:25:10.000 And they're like, no, you're wrong.

01:25:12.000 And I was like, wow.

01:25:14.000 How is it that you have walked into one of the most easily surveilled systems and you don't realize it?

01:25:20.000 So what happens when Bitcoin becomes a standard?

01:25:25.000 It's skyrocketing in value.

01:25:26.000 What happens when a Bitcoin, which has 8 decibel points, becomes worth the equivalent of $1 million?

01:25:33.000 You now have a digital international standard of easily tracked currencies that people will say it's decentralized to a certain degree.

01:25:41.000 But if every massive major multinational corporation requires the use of Bitcoin, well, it's not really decentralized then.

01:25:48.000 Because this international consortium can simply say, we all agree, we will not accept Bitcoin from Ian.

01:25:53.000 This address, banned.

01:25:55.000 And then any address associated with it, banned.

01:25:58.000 And because it's publicly exchanged, you will have to, there's ways to do it, but you'll have to then essentially launder your coins to another address, and then to a different address, maybe using Monero or something, so that they can't publicly see your coins are associated with a certain address.

01:26:15.000 But what happens if they say, if we track any of these coins Going through any address, they're no good anymore.

01:26:23.000 Well, then there's nothing you can do.

01:26:25.000 Those coins are essentially defunct, and they've excised you from society.

01:26:29.000 It's hard to do with cash.

01:26:30.000 With hard US dollars, You got paper money, it's valuable.

01:26:34.000 You can hand it off to somebody, they don't know who had it or when they had it, I mean, they can track it to a certain degree.

01:26:38.000 With Bitcoin, Ian's money could be deemed, all of the money in this address is now worthless, and anybody who trades in it will be banned from the network as well, and people will be like, I'm not trading with you, Ian.

01:26:48.000 There's no way to get that money out.

01:26:50.000 That's a beautiful system, I've never, look, I understand the technology, I think Ethereum's brilliant technology, it's gonna do a lot of really great things.

01:27:00.000 What people don't realize, you know, when the far right, as they say, started taking Bitcoin, news outlets started publishing the amount of money these people had.

01:27:10.000 There you go.

01:27:11.000 Yeah, I don't think using Bitcoin as a store of value is really the future.

01:27:15.000 I think it's the smart contracts themselves and the ability to transact a token, a digital piece of information that activates a program.

01:27:22.000 What's Ethereum?

01:27:23.000 Yeah, Ethereum.

01:27:23.000 Right, right, right.

01:27:24.000 That's brilliant technology.

01:27:25.000 You can remove the middleman of the dude sitting there flipping the switch for you once he gets his paycheck.

01:27:30.000 There's a lot that do that.

01:27:31.000 EOS is another one.

01:27:33.000 That's what the Everipedia, the blockchain encyclopedia.

01:27:39.000 Basically, they forked Wikipedia and they added another million articles.

01:27:42.000 A lot of them are auto-generated, but they've written a lot by hand for sure about all kinds of topics that aren't in Wikipedia.

01:27:51.000 They're like not notable enough or something or people who are only internet famous or whatever.

01:27:58.000 And it's cool and I support them.

01:28:01.000 They actually are built on Eos.

01:28:07.000 Unfortunately, they're an example And I don't want to say anything too negative about even EOS here, but it bothers me, and I'm sorry I just have to say it, that the block producers, at least back in 2019, I don't know what the current situation is, the people who are responsible for deciding what goes on the EOS blockchain,

01:28:32.000 They were all owned by Chinese corporations.

01:28:36.000 So, I mean, okay, it's decentralized in one sense, but it's kind of centralized in another really important sense, too.

01:28:43.000 The issue is private corporations, of which there is an ever-decreasing amount that own everything, The CEO of Disney can go to the CEO of Unilever and be like, hey, so we agree, like, Ian Crosland's banned from society, right?

01:28:58.000 And they'll make sure every company is off-limits to you.

01:29:00.000 I truly believe we need a program that will allow every individual to spin up their own token that they can use as their own value transaction.

01:29:08.000 So if you want to subscribe to my channel, you can give me $10 a month, or you can give me $9 a month in Ian coin.

01:29:14.000 But why would they have it?

01:29:16.000 So they get 10% off the subscription.

01:29:18.000 Listen, this is how Everepedia solves the problem, so I don't want to come down too hard on them, but they have told me that if EOS starts, if like the block producers, the Chinese block producers of EOS start censoring the content of Everepedia, then they'll just make it possible to To transact edits, essentially, using a different coin.

01:29:49.000 And that would be cool if we can trust them.

01:29:51.000 I just don't like having to trust people when the whole system is supposed to not require trust.

01:29:58.000 That's the whole idea.

01:29:59.000 It's supposed to be trustless!

01:30:01.000 I suppose we can just talk about the positives.

01:30:04.000 In a society with your digital identity owned by massive corporations, crime will be gone.

01:30:09.000 People will get arrested immediately.

01:30:11.000 There'll be no more need for investigations.

01:30:13.000 Passion murder will happen.

01:30:15.000 Robberies will happen.

01:30:16.000 But the people will be immediately apprehended and locked up in a private prison for, you know, for profit.

01:30:21.000 Uh-huh.

01:30:22.000 Sounds funnier.

01:30:23.000 No more trials.

01:30:24.000 All hard evidence.

01:30:25.000 Everything's in the blockchain and tracked.

01:30:27.000 And we will all live walking around with forced smiles.

01:30:30.000 I don't like that.

01:30:31.000 Everything is great!

01:30:32.000 I'm happy!

01:30:32.000 Are you happy?

01:30:33.000 Ian, you're happy?

01:30:34.000 I want to talk about Encyclosphere.

01:30:35.000 Hey.

01:30:37.000 Sure.

01:30:37.000 Okay.

01:30:39.000 No, that didn't make me happy, though. 0.98

01:30:40.000 Damn, that was funny. 0.97

01:30:43.000 How far along are you within Cyclosphere right now? 0.97

01:30:46.000 So, well, we've been laying the groundwork, basically, a few different things.

01:30:53.000 So we've raised some money, we've incorporated and we've applied for 501c3 status.

01:31:01.000 We've got three different software projects going.

01:31:07.000 One is called FactSeek, factseek.org.

01:31:11.000 It's just an encyclopedia meta-search engine.

01:31:14.000 It's not much, but it's useful for sure.

01:31:17.000 Another encyclopedia meta-search engine is, and these aren't owned by us, they're just affiliated with us, and the people who are working on those are people who are committed to helping to develop the standards for publishing encyclopedias.

01:31:36.000 Let's see, the other one is called encyclosearch.org.

01:31:42.000 And then we're also directly paying for the development, it's not encyclopedia related, but it's still decentralized, of a plugin for WordPress.

01:31:56.000 that basically it allows you to run your own microblog.

01:32:04.000 So like your own Twitter feed that you own.

01:32:08.000 Nobody can shut it down via a WordPress blog.

01:32:12.000 So I'm already doing that on a website called startthis.org.

01:32:19.000 But pretty soon that's going to be running a different theme.

01:32:23.000 And pretty soon after that, there's going to be a plug-in in addition to the theme, and in a later iteration, it's actually going to be possible for different blogs to talk to each other, and it'll look and act something like Wikipedia does, but it's all going to be transacted via blogging standards, the RSS and Atom So, like, when I pull up one of your articles, I'll be looking at, like, the dog went to the zoo, and I'll be able to click on zoo, and it'll take me, or, like, mouse over the word zoo, and it'll, like, pull up, like, a... Well, no, I was just now talking about decentralizing social media using this WordPress plug-in.

01:33:09.000 If you're asking about the Encyclosphere, the Encyclosphere is...

01:33:15.000 So it's hard to explain, and I apologize.

01:33:20.000 A lot of people aren't going to be able to get it on the first pass, and it's because it's complicated.

01:33:27.000 I'm not accusing anyone of being dense.

01:33:29.000 There's all kinds of brilliant people who need this explained several times.

01:33:33.000 And that's not because I'm smart.

01:33:35.000 It's because it's got a lot of moving parts right so the idea is we're building a network of encyclopedias or another way to put it is we're building a way to network together all of the existing encyclopedias and then for just ordinary people to add new content very easily and quickly so imagine a search engine

01:33:59.000 that covers all of the existing encyclopedias.

01:34:03.000 Maybe it doesn't have all of the content of the articles, but at least it has the metadata, so it allows you to find really quickly and easily the best encyclopedia articles on each topic.

01:34:13.000 That might be something you would use to find articles instead of Wikipedia, if it were really good enough.

01:34:19.000 Okay, what if, in addition to that, You had the ability through, say, another WordPress blog plug-in to just press a button after you've written your own one-off encyclopedia article, and it's added to the same database.

01:34:39.000 Then you wouldn't have to ask permission of anyone to add to this, and I think there would be all kinds of hobbyists and experts and professors and researchers and all kinds of people who would be delighted to have an effective way of adding to the world's knowledge.

01:35:04.000 And it wouldn't just like be buried way down in the search results of Google, it would actually be in a format that can be collected and redistributed in a zillion different ways by a bunch of different independent apps.

01:35:18.000 See, so it's creating the technical infrastructure for people making lots of different competing apps that tap into the same body of encyclopedia articles.

01:35:29.000 I would love for like, um, as I'm reading any boing boing article or whatever that I can mouse over and click on any word in the article or just mouse over and it'll show me an overlay.

01:35:40.000 If I want to pop this, you know, in cyclosphere app or whatever it is up browser extension, something like an extension searcher, as well as watching a video and you see the closed captions, I can choose any word that comes up in the closed caption.

01:35:53.000 And if I see a bird flying by in the video, I could somehow search what, like, what is that?

01:35:57.000 So that can bypass languages.

01:35:59.000 that already. Yeah, stuff like that. For some time, actually, I think Google built it where you could be

01:36:04.000 watching a video and then stop or they demoed this and the AI can identify in an image what a like Google does this,

01:36:11.000 you can show an image and like this is a lamp, this is an apple. And so that was one of the ideas. You're watching a

01:36:17.000 show, it could pause and you could be like, what's that shirt, it would do instant Google image search and then

01:36:24.000 show you the product where to buy it. Different idea, one One's an encyclopedia, one's a market.

01:36:26.000 But, you know, we should jump over to Super Chats, though, and see what the audience has to say.

01:36:32.000 And I'm first going to state something.

01:36:35.000 The other day, I get a message from my brother and he's like, hey, buy Dogecoin.

01:36:38.000 And I was like, whatever.

01:36:39.000 And so I just was like, fine.

01:36:40.000 And I bought some Dogecoin.

01:36:41.000 I didn't even think twice.

01:36:42.000 I don't know.

01:36:43.000 I don't care.

01:36:43.000 I was like, sure, whatever.

01:36:44.000 My 10 year old son has bought Dogecoin.

01:36:47.000 It was at 10 cents.

01:36:48.000 It's at 25 cents right now.

01:36:50.000 He's made money.

01:36:52.000 So I bought some, and I'm seeing the chat blow up where people are like, Dogecoin!

01:36:57.000 Full disclosure, I bought some.

01:36:58.000 I am not confident.

01:37:00.000 I just didn't care all that much because it's a quarter, so I like just bought some.

01:37:05.000 And now it's... Well, we'll see.

01:37:08.000 Could you imagine?

01:37:09.000 I would love this.

01:37:11.000 Considering I just bought some Dogecoin, I would love Dogecoin to beat Bitcoin and become the actual... But I guess Doge has no real support or something.

01:37:19.000 I don't know.

01:37:20.000 Anyway, my friends, smash that like button if you'd like to support the show and subscribe.

01:37:24.000 We are going to take your super chats.

01:37:26.000 The first super chat we have is RJ Colu says, Tim, if states, Texas, seceded, would you move to those states?

01:37:34.000 Yes!

01:37:36.000 Absolutely.

01:37:37.000 Really?

01:37:37.000 A whole other country?

01:37:38.000 A new country?

01:37:40.000 Texas?

01:37:41.000 Yeah.

01:37:42.000 Would it become its own country?

01:37:44.000 What about if it got invaded?

01:37:45.000 Actually, I gotta be honest.

01:37:46.000 I'd say no.

01:37:47.000 I would.

01:37:47.000 That's dangerous.

01:37:48.000 If Texas secedes, I would wait a little bit.

01:37:52.000 And if Texas stays true to its values and the Constitution and upholds rights and expands them, because I guess they're talking about constitutional carry, I'd probably do it.

01:37:59.000 What would you do there?

01:38:03.000 I don't know.

01:38:04.000 If that happened, I would worry about the US government stopping people from emigrating.

01:38:12.000 I mean, because I think that would be a real possibility.

01:38:15.000 I'd think about that.

01:38:16.000 There'd be a lot that would go into the decision.

01:38:20.000 There's no way to know without all the facts of the whole situation.

01:38:25.000 Yeah, you'd have to wait a little bit.

01:38:26.000 For sure, maybe.

01:38:27.000 I do want to mention, I am not giving financial advice.

01:38:30.000 I actually would say in my, you know, I am not confident in the fact that I just bought Dogecoin, but I like it's funny, so I'm glad.

01:38:36.000 The Doge.

01:38:37.000 The Doge.

01:38:38.000 Didn't you buy some?

01:38:39.000 Yeah, I bought a bunch.

01:38:40.000 I bought thousands of them.

01:38:41.000 Thousands.

01:38:42.000 Back when they were like nine cents.

01:38:43.000 It spiked to nine cents.

01:38:45.000 I was like, I got to get in on this.

01:38:46.000 And then it dropped down to four.

01:38:47.000 And I was like, what have I done?

01:38:48.000 But I had diamond hands.

01:38:49.000 That's right.

01:38:50.000 It's at 25.

01:38:52.000 I didn't break my bank for this.

01:38:53.000 I bought some Doge because I thought it was funny.

01:38:56.000 If Doge goes up to Bitcoin levels, I'd probably be like, I should have bought more.

01:38:59.000 Dude, Lex Freeman and Elon Musk.

01:39:00.000 It's funny is the entire proposal on which it is based.

01:39:05.000 We have like some of the preeminent artificial intelligence geniuses of the world, Lex Freeman and Elon tweeting about it and loving it.

01:39:11.000 Like, these are like the top geniuses on earth.

01:39:14.000 So, alright, we got a very important one from Jonathan Galtarini, JDLLM.

01:39:19.000 Larry Sanger, how does one classify as an ex-founder?

01:39:22.000 If you helped found the company, how do you unfound it?

01:39:24.000 I'm not intending to be rude, lol, I'm honestly asking.

01:39:27.000 It's tongue-in-cheek, obviously.

01:39:30.000 It's like, it's a reference to a couple of different things.

01:39:35.000 One is when people, when I'm identified as a co-founder, a lot of people have just assumed that I'm still there and they like criticize me for it.

01:39:46.000 And it's like, I'm tired of being criticized for Wikipedia when I'm like on the front lines criticizing Wikipedia myself.

01:39:53.000 Okay, so that's part of it.

01:39:55.000 Another part is Jimmy Wales back in 2004-2005 started denying that I am co-founder.

01:40:03.000 Really?

01:40:04.000 Oh yeah, that's a big story.

01:40:07.000 It was back then.

01:40:08.000 I don't really care anymore.

01:40:13.000 He still hasn't come out and just said, yeah, he's co-founder.

01:40:18.000 And so it's like, okay, fine.

01:40:23.000 I'm just going to distance myself from it entirely.

01:40:28.000 I'm going to call myself ex-founder.

01:40:30.000 Jimmy, now you are the sole founder.

01:40:33.000 Okay, so that's fine.

01:40:35.000 Go ahead.

01:40:36.000 All right.

01:40:36.000 We got Matt Daniel.

01:40:37.000 He says, Hey, Tim, I bought Dogecoin.

01:40:39.000 If you talked about it in January during the GameStop thing, it's gone from point 003 to point 19.

01:40:43.000 I made bank.

01:40:44.000 to 0.19 I made bank.

01:40:49.000 I mean, you know what?

01:40:52.000 I should stop and think to myself about what I'm doing because I often look.

01:40:57.000 I remember when I was talking about Bitcoin was $2 and now it's $20 and everyone thought that was it.

01:41:02.000 And then I still don't buy any.

01:41:04.000 So I remember when in November Bitcoin was at $13,000.

01:41:08.000 Now it's at 63.

01:41:08.000 Geez.

01:41:11.000 Ethereum was at 1,000.

01:41:12.000 I remember when Ethereum was like, what, five bucks?

01:41:16.000 And I was like, oh, that's a cool thing.

01:41:16.000 And everyone was like, this is great stuff.

01:41:18.000 And I'm just like, you know what?

01:41:20.000 I'm not giving financial advice. 1.00

01:41:21.000 I'm just going to criticize myself for being so smart and stupid at the same time. 0.98

01:41:25.000 Smart enough to be like, I can see why that's valuable, but I'm not going to buy it. 0.99

01:41:30.000 And now it's like, you know, 10 years later, I'm like, why didn't I buy it? 0.94

01:41:34.000 So I'm just going to buy dumb things, I guess.

01:41:37.000 Left is insane says, are you planning on taking substances like MDMA, LSD, or DMT in the future? 0.96

01:41:42.000 Yes.

01:41:42.000 If not, can you have someone on the show who knows a lot about them and can accurately describe the experiences?

01:41:47.000 Those are illegal, by the way.

01:41:49.000 Now, I suppose they're talking about in an academic setting where they have the legal authority to do so.

01:41:55.000 In Oregon.

01:41:56.000 No, I wouldn't.

01:41:57.000 However, there is that extended state DMT thing that we talk about, you know, every so often, which is really interesting.

01:42:02.000 Have you experimented much with psychedelics?

01:42:05.000 No.

01:42:05.000 He doesn't seem like that guy, Ian.

01:42:07.000 They're amazing.

01:42:07.000 Sometimes when you're in development, it helps.

01:42:10.000 You just gotta look at Larry, and then look at Ian.

01:42:13.000 And then it's like... Larry's definitely the psychonaut.

01:42:15.000 No, no!

01:42:17.000 I found with LSD... Ian, I think you need to look in a mirror.

01:42:19.000 LSD lets you see shape, like structure, easier.

01:42:22.000 For me, it did anyway.

01:42:23.000 And I was able to more mathematically perceive the shapes, which helped for development and coding.

01:42:28.000 Interesting.

01:42:30.000 Yeah.

01:42:30.000 All right.

01:42:31.000 We got Dr. Rollergator.

01:42:33.000 He says, congratulations on one million subs.

01:42:35.000 Lydia, great job as always. 1.00

01:42:36.000 Thank you.

01:42:37.000 Absolutely.

01:42:37.000 The real president.

01:42:38.000 Yeah.

01:42:38.000 Dave says, hey Tim, I was working at a plastic extrusion plant in Wisconsin, in Wisco, and the boxes we were putting some rolls in said made in China on them.

01:42:47.000 It makes you wonder how often it happens to other products that are actually made in the USA.

01:42:50.000 Yeah.

01:42:51.000 I bought an air purifier and it says, designed in Florida, made in China. 1.00

01:42:55.000 Or like, assembled in China.

01:42:57.000 I'm like, I get... Come on.

01:42:59.000 Just admit it.

01:43:00.000 You made it in China.

01:43:02.000 Yep.

01:43:03.000 Joseph Cole says, Tim, you have inspired me to move out of the city.

01:43:06.000 I am moving my family out of Denver.

01:43:08.000 We can't take the Dems BS anymore.

01:43:09.000 Thank you for the push.

01:43:12.000 That's, I mean, I don't know much about Denver.

01:43:14.000 I've been there a couple of times.

01:43:15.000 Uh, I was in Colorado Springs, Fort Carson, I believe, right?

01:43:20.000 Um, but I, yeah, I got out of the city because it's awful.

01:43:24.000 It's nice.

01:43:25.000 And you, you realize how awful it is once you get out of the city.

01:43:27.000 I've, we've been out of the city since 2005 in the excerpts.

01:43:32.000 I had a friend hit me up, you know, saying like, you know, I got the vaccine.

01:43:36.000 I'm so excited.

01:43:37.000 Normalcy, we're coming back.

01:43:38.000 And I'm just like, we've been in normalcy, like out here forever.

01:43:43.000 Like I was talking to one of the locals out here and they're like, nothing changed for us.

01:43:47.000 Literally nothing.

01:43:48.000 You're in the mountains, you're in the middle of nowhere.

01:43:50.000 You wake up in the morning, you go outside, there's chickens running around pooping all over the place.

01:43:54.000 In New York though, you can't go outside.

01:43:56.000 That's crazy, man.

01:43:56.000 L.A.

01:43:57.000 was just a depressing nightmare when I was there.

01:43:58.000 People waiting in line outside of Whole Foods with masks on, afraid of each other.

01:44:04.000 But you bought some Dogecoin to make you feel better.

01:44:06.000 I made a bunch of Dogecoin.

01:44:07.000 Got a bunch of Dogecoin.

01:44:09.000 Ian, secretly a Dogecoin millionaire.

01:44:11.000 I love it.

01:44:12.000 Don't, wait, don't hesitate.

01:44:14.000 Oh, don't give advice.

01:44:15.000 No, no, just in life, don't hesitate.

01:44:17.000 Oh, okay, okay, that's good.

01:44:18.000 That's good advice.

01:44:19.000 Daniel says, hey guys, I really enjoy what you're doing here and I've been watching you, Tim, since 2018.

01:44:23.000 You've really inspired me with everything that you've done and now I have my own independently hosted website, Webitology, on Google.

01:44:29.000 Hey, there you go.

01:44:30.000 Awesome.

01:44:31.000 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

01:44:33.000 Matthew Alcazar says the Texas State House just passed constitutional carry in an 84 to 56 vote.

01:44:38.000 They passed it?

01:44:39.000 Hear, hear!

01:44:40.000 Holy cow! 0.96

01:44:41.000 Now that it goes to the Senate?

01:44:42.000 I suppose it will go to the State Senate, if they have a State Senate.

01:44:46.000 And, uh, I imagine it's gonna pass.

01:44:48.000 It's Texas, of all places.

01:44:49.000 How do they not have constitutional carry?

01:44:51.000 West Virginia has constitutional carry.

01:44:53.000 You don't need anything.

01:44:54.000 You can just go to West Virginia and walk around with a gun.

01:44:56.000 You can put it in your belt and, you know.

01:44:58.000 It's normal in the West.

01:45:01.000 A lot of people don't realize this.

01:45:03.000 Not California.

01:45:04.000 Oh, no, no, no.

01:45:05.000 Not in California.

01:45:06.000 Oregon and Washington are pretty gun and guns.

01:45:09.000 Right?

01:45:09.000 That's my understanding.

01:45:11.000 Not the East Coast.

01:45:13.000 Yeah.

01:45:13.000 Colorado?

01:45:15.000 Well, Colorado's getting worse.

01:45:16.000 Oh, yeah.

01:45:16.000 Okay.

01:45:17.000 The Bros Durham says Wikipedia did a number on Count Dankula and the Quartering's boss.

01:45:23.000 Interesting.

01:45:25.000 Brendan Leach said, Mr. Sanger, thank you for making research in high school and college so much easier.

01:45:29.000 In particular, all of the links to the actual articles.

01:45:32.000 Yeah, that's what I always said.

01:45:33.000 It's like, if you've got a problem with the article, just click the link.

01:45:35.000 Seriously.

01:45:36.000 Here's the funniest thing I love about Wikipedia.

01:45:39.000 I proved a point to my friend, this was probably 15 or some odd years ago, that you could take a link to a long, complicated scientific journal, and then say whatever you want, so long as you put in the citations.

01:45:51.000 So you could take a scientific journal that says, like, you know, the reality of, you know, sleeping babies in a construction zone or something.

01:46:00.000 And then find an article about sleep apnea and then say whatever you want.

01:46:07.000 Loud banging noises have been found to be soothing for babies, and then put that citation next to it, people would click it, see the journal, not read the journal, and assume it was true, and it would just stay there.

01:46:15.000 That's one of the Wikipedia's many dirty little secrets.

01:46:18.000 They have very many, and that's definitely one of them, that a lot of the citations don't actually say what they're supposed to say, or they have basically added their own bias to what a less biased source says.

01:46:39.000 Right.

01:46:40.000 Yeah.

01:46:42.000 I mean, news outlets do the exact same thing. 1.00

01:46:44.000 Pathetic. 0.99

01:46:44.000 Yeah, absolutely. 0.99

01:46:45.000 Framing tools.

01:46:47.000 Brilliant.

01:46:47.000 So my favorite, you're gonna love this, is we had the big story about Russian bounties on American troops.

01:46:53.000 Turns out it's not true.

01:46:54.000 My favorite thing is, instead of coming out and saying the story's not true, what they said was, well, we had low to moderate confidence That Russian agents sought to encourage the Taliban.

01:47:07.000 And I'm like, whoa, hold on, hold on.

01:47:10.000 Hold on.

01:47:11.000 If you said we had low to moderate confidence that Russian agents encouraged the Taliban.

01:47:16.000 I'm seeking to be a trillionaire right now.

01:47:18.000 small likelihood they actually encouraged it. When you say you had low confidence they sought

01:47:24.000 to encourage them, you add that word and what the story really is, they think Russians at some point

01:47:30.000 considered talking to the Taliban but probably didn't. Yes, I'm seeking to be a trillionaire

01:47:35.000 right now. No article's gonna say that I'm a trillionaire right now. Well no, it would be like

01:47:39.000 saying, uh, breaking news, Ian Crosland, you know, paid one trillion, uh, paid a billion dollars

01:47:46.000 to build a helicopter in his backyard.

01:47:49.000 And then it's like later, it's like, well, actually the story may have not been true.

01:47:53.000 And then the quote you give is that you sought to pay a billion dollars to build a helicopter.

01:47:58.000 Yes.

01:47:59.000 I seek to find Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake and then become the true King of the Britons too.

01:48:03.000 Tim found Excalibur.

01:48:05.000 That's right.

01:48:07.000 Quote me on it for now.

01:48:09.000 They're creating another point removed.

01:48:11.000 Where the story is actually, it's probably some Russian guy who is like, hey Vladimir, do you want to pay Taliban to kill Americans?

01:48:19.000 And then they're like, nah, okay.

01:48:22.000 And then they're like, write it down and publish!

01:48:24.000 We have low evidence, what do they say, low?

01:48:28.000 Low to moderate confidence.

01:48:29.000 Low confidence that it may have happened.

01:48:31.000 All right, we got Student of History who says, It's gonna cost a lot of money.

01:48:35.000 I mean, look, Veritas is seeking to raise a million dollars to go up against the New York Times.

01:48:39.000 They're gonna need to raise millions more to go up against Twitter and CNN and Brian Stelter and Anna Cabrera's individuals.

01:48:43.000 And now he'll take the smear merchant's ill-gotten gains.

01:48:47.000 It's gonna cost a lot of money.

01:48:49.000 I mean, look, Veritas is seeking to raise a million dollars to go up against the New

01:48:52.000 York Times.

01:48:53.000 They're gonna need to raise millions more to go up against Twitter and CNN and Brian

01:48:57.000 Stelter and Anna Cabrera's individuals.

01:48:59.000 We'll see if they have it.

01:49:02.000 Alright, let's see where we're at.

01:49:04.000 Thank you.

01:49:07.000 Jacob N. M. Clutter says, Tim, I think you guys are looking at James not suing Wikipedia the wrong way.

01:49:12.000 He's going after the New York Times to weaken or destroy Section 230.

01:49:16.000 If he succeeds, that would open Wikipedia up to be sued.

01:49:20.000 Yeah, this is interesting.

01:49:23.000 This will be interesting.

01:49:24.000 There's a lot of dead citations as well.

01:49:26.000 For instance, the news outlets change their articles every day, minute after minute.

01:49:32.000 They'll publish an article, then update it an hour later.

01:49:35.000 Someone on Wikipedia will take an article that says, you know, Ian Crosland did a backflip, put it up on Wikipedia as a fact, and then an hour later, when this editor is long gone, the article changes to say, correction, it was a frontflip.

01:49:48.000 Now you've got a bad citation.

01:49:50.000 I wonder if we'll be able to fix hyperlinks so that in the future, if the receiving end of the hyperlink alters, the hyperlink disappears.

01:49:58.000 I think that was a proposal in the original World Wide Web specification, if I'm not mistaken.

01:50:08.000 And they decided against it because they wanted to keep the system maximally simple.

01:50:16.000 If you start trying to track stuff like that, it just becomes much too difficult.

01:50:25.000 I have the last little tidbit directly from one of the co-founders of the World Wide Web, who actually has weighed in in the Knowledge Standards Foundation, which is developing the Encyclosphere.

01:50:39.000 I'm proud to say, and humbled to say, Yeah, he basically said a lot of the decisions that we made, and a lot of the reason why HTML is as sloppy as it is, is that we wanted it to be simple and flexible.

01:50:59.000 And that was the right decision to make, basically.

01:51:01.000 It wouldn't have flourished the way it did if it weren't kept that way.

01:51:04.000 Is that Barlow?

01:51:06.000 John Barlow?

01:51:07.000 Um, no.

01:51:09.000 I like that guy a lot.

01:51:10.000 Someone mentioned in the comments... I don't want to name his name because I didn't have his permission to.

01:51:16.000 Oh, okay.

01:51:17.000 Shout out to the dude.

01:51:18.000 We have a comment, just a regular comment. 0.99

01:51:19.000 They said, um, Ian is a back-flipping, dog-punching white supremacist. 0.99

01:51:23.000 Tim Pool. 0.99

01:51:24.000 Quote it!

01:51:24.000 Because whenever I make references to fake news I'll be like, they'll say Ian did this or Ian did that.

01:51:28.000 Start my Wikipedia and I won't take it down.

01:51:31.000 So here's the funny thing, too.

01:51:33.000 It would not be a lie if a news outlet said, Tim Pool accused Ian of punching a dog.

01:51:40.000 Or they would say, Tim Pool said, quote, Ian punched a dog, because I did say those words.

01:51:45.000 Context is irrelevant to these people.

01:51:47.000 Then someone would take that and put it in Wikipedia, Ian has been accused of punching dogs.

01:51:53.000 Like, that's the laundering of information.

01:51:55.000 And flipping backs.

01:51:56.000 You guys ever do a backflip?

01:51:57.000 Flipping backs?

01:51:57.000 I have done many backflips, actually.

01:51:59.000 I used to go to a parkour gym every so often.

01:52:01.000 It was fun.

01:52:01.000 It freaked me out.

01:52:02.000 Backflips?

01:52:02.000 Yeah.

01:52:03.000 I should do one.

01:52:03.000 Front flips are easier.

01:52:04.000 I mean, I guess actually backflips are easier, but scarier.

01:52:09.000 Do you do backflips or back walkovers?

01:52:11.000 Backflips.

01:52:12.000 Oh, that's impressive.

01:52:13.000 Well, I mean, I don't do them anymore.

01:52:15.000 But there's actually a video on my YouTube channel that people won't be able to find of me doing a... I jumped up onto a platform and then front flip off of it.

01:52:23.000 Yeah, I probably could still do front flips.

01:52:25.000 I mean, I still skate and skateboard and stuff like that.

01:52:28.000 I've got a son who's trying to learn.

01:52:30.000 Skateboarding or parkour?

01:52:31.000 What's that?

01:52:32.000 Skateboarding.

01:52:33.000 Oh, doing front flips.

01:52:35.000 Doing flips, yeah.

01:52:36.000 There was a parkour gym in Brooklyn.

01:52:38.000 Now I'd go there and just bounce around.

01:52:39.000 It was a lot of fun.

01:52:40.000 I was really good at doing side tucks.

01:52:42.000 For some reason, that seemed the easiest to me.

01:52:44.000 And I think it's because it's the least scary.

01:52:47.000 Like, when you do a front flip, you gotta jump right, your head's going down.

01:52:50.000 You do the back flip, you don't want your head... When you do a side tuck, your head is not exposed.

01:52:55.000 It's like you fall, you fall on your back.

01:52:56.000 And it was really easy to learn because... That's cool.

01:52:58.000 What I would do is, this is how they taught me, I would just roll over this big foam obstacle, and you just jump and roll on your back.

01:53:06.000 And then eventually they have you jump more, and then jump more, and then they take it away, and then you're side-tucking and flipping.

01:53:11.000 And then, yeah, the parkour stuff was fun.

01:53:14.000 It's good fun.

01:53:14.000 All right, Krista Lucas says, I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when 20 cops quit over the weekend because of protests.

01:53:20.000 Bravo.

01:53:21.000 I'm applauding.

01:53:22.000 And I quote, they do not feel supported here and they don't feel trust.

01:53:26.000 They feel second guessed and they don't feel that they can do their job no matter how perfect they do their job without getting in trouble.

01:53:33.000 I am going to look into that.

01:53:34.000 That is a great story.

01:53:35.000 I would love to go in depth on.

01:53:38.000 All right.

01:53:39.000 Let's see.

01:53:40.000 Knuckles says Dogecoin to the moon.

01:53:42.000 23 cents.

01:53:43.000 That was actually a little while ago.

01:53:44.000 I think it's actually like 28 cents right now.

01:53:48.000 How is Dogecoin skyrocketing like this?

01:53:52.000 It's funny.

01:53:53.000 I'm not telling anybody to do anything.

01:53:55.000 I'm going to buy more, but only because it's funny.

01:53:58.000 It might be peaking right now.

01:54:00.000 So you might want to wait a day or two.

01:54:02.000 Just going in.

01:54:02.000 Nope, don't care.

01:54:03.000 I went in at nine cents and I don't regret it.

01:54:04.000 It did go down, but then it went back up.

01:54:07.000 I'm not spending that much money.

01:54:08.000 It's not like I'm throwing, you know, tons of cash into this.

01:54:11.000 I bought a little bit.

01:54:12.000 It's funny.

01:54:13.000 I want to be able to say I have Dogecoin.

01:54:14.000 That's it.

01:54:15.000 Did you buy Doge?

01:54:16.000 I did.

01:54:16.000 I should have bought it months ago when it was funny still, but you know, there you go.

01:54:21.000 All right, Jandon Patterson says, got the whole gorilla t-shirt collection, even a pink diamond gorilla t-shirt for the wife.

01:54:28.000 Got two of the regular plus two versions.

01:54:30.000 I am a gorilla 25 member Timcast.com as well.

01:54:33.000 Thanks for telling the truth and big thanks to Miss Lids. 1.00

01:54:37.000 We got so much hiring to do.

01:54:40.000 We need a web dev, so somebody who lives in the DC area.

01:54:44.000 Email jobs at timcast.com.

01:54:46.000 This is a web editor position.

01:54:48.000 We're looking for somebody who can just maintain and knows how to handle WordPress and probably CSS.

01:54:52.000 It's CSS, right?

01:54:53.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:54:54.000 That is content system.

01:54:55.000 What does CSS stand for?

01:54:57.000 There you go.

01:54:57.000 Such a noob.

01:54:57.000 There's a lot of people like that.

01:54:58.000 And so also post articles new there's a lot of people like that, but we're also looking for a master of ceremonies

01:55:04.000 Yes for the Friday night events of which we want to do every Friday with one big monthly event where our

01:55:12.000 Members actually have the option to buy tickets and show up in limited capacities probably like 20 or so people

01:55:18.000 That's an MC for Tim cast media Yeah, and the emcee would actually be helping run the vlog, so the bigger position is coming up with ideas for fun things to film, and then Friday night is the big, woohoo, fun stuff.

01:55:31.000 A bit of a cool job.

01:55:31.000 Yeah, bands playing, comedians, all that good stuff, you know.

01:55:34.000 So, jobs at timcast.com.

01:55:37.000 And, uh...

01:55:39.000 I don't know.

01:55:41.000 Resumes aren't as important as portfolio material.

01:55:44.000 Cascading style system?

01:55:45.000 Is that CSS?

01:55:47.000 I don't know.

01:55:47.000 Okay.

01:55:47.000 Send me pictures of websites.

01:55:49.000 Send me links to websites you've made and send me videos about vlog stuff you've done.

01:55:53.000 Thank you.

01:55:55.000 We're also hiring, uh, we're going through, we're looking for a paranormal subject matter editor.

01:56:00.000 So cults, murders, mystery, paranormal.

01:56:02.000 We have a lot of UFO news coming out right now.

01:56:05.000 So this would fall absolutely into the purview of this, this person, this writer.

01:56:08.000 The reason we're hiring for this, because this would also be the production for the new show we're putting together, which is a podcast on murder, mystery, cults, paranormal.

01:56:15.000 We'll be doing that with Cassandra Fairbanks.

01:56:16.000 It's gonna be a lot of fun.

01:56:18.000 Yeah.

01:56:19.000 All right.

01:56:20.000 Let's read some more.

01:56:22.000 Set me free says good wins in the end because it comes together to defeat evil.

01:56:26.000 That's what's happening now with all these different personalities echoing information.

01:56:30.000 Be good examples in your communities.

01:56:32.000 The left is coming together.

01:56:34.000 They're collectivists.

01:56:34.000 They're a hive.

01:56:35.000 So, yeah.

01:56:38.000 It's not over until it's over.

01:56:40.000 That's true.

01:56:41.000 Noah Poa says, 2 plus 2 equals 7, right?

01:56:43.000 Don't worry, Tim.

01:56:43.000 Jerry Nadler is just trying to fit in like us when he said, we're not packing the court, we're unpacking it.

01:56:49.000 Unpacking it from 9 to 13.

01:56:51.000 Come on, bro.

01:56:52.000 LOL.

01:56:53.000 I tweeted, 2 plus 2 is 7.

01:56:54.000 And then I replied, I'm just trying to fit in.

01:56:57.000 Because you saw the 2 plus 2 is 5 thing.

01:57:01.000 Big push from critical theorists that 2 plus 2 could actually equal 5.

01:57:06.000 I'm pretty sure that's not true.

01:57:07.000 But they can say what they want, I suppose.

01:57:13.000 Oh, there you go.

01:57:14.000 Jason says, back on Glocks, while the safety is a drop safety, there is no other safety.

01:57:19.000 It's striker fired, so it has no hammer, but you can buy a striker controlled device that

01:57:24.000 replaces the backplate to function like a hammer.

01:57:27.000 Safety plus.

01:57:28.000 Oh, there you go.

01:57:29.000 BCH broke $900?

01:57:31.000 Geez.

01:57:32.000 That's the Bitcoin cash.

01:57:34.000 Wow.

01:57:35.000 There was a period where Bitcoin cash, wasn't it like 10 grand or something?

01:57:38.000 God, I don't remember.

01:57:40.000 Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash forked.

01:57:42.000 Yeah, they forked.

01:57:43.000 And then no one knew which one was going to take over and Bitcoin Cash skyrocketed and then fell down and dropped dramatically.

01:57:49.000 This strikes me as the entire market is escalating because the U.S.

01:57:52.000 dollar is depreciating from inflation.

01:57:55.000 People want to have stored value somewhere else.

01:57:57.000 They're trying to hide it by making it go up and down and up and down, but it just keeps going up.

01:58:03.000 The US dollar keeps getting printed.

01:58:06.000 A lot of comments are talking about Dogecoin.

01:58:08.000 Throughout the show, people have been like, Dogecoin!

01:58:11.000 That's right.

01:58:12.000 Dogecoin is big. 1.00

01:58:15.000 Peanutbutterjelly says Doge because stupid people don't know how to buy XRP. 1.00

01:58:19.000 Eh. 1.00

01:58:20.000 Dogecoin's funny.

01:58:21.000 XRP isn't funny.

01:58:22.000 What am I supposed to laugh about?

01:58:24.000 I invest in things that I think are, like, interesting to me.

01:58:27.000 Like a cell phone company or something like that.

01:58:30.000 I like technology.

01:58:31.000 I invest in Tesla.

01:58:32.000 I like electric cars.

01:58:32.000 I have a fraction.

01:58:33.000 I was like, whatever.

01:58:34.000 I had, like, some, like, 20 bucks laying over and I was like, you know, just whatever.

01:58:38.000 But Doge is funny.

01:58:40.000 Cancer Culture says, when will you have Tim Dillon on?

01:58:44.000 He is the funniest comedian on earth.

01:58:46.000 I don't think we will have Tim Dillon on.

01:58:48.000 Probably because he's just too famous.

01:58:50.000 Tim.

01:58:50.000 I'd like to have Dave Chappelle on the show too.

01:58:52.000 Yeah, that'd be good.

01:58:53.000 I don't think he'll come on either.

01:58:55.000 Maybe we go down to Austin and get everybody to come do a big show with everybody.

01:58:59.000 We're planning on doing that tour, so maybe, you know.

01:59:02.000 Bradley Swan says, Donate to Project Veritas.

01:59:04.000 They will fight in ways many of us cannot due to our jobs or life circumstances.

01:59:10.000 Find the donate link in one of their videos and donate to these heroes.

01:59:13.000 There you go.

01:59:15.000 Bobby Bob says, I googled riots expected tomorrow and all but the bottom three results were about the Capitol.

01:59:22.000 Totally.

01:59:22.000 Have you seen that?

01:59:23.000 We did this on the show.

01:59:24.000 We Google searched riots on Monday because we just had these riots and what comes up?

01:59:30.000 The capital Trump, capital Trump, Trump, Trump.

01:59:33.000 We go on Bing and we get Minnesota.

01:59:35.000 We go on Doug.Go, we get Minnesota.

01:59:38.000 Google is absolutely filtering out Minnesota.

01:59:40.000 But if you Google protests, you'll get the riots.

01:59:45.000 Now, the reason we know it's Google is because CBS, NBC, CNN did write about riots.

01:59:53.000 And you can see those articles on Bing and DuckDuckGo.

01:59:56.000 So that means Google was filtering these out, so you couldn't see them.

02:00:00.000 Google is evil!

02:00:02.000 CNN was reporting on Biden wanting to pull troops out, but that Trump had wanted to pull them out by May 1st, and the Taliban's like, get out by May 1st, Biden.

02:00:10.000 So CNN kind of transparently reported on that.

02:00:13.000 I didn't expect them to acknowledge that Trump wanted us out.

02:00:17.000 JP McGlone says, Tim, Duke University in North Carolina is requiring the vaccine for students to enroll this fall.

02:00:24.000 This affects new and existing students.

02:00:26.000 Students who don't want it but want to finish undergrad are in a tough place.

02:00:30.000 Thoughts? 1.00

02:00:32.000 College is stupid. 1.00

02:00:34.000 So if a bunch of students don't want to get the vaccine and they don't want to go to school, I don't care. 1.00

02:00:40.000 Look, I think first and foremost, always talk to your doctor.

02:00:43.000 I don't like the idea of mandated vaccines.

02:00:47.000 However, if a private institution like a university wants to require that, then, I don't know, then don't go there.

02:00:55.000 It's that simple, isn't it?

02:00:57.000 Look, most of my friends have gotten the vaccine.

02:00:58.000 Most of the people, I think a good, maybe not most, but a good portion of our guests have all gotten the vaccine.

02:01:02.000 A bunch of conservative guests are like talking about how they've already gotten it or getting it.

02:01:06.000 So I'm, it's a really weird thing to see like Donald Trump talking about getting it, to see Ivanka Trump literally taking her vaccine selfie.

02:01:12.000 I do think the vaccine selfies are a bit like, you know, eye-rolly.

02:01:16.000 But it is weird that like Ivanka literally is coming out and like, get this, Trump sent out an email where he was furious that the FDA and the CDC pulled the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

02:01:26.000 He's like, I did this.

02:01:28.000 I deserve the credit.

02:01:29.000 They're trying to make me look bad.

02:01:30.000 But there are so many people who are like, not, you know, they don't want to get the vaccine.

02:01:34.000 I'll tell you this.

02:01:35.000 I believe in freedom, individual liberty, you do what you want.

02:01:38.000 If a private business wants to require it, that's where the problem is.

02:01:42.000 Because the vaccine passports is the freaky, invasive stuff.

02:01:46.000 But I do think, ultimately, you've just got to talk to your doctor.

02:01:48.000 And I think you should take your doctor's word for it.

02:01:50.000 I mean, if you don't trust your doctor, you've got bigger problems.

02:01:52.000 Or take a doctor's word for it.

02:01:54.000 No, your doctor.

02:01:56.000 Dr. Fauci is a doctor.

02:01:57.000 Yeah, you can have multiple doctors.

02:01:59.000 A second opinion is still your doctor.

02:02:01.000 Well, you could go to another doctor and get another opinion as well.

02:02:03.000 That's your doctor.

02:02:04.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:02:04.000 You go to 10 doctors, they're all your doctors.

02:02:06.000 Yes, yes.

02:02:07.000 I'm saying, don't trust people on TV or YouTube.

02:02:09.000 Oh, yeah.

02:02:10.000 Don't take my word for it.

02:02:11.000 Trust us.

02:02:12.000 Doctor, doctor.

02:02:14.000 I just, I think what the problem is, private corporations do at a certain point have a right to say, like, we don't want you coming into our institution or whatever.

02:02:20.000 The issue is when all of society does it, you have this problem.

02:02:24.000 And I'll throw, and I think that's where you might need regulation to defend rights, maybe under the 14th Amendment.

02:02:29.000 And I cite the, was it the Cuyahoga River burst into flames?

02:02:32.000 It did, yeah.

02:02:33.000 All of these companies were contributing a little bit of the pollution and saying, it's not me, I'm only doing a little bit.

02:02:37.000 And then we were like, okay, but y'all can't do it at the same time.

02:02:40.000 So it's the same thing with the vaccine passports.

02:02:42.000 It's fine, you know, I think if the company's like, you know, you should have a vaccine.

02:02:46.000 It's a problem when a regular person can't buy food and is not being treated fairly in society because of a medical issue.

02:02:53.000 Right.

02:02:53.000 And I'm not talking about anti-vaxxers.

02:02:55.000 I'm talking about people who are literally told by their doctors they advise against the vaccine for several reasons, of which there are many, many reasons.

02:03:02.000 Not everyone is able to go out and take every drug.

02:03:04.000 So let me address this person's question.

02:03:09.000 This is an idea I like to get out there.

02:03:11.000 I've been talking about it since the 90s.

02:03:14.000 I'm a big advocate of degrees by examination, basically.

02:03:20.000 It's a way to basically do something like homeschooling at the college level.

02:03:26.000 What I really want to exist is, and I've never seen this before.

02:03:34.000 I mean, degrees by examination exist, and they're very cool.

02:03:38.000 You can look into it.

02:03:39.000 You know, there's, I think it's Empire State College in New York, and then there's a system also in New Jersey and other places.

02:03:49.000 I think Arizona has a program like this.

02:03:52.000 But what I would like to see is a committee of like three or four professors who do like a portfolio examination and an oral exam and maybe a written exam that comes at the end of a course of study.

02:04:10.000 And then those people, just by themselves, independent of any institution, They declare that you are, you have knowledge that is equivalent to a bachelor's degree.

02:04:23.000 Is there any reason why a lot of people, would you accept as the CEO of your company, would you accept that as like proof of being college educated?

02:04:41.000 I don't, I don't think proof of college education means anything.

02:04:43.000 Okay.

02:04:44.000 So, uh, I could, I, I, you know, you know, as a joke, I used to tell people that I had a PhD in nuclear physics and they would be like, you do?

02:04:53.000 And I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

02:04:54.000 From the College of Milton.

02:04:55.000 And they'll go, oh, wow.

02:04:56.000 And they wouldn't ask anything beyond that.

02:04:58.000 So it's my brother actually made that up.

02:05:00.000 And the point is, I never said it was an accredited university.

02:05:04.000 I never said any, I never even elaborated.

02:05:05.000 People just assume things are true. 0.97

02:05:07.000 It's the stupidest thing to me where someone's like, I got my piece of paper. 0.99

02:05:10.000 It's like, okay, you know what I did? 0.99

02:05:11.000 I took, I took, uh, two months of a community college course that costs like 500 bucks.

02:05:17.000 And that now my highest level of education is some college.

02:05:19.000 Well, you're thinking about the value of a college degree differently than I do.

02:05:24.000 You think of it as a, or you seem to think of it anyway, as having only economic value.

02:05:31.000 I think it represents a certain level of intellectual attainment in a particular subject.

02:05:39.000 Completely disagree.

02:05:40.000 It ought to, anyway.

02:05:41.000 It ought to and does, two different things.

02:05:44.000 My experience from people in colleges is that they're underwhelming.

02:05:48.000 I mean, I've gone to MIT several times.

02:05:51.000 I spoke at MIT for one special event in front of a large group of people from various backgrounds, talking about media technology, drones, the things we're applying them to.

02:05:59.000 And it was fascinating to me that the people at MIT, of all places, who are working on this tech, knew less about this tech than I did.

02:06:06.000 As some random dude who went out into a parking lot and bought a drone and hacked it with his buddy, you know, running the SDK through Linux and then screen grabbing to broadcast.

02:06:16.000 And I'm like, we just did it.

02:06:18.000 And then I, I was really, I was really amazed the first time I went to MIT and I saw their lab.

02:06:23.000 It's cool.

02:06:24.000 Saw the things they were building.

02:06:25.000 And I was like, my buddy does this in his garage.

02:06:27.000 And he's not spending tens of thousands of dollars on tuition to do it.

02:06:31.000 That's weird to me.

02:06:32.000 You guys are both making interesting points because I think it was a comprehensive enough examination that elucidated that the person really does understand this breadth of knowledge.

02:06:42.000 That is almost better than someone that went to class for four years, sat there, barely listened, went in, wrote down the test information they remembered and then forgot it within a few weeks.

02:06:53.000 So just going there and being there doesn't necessarily mean you understand the concept.

02:06:58.000 I would love to see examinations taking precedence.

02:07:00.000 This is why I just said resumes mean very little to me.

02:07:04.000 Send me your portfolio.

02:07:05.000 Well, I mean, OK, maybe for jobs here, but in larger institutions where, you know, HR has certain requirements.

02:07:14.000 Stay away from those jobs.

02:07:17.000 I don't disagree, but OK, not everybody is going to take your advice.

02:07:20.000 Oh, they should.

02:07:21.000 Right now, college degrees, in my opinion, are evidence to the contrary of independent thought, the ability to think critically and solve problems.

02:07:27.000 And the reason is, the people who go to college right now are the ones who were just told by their parents to do it and they don't know why.

02:07:33.000 I think half the statistic is that 50% of people change their majors, like some ridiculously

02:07:37.000 large number.

02:07:38.000 They don't know what they want to do.

02:07:39.000 And so I prefer to find people who are like, I pursued my dreams and tried to solve problems

02:07:45.000 on my own and didn't go to college.

02:07:46.000 Because then you're going to have someone who's a problem solver, a thinker, someone

02:07:50.000 who can think critically.

02:07:51.000 The people who I found when I've worked for various companies who have college degrees,

02:07:57.000 And they're really good at just doing what they're told, but I need people who can solve problems, and I need quality control.

02:08:03.000 I think there's an important point to be made here.

02:08:07.000 Again, you're just thinking, and you're not the only one, most people think of college degrees this way, and the value of a college education this way.

02:08:15.000 It's basically an economic transaction.

02:08:19.000 I think you're misunderstanding me.

02:08:20.000 Okay.

02:08:21.000 People are supposed to go to college to learn how to think critically and develop intellectually.

02:08:25.000 And some do.

02:08:27.000 Some, but most don't.

02:08:28.000 Okay, fine.

02:08:29.000 And so the issue is... Fine, well then that's the criticism.

02:08:32.000 In my experience... The criticism isn't a criticism of college per se.

02:08:36.000 It's of how college is pursued today.

02:08:40.000 I don't like how it's pursued today, absolutely.

02:08:43.000 As a former college professor myself, I remember people at Ohio State and Columbus State, and no offense against the people who go to those institutions.

02:08:54.000 They're very smart, actually.

02:08:55.000 But they had no motivation to better their minds and to get a liberal arts education.

02:09:06.000 That means something important.

02:09:08.000 A lot of people who go to these institutions, they don't even realize what it means and why it's important.

02:09:14.000 So here's the issue.

02:09:15.000 Okay.

02:09:16.000 I used to love playing Magic the Gathering.

02:09:18.000 I now say I hate the game and don't play it.

02:09:21.000 Because the game's bad.

02:09:22.000 They spanked him like a hundred times at it. 1.00

02:09:25.000 No, the game's bad.

02:09:25.000 The power creep has gone insane.

02:09:28.000 That is true.

02:09:29.000 It's become boring monotonous and people use essentially crowdsourcing to solve the games as soon as they're made.

02:09:35.000 It's just not fun anymore.

02:09:37.000 Net decking.

02:09:37.000 Yeah, net decking.

02:09:38.000 It's just competition has become boring.

02:09:41.000 The win ratios are predictable.

02:09:44.000 It's just become very boring.

02:09:45.000 And then you have new cards coming out that are just insane power creep.

02:09:49.000 I'm not going to sit here and be like, no, no, no, Magic the Gathering is great because of what it used to be.

02:09:52.000 Well, it's not that anymore.

02:09:54.000 College may have been a place where you could show up and learn and explore and experience, but it's not been that way since my entire life.

02:10:00.000 It has never been that.

02:10:01.000 Well, this is actually one of the reasons why I am pushing young people.

02:10:06.000 I occasionally do this on my blog, and I've been talking to my sons about it, too.

02:10:14.000 Education is super important.

02:10:16.000 It's really important.

02:10:17.000 It isn't important for educational reasons, or sorry, for economic reasons.

02:10:22.000 It's important for educational reasons.

02:10:24.000 For developing your mind, it actually makes life more interesting.

02:10:29.000 It's hard to explain why this is, why knowledge is important.

02:10:36.000 Having it in your head, not just in a place to look it up.

02:10:39.000 Knowledge, having a systematic understanding of the world.

02:10:45.000 is important.

02:10:47.000 I'll give you an example of how I think about this, right?

02:10:51.000 So I started reading the Bible and I've read it through all the way through twice in the last I guess 15 months or so.

02:11:02.000 I'm starting again and I'm also like reading commentaries and stuff.

02:11:06.000 I'm actually getting into it.

02:11:07.000 I'm I'm reading a little bit on the side, obviously, that is very similar to the reading that one would get at seminary.

02:11:19.000 I have absolutely no motivation, no desire to go to seminary.

02:11:25.000 I have talked to a few seminary professors, though, and they're actually interested in my whole proposal of, like, saying, you know, declaring Sanger to have, like, a Master of Divinity degree in five years after you've gone through these, you know, texts and written certain things and that sort of thing.

02:11:48.000 I think that would be... But the reason I'm doing it is not so that I can, like, do anything with the degree.

02:11:56.000 It's other than But we agree on that.

02:12:00.000 Okay, good, but you're not saying these things and I am, so I'm confused.

02:12:04.000 So you're saying that you're not going to seminary, but you're learning anyway?

02:12:08.000 That's my point.

02:12:09.000 Why go to college to learn things you don't have to go to college to learn?

02:12:13.000 But you're doing this, the kind of work that one does at going to college.

02:12:20.000 So if somebody... College type study is still important.

02:12:23.000 Do you agree?

02:12:25.000 College type study and what does that mean?

02:12:27.000 Reading difficult books, thinking deep thoughts about them, having meaningful discussions with other people about them, writing long papers, doing research.

02:12:37.000 Let's just study.

02:12:39.000 Sure.

02:12:40.000 So if someone wanted to learn how to be successful.

02:12:42.000 You haven't answered my question.

02:12:43.000 Is it important or not?

02:12:45.000 Studying is important.

02:12:46.000 Okay, good.

02:12:47.000 Yeah, the idea that college is bad as an institution, everything it represents is a corruption of these ideas.

02:12:55.000 There may be some positive aspects within these institutions, but they are overwhelmingly corrupt.

02:13:01.000 The best way I can explain it is... There's a lot of good people, even today, in colleges.

02:13:06.000 I don't support a lot of the institutions very much, but it needs to be said that there's a lot of people who Simple question.

02:13:15.000 want to lose their jobs, you know, and they're still decent, even some of them

02:13:20.000 are even conservative or libertarian.

02:13:22.000 Simple question. Would you learn more about journalism going to college or

02:13:28.000 hanging out in my house?

02:13:32.000 You'd learn different things for sure.

02:13:36.000 You would learn more about journalism hanging out at my house than you would in college.

02:13:39.000 You know how I know?

02:13:40.000 Because I've actually been called to speak at numerous colleges.

02:13:44.000 And it's amazing, when I was a 25-year-old high school dropout with a backpack, and I was called to give guest lectures for PhD courses in journalism, and they had no idea any of the modern components of journalism.

02:13:55.000 It was fascinating.

02:13:57.000 Oh, they could tell me things about, you know, like Woodward and Bernstein.

02:14:01.000 And I was like, is that relevant to today's modern understanding of how journalism newsrooms operate?

02:14:06.000 About how to gather news, how to disseminate information, how to be a journalist?

02:14:09.000 So I'm out here, I'm 25, and I was consulting with the BBC, sitting down with their mobile experts, explaining to them what to do, how to do it.

02:14:18.000 Universities were asking me to go and speak there, and there's this idea among people that they're better off going to these schools and spending tons of money, instead of literally just going and doing journalism and being surrounded by the experts in the field.

02:14:30.000 The value of being here would be they would learn faster because of the mentorship and college.

02:14:36.000 The one on one.

02:14:37.000 Yeah.

02:14:38.000 It's supposed to simulate mentorship.

02:14:39.000 You have a professor that you're mentoring with, but it's become so big.

02:14:43.000 It's the education industry that they've even industrialized.

02:14:46.000 It is the problem I have with it.

02:14:48.000 that it's a money-making machine. Now look, look, look, look, if you want to be a lawyer...

02:14:52.000 There's a distinction that needs to be made here though, right? Because you're talking about professional training

02:14:57.000 and I actually happen to agree with you that... I'm not, I'm not, you're inferring that. I'm talking

02:15:01.000 about if you want to have a modern understanding of journalism outside of any doing a job. I didn't

02:15:05.000 say work here, I said hang out here. No, no, no.

02:15:08.000 But I understand.

02:15:10.000 But this is all in the context of discussion about the value of college education.

02:15:17.000 And your point seems to be that learning in the context of, you know, on the job, basically.

02:15:24.000 I gotta stop you.

02:15:27.000 I didn't say work here.

02:15:29.000 Okay.

02:15:29.000 No, no.

02:15:30.000 Okay.

02:15:30.000 Right.

02:15:30.000 So someone who's literally sleeping on my couch will learn more about journalism than someone in a college.

02:15:34.000 Okay.

02:15:35.000 Yeah.

02:15:35.000 It has nothing to do with work.

02:15:36.000 Because they're going to hear conversations about the president of CNN, high-level staffers at various news organizations.

02:15:42.000 They're going to see various top-level journalists who will be hanging out here and telling them stories as opposed to going to college.

02:15:48.000 What they will not get is a liberal arts education.

02:15:52.000 What does that mean?

02:15:53.000 Well, a liberal arts education has a number of different components in which basically you systematically develop an understanding of the world through a study of the great books.

02:16:07.000 Why wouldn't they get that?

02:16:09.000 Well, I don't know.

02:16:10.000 Do the people who work here often read Homer?

02:16:13.000 Yeah, I think we have like 3,000 books.

02:16:15.000 No joke.

02:16:16.000 We get sent dozens of books every week, and we have tons of bookshelves.

02:16:19.000 Classics?

02:16:21.000 The great books?

02:16:21.000 I'm pretty sure we do.

02:16:22.000 I was just handed The Art of War, for instance, and we've got a bunch of different versions of the Bible.

02:16:27.000 If you don't want to read, then you don't read.

02:16:29.000 Well, here's a very unusual workplace, then, I guess I should say.

02:16:34.000 It's not about work.

02:16:37.000 Everyone here is doing something, but for the most part, We get books sent here.

02:16:41.000 Some of them are insane.

02:16:42.000 Some of them are classics.

02:16:44.000 Some of them are modern.

02:16:46.000 Some of them are old.

02:16:47.000 Some of them are ancient philosophy.

02:16:50.000 And they're all here on the bookshelves available for people to read if they want to.

02:16:52.000 Well, that's great.

02:16:52.000 My head is off.

02:16:53.000 I think that's great.

02:16:54.000 So, all right.

02:16:55.000 But so what's the point of going, spending tens of thousands of dollars to be surrounded by other people with no experience and hang out with people with no experience, to be mentored by someone who has limited experience, who's going to tell you to read a book?

02:17:06.000 It's the structure.

02:17:07.000 Like here at this house, you have to seek it to find it.

02:17:11.000 It's not, there's no classes to go to.

02:17:12.000 There's no like expectation of you.

02:17:14.000 But at college, there's someone there waiting for you.

02:17:17.000 They're giving you a place to be, a seat to sit in, and they're focused on giving it to you.

02:17:20.000 So you're saying unmotivated people will somehow understand these concepts while being told they have to do it?

02:17:26.000 Sometimes.

02:17:27.000 Actually, yeah.

02:17:28.000 I mean, basically, unfortunately, like it or not, um, Students need a structure that is imposed by their parents or their teachers or professors.

02:17:42.000 And that's the way most people are, like it or not.

02:17:46.000 And I wish that people were motivated to do a lot of extracurricular activities, you know, bettering their minds as they are, like, uh, working near your office or whatever, that'd be, that'd

02:18:04.000 be great if the world worked that way. But for the most part, it doesn't.

02:18:07.000 So the, so the results of taking unmotivated people who often not, not every, I'll put

02:18:13.000 it this way. Not everybody has the ability to, to reach the levels you're describing.

02:18:19.000 There's a reality.

02:18:20.000 Some people are smart.

02:18:21.000 Some people are average.

02:18:22.000 Some people are not smart.

02:18:23.000 Some people are strong.

02:18:24.000 Some people are tall.

02:18:25.000 I read this really great article years ago.

02:18:27.000 It was actually from a professor who said, the challenge with universities is that when unmotivated people go to these schools because their parents told them to, Instead of learning and truly understanding what they're being told to learn, they simply memorize details.

02:18:43.000 The problem with memorizing details as opposed to understanding is that they then start to mash things in a broken way.

02:18:50.000 You know, the saying is, knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing that it doesn't go in a fruit salad.

02:18:57.000 The problem is if you take unmotivated people and you put them in a room and you say, tomato is a fruit!

02:19:01.000 They'll go, okay.

02:19:02.000 And then later on in life, they'll go, tomato is a fruit, put it in the fruit salad.

02:19:05.000 Motivated people who are dedicated and passionate will sit there and they'll understand and say, tomato is a fruit, huh?

02:19:11.000 Then why do we call it a vegetable?

02:19:13.000 Then you'll go through culinary, you'll start researching, you'll learn about different, you know, culinary arts and you'll go, wow!

02:19:19.000 And then you'll understand.

02:19:21.000 Unmotivated people being put in a box where someone tells them to read a book doesn't mean they'll understand it or they want to understand it.

02:19:26.000 Well, I agree, but...

02:19:29.000 There's a lot of people who are inspired to become, to better themselves, essentially, to better their minds when they go to college.

02:19:38.000 That's just a fact, it's happened a lot.

02:19:41.000 I'm worried that because a lot of people are listening to you, and I understand, I think I understand what you're saying, I've heard a lot of it, that they're gonna take your advice and they're gonna end up being, anti-intellectual, frankly, and that's not a good thing.

02:20:00.000 Telling people to study and research is anti-intellectual?

02:20:03.000 Let me show you this.

02:20:04.000 I'm going to give you this.

02:20:05.000 And we'll put it in the library.

02:20:07.000 Okay, sure.

02:20:08.000 Okay, so this is Essays on Free Knowledge.

02:20:11.000 I wrote it.

02:20:12.000 One of my most controversial Blog posts is in here.

02:20:17.000 It's called, Is There a New Geek Anti-Intellectualism?

02:20:22.000 The things that you've been saying are in this article.

02:20:26.000 I basically responded to it.

02:20:28.000 It's from 2011.

02:20:32.000 And I would love to have your feedback on that, and also there's a follow-up where I have replies to objections.

02:20:41.000 There were like hundreds and hundreds of objections, and it generated all kinds of controversy as bloggers responded.

02:20:49.000 So are you of the opinion that independent study and research is anti-intellectual?

02:20:54.000 No, no, no.

02:20:56.000 This is how we got onto this subject.

02:20:57.000 Of course, it's perfectly intellectual, and it's a great thing.

02:21:04.000 What I want to do is reform the university system, or force it in one way or another to reform, so it recaptures its old spirit of true knowledge-seeking, where there is There are not essentially doctrinal or ideological tests for participating in the system.

02:21:30.000 That bothers me.

02:21:31.000 I think that's a huge part of the problem.

02:21:35.000 But discouraging people from going to college is going to be interpreted, whether you intend it this way or not, I think it's going to be interpreted by a lot of people as saying, The sorts of things that one learn in college are not important.

02:21:53.000 I know that's not what you're saying, but... From my understanding, I think from talking with Tim a lot about this, it's that the things you learn in college aren't worth the modern cost of college, fiscally.

02:22:05.000 I actually agree with that.

02:22:06.000 But it's more than that.

02:22:08.000 And people are being indoctrinated, and you get the 99.4% of the people that want to go work for a firm instead of start their own company that end up going there and becoming part of the machine.

02:22:19.000 I've spent a lot of time at various universities throughout my life, and boy did I find it laughable.

02:22:26.000 I lived with so many people who spent so much money going to college, and it was remarkable to me how I could sit in a room with people and explain to them basic concepts you'd think a freshman in college would have learned that they don't understand.

02:22:40.000 How I could have sat down with a third-year music business major who had no idea how she'd not read Homer, she didn't know what the word solipsism meant, and she didn't know how to manage bands.

02:22:51.000 And I said, then why are you in college?

02:22:54.000 That's what college was breeding in Chicago. 0.87

02:22:58.000 Your experience, you know, the way you viewed college is this positive thing that needs to be brought back.

02:23:02.000 The way I see it is it's corrupted.

02:23:04.000 And so encouraging people to go into corruption won't improve it.

02:23:08.000 If the system is reformed, then maybe later we can say, hey, this is actually good, go do this.

02:23:12.000 However, technology maybe has made the whole institution archaic.

02:23:16.000 You look at the story of someone like Aaron Swartz, who helped contribute to the foundation of Reddit, as well as, I think, um, wasn't he involved in RSS?

02:23:23.000 Or no, no, no.

02:23:24.000 I'm sorry.

02:23:24.000 Creative Commons.

02:23:25.000 He was, he was like 13 and he was on the internet.

02:23:27.000 He got involved with very prominent individuals.

02:23:29.000 I remember him.

02:23:30.000 I had some interactions with him back in the day.

02:23:32.000 So, how do we encourage young people to be inspired, to get involved, to seek out on their own?

02:23:38.000 College does the opposite of that today.

02:23:41.000 It beats people down and dulls them and makes them hate these things.

02:23:45.000 Maybe not completely, but in a very large way.

02:23:48.000 Then they come out with massive debt, they become indentured servants, and many of them, because of the hopelessness, become communists.

02:23:55.000 No, jeez, I agree with all of that entirely.

02:23:58.000 So what we agree on is we want to encourage people to read the classics, to read philosophy, to understand these deep questions and thoughts, but it's not going to happen.

02:24:10.000 We can agree on that.

02:24:11.000 Now, my opinion is college is corrupted, siphons money, makes people disinterested, and leaves them as angered, indentured servants.

02:24:20.000 Yeah.

02:24:21.000 So it's a bad thing?

02:24:22.000 Well, I would disagree with that.

02:24:23.000 I do believe that it makes people indentured.

02:24:26.000 I've been to college 20 years ago, so maybe it's changed, but I learned a lot, and I would pay that debt thrice over to have that experience again.

02:24:34.000 So what if you hung out at Hackerspace instead?

02:24:36.000 I guess I don't disagree in my own case, yeah.

02:24:39.000 What if we just turned the local libraries into Hackerspaces and you can go and hang out for free?

02:24:42.000 Oh, that'd be such a good use of libraries.

02:24:44.000 Right.

02:24:45.000 But the books are still there?

02:24:48.000 Of course.

02:24:48.000 Okay.

02:24:49.000 And the internet.

02:24:52.000 So I hung out at various... Man, I traveled around.

02:24:55.000 I met a lot of different interesting people.

02:24:57.000 I had access to the internet, so I was able to read and research.

02:25:01.000 That's how a lot of people do use libraries.

02:25:03.000 Absolutely.

02:25:04.000 I go and do work at libraries sometimes.

02:25:06.000 So we can abolish college.

02:25:08.000 But re-center libraries as the centers for inquiry, investigation, research, knowledge seeking, but also activities.

02:25:20.000 Libraries are amazing.

02:25:21.000 I love libraries.

02:25:22.000 I used to use them all the time when I was a kid.

02:25:24.000 Get access to the internet, rent movies.

02:25:25.000 People don't know this.

02:25:26.000 I used to go to the library because they had free movies to rent.

02:25:29.000 And I would get books, movies, and I would go on the internet.

02:25:32.000 Now what we can do is create community centers where people have fun hanging out with each other, exploring ideas.

02:25:38.000 And you could have people come to the libraries and perhaps teach these people, and you could have a subscription model where each of these, we'll call them students, would learn from these teachers, but pay them $20 a class via PayPal.

02:25:52.000 Cut out the middleman.

02:25:53.000 they're free. This is precisely what I've been advocating.

02:25:56.000 Teachers deserve to make a living. What he has tried to do is cut out the middleman of

02:26:00.000 college and just pay the teacher directly. I'm saying libraries are free and there's

02:26:04.000 no schedule, but there's no structure. There's no professors. You show up and Richard is

02:26:10.000 there and he's machining rocket parts and you go and you go, what's he doing?

02:26:15.000 Machining rocket parts.

02:26:16.000 And then he talks to you about rocketry.

02:26:18.000 And then one guy's reading a book on philosophy.

02:26:20.000 Aristotle.

02:26:21.000 And then kids are going around.

02:26:24.000 They're being mentored by people who are talking about interesting things.

02:26:27.000 It's just a scaling problem because if too many people are surrounding the rocketry guy and he doesn't have time to work on his product or enough.

02:26:33.000 That's true for college.

02:26:34.000 Exactly.

02:26:35.000 So we've got to mediate for the scaling problem.

02:26:37.000 I think that's why you want to pay them.

02:26:38.000 Community centers where people can explore and expand and engage in practical activities.

02:26:45.000 Now, I will stress there are absolute important reasons for college, and that's literally the sciences where you have to do these things under regulated conditions.

02:26:55.000 If you want to be a lawyer or a doctor and you have to have certain credentials, yes, college exists for those reasons.

02:27:01.000 So let me Let me ask you first, have you heard of different homeschooling philosophies like a classic method and unschooling and these different homeschooling approaches?

02:27:23.000 I've heard of unschooling.

02:27:24.000 I know the girl Dana Martin.

02:27:25.000 So let me sort of I actually think we agree a lot more than we disagree, but you basically want your model, your mental model for education is essentially unschooling.

02:27:38.000 My mental model for education is it makes room for that for people for whom it is Good, but it isn't good for most people.

02:27:48.000 Most people need more structure.

02:27:50.000 My sons would not thrive under an unschooling model.

02:27:54.000 They simply wouldn't learn the things that they should learn.

02:27:57.000 I'm not advocating for an unschooling system.

02:27:59.000 I'm saying there are benefits to converting libraries into hackerspaces because hackerspaces are greatly beneficial.

02:28:05.000 I think there's many different ways people learn.

02:28:07.000 Some people learn through physically grasping an object and rotating it.

02:28:10.000 Some people learn through hearing from another person or through reading, through demonstration.

02:28:14.000 There's many different ways to learn.

02:28:16.000 Those are not the things that are relevant to the controversy between us here.

02:28:20.000 The thing that's relevant is, does education need to be regimented from above by some leader of the curriculum?

02:28:34.000 Because, look, there's some people who really want to learn They have a hard time motivating themselves and they actually want the direction.

02:28:43.000 They need the direction and they really would benefit too.

02:28:49.000 So I'm not saying we don't have teachers. 0.93

02:28:52.000 I'm saying the current institution of college is a broken down old rusty pile of garbage that you can't polish. 1.00

02:29:00.000 Well, but I think if you're going to appeal to all the people that we need to appeal to, if we're going to serve all of their needs, then there's going to be something like college that emerges, even if it is decentralized and so forth.

02:29:20.000 But I think the issue is, there's a reason why the left targets children.

02:29:24.000 They don't need to appeal to the old people. 1.00

02:29:26.000 The old people walk away and the young people do what the generation was told to do. 1.00

02:29:31.000 So what we need to do is we need to inspire young people to be seekers, to be hackers, to be interested and to achieve things.

02:29:35.000 that.

02:29:36.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:29:37.000 Sign it.

02:29:38.000 We need to inspire young people to be seekers, to be hackers, to be interested and to achieve

02:29:43.000 things and there's probably some people who can't do it and they need direction, but a

02:29:48.000 lot of what I see happening is that young people are not being properly educated and

02:29:53.000 Notably, that in America, we don't teach children anything before the age of five, which is insane to me.

02:29:58.000 It's like from zero to five, right, the most important years of your life.

02:30:01.000 I taught my boys to read both when they were one.

02:30:04.000 They knew how to read picture books by the age of two, and they were reading chapter books when they were three. 0.78

02:30:10.000 And the problem is most Americans don't do anything until they're five, which is ridiculous.

02:30:15.000 And they loved it, too, by the way.

02:30:17.000 I didn't force them at all.

02:30:18.000 Because kids want to learn.

02:30:21.000 It's literally within humans to try.

02:30:23.000 They always say kids will imitate you, but they're trying to learn.

02:30:26.000 So teach these kids things and congratulate them and make them feel good.

02:30:31.000 The one thing that will really help people be inspired is if you've got a little kid And they go in and they're, you know, doing something positive and you cheer them on and other people are like, wow, this kid's cool.

02:30:42.000 They're going to feel good from the social acceptance.

02:30:44.000 It will encourage them to pursue doing good things.

02:30:48.000 However, what we do in this country is we don't teach our kids until they're five.

02:30:52.000 Then they start learning rudimentary basics.

02:30:54.000 I mean, I'm sure parents to some degree teach their kids some things, obviously.

02:30:58.000 But then they basically go to an institutionalized learning facility where many teachers are just not good at what they do.

02:31:03.000 Many of them are mean.

02:31:05.000 I think I had two good teachers in my life.

02:31:08.000 Two.

02:31:09.000 And there's a phrase that I think breaks down exactly what's wrong with schooling. 0.99

02:31:13.000 School sucks. 0.98

02:31:15.000 Why would kids say that? 1.00

02:31:17.000 Why is it that I can be so inspired?

02:31:19.000 I built my first computer when I was like eight years old.

02:31:21.000 Why?

02:31:22.000 Because I had good parents.

02:31:23.000 They taught me before five.

02:31:25.000 They inspired me.

02:31:26.000 They cheered me on.

02:31:27.000 They talked about how amazing these things were.

02:31:29.000 And I wanted to do these amazing things.

02:31:31.000 Many other kids were riding around on their bikes, careless.

02:31:33.000 And so all they wanted to do was get social acceptance from their friends who also were riding around on their bikes, having fun.

02:31:39.000 I wanted to do things.

02:31:40.000 I wanted to play music.

02:31:40.000 I wanted to skateboard.

02:31:41.000 I wanted to accomplish things.

02:31:43.000 So how do we get kids to do that?

02:31:45.000 We need to create a new culture of inspiration, of hands-on activities, having kids feel good when they accomplish something.

02:31:55.000 Dopamine.

02:31:57.000 What you're describing here sounds like just what our educators are taught in progressive education institutions and have been for the last hundred years.

02:32:12.000 So yeah, they're like vigorously nodding their head to the suggestion that we need hands-on education, that they need to get out there and actually build things.

02:32:26.000 And it comes from the parents.

02:32:28.000 Yeah, they need inspiration.

02:32:31.000 They don't need indoctrination.

02:32:35.000 Less reading of books and more making and doing.

02:32:41.000 Well, that's what they say, and they regard it as, well, they regard it all of a piece, you see.

02:32:49.000 This is why it's so easy, I think.

02:32:51.000 And if you read the essay that I was referring to there about geek anti-intellectualism, You'll see why.

02:33:01.000 I have a feeling that you don't have kids, right?

02:33:09.000 No.

02:33:09.000 Well, I mean, when you have kids, you're probably going to be a homeschooling dad, I'm guessing.

02:33:14.000 It's going to be a very interesting curriculum.

02:33:16.000 There will be many whiteboards.

02:33:17.000 I hope so.

02:33:17.000 Monday morning from 9 to 10 is parkour hour.

02:33:21.000 Math time.

02:33:22.000 No, no, no.

02:33:23.000 I'm sorry.

02:33:24.000 I'm commanding.

02:33:24.000 Then it's going to be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

02:33:26.000 All right.

02:33:27.000 So the first is just to get loosened up, to climb around, to get that agility.

02:33:31.000 And then the next hour is the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

02:33:33.000 I hope you have boys.

02:33:35.000 And then you can earn crypto from your math class.

02:33:37.000 See, I think gamifying education is going to be the wave of the future.

02:33:40.000 Because if you can earn crypto, even if it's just like non-fungible tokens that are worth anything, but you can spend on like a hat for your avatar.

02:33:48.000 And then rather than riding around and showing your friends how cool you are outside, you'll go to class and be like, yo, I don't need video games because look how good I am at my class.

02:33:56.000 You can see it on my cool dude.

02:33:57.000 My son has actually stopped playing some of his I.O.

02:34:02.000 games in favor of trading crypto.

02:34:08.000 You're agreeing with me when I'm saying it's the dopamine hit.

02:34:11.000 Yes.

02:34:12.000 Getting kids to get that dopamine hit, a goal was accomplished.

02:34:16.000 The problem I see is that many, many parents don't do anything with their kids until, so the kids don't develop this, you know, this mindset.

02:34:24.000 But anyway, we've gone very, very long rewarding the kids.

02:34:27.000 Oh yeah, I guess we have from the beginning.

02:34:28.000 This has been absolutely wonderful.

02:34:30.000 Thanks for hanging out and talking about Wikipedia.

02:34:32.000 Really appreciate you coming, Larry.

02:34:33.000 Absolutely.

02:34:34.000 For everybody who's watching, we're not going to have an extended bonus segment tonight.

02:34:38.000 Consider this the extra half an hour we did.

02:34:39.000 Free bonus segment.

02:34:40.000 Awesome.

02:34:41.000 Free bonus segment for everybody.

02:34:42.000 It was interesting.

02:34:43.000 We rolled with it.

02:34:45.000 But we are going to have more vlogs coming up because we do have one we're ready to publish.

02:34:49.000 We're just, there's like some bumps we're going to get through.

02:34:51.000 It might be up like a Saturday or Sunday thing.

02:34:53.000 We're going to start filming these.

02:34:54.000 We need a Master of Ceremonies.

02:34:56.000 Email us at jobs at timcast.com if you think you have what it takes.

02:35:00.000 I'll put it this way, MC's probably got to be able to play music and skateboard because you're going to be helping produce these vlogs, so.

02:35:07.000 And we're also looking for a web dev and web editor.

02:35:10.000 But you can follow me on every social media platform at Timcast.

02:35:14.000 My other YouTube channels are YouTube.com slash Timcast and YouTube.com slash Timcast News.

02:35:18.000 This show is live Monday to Friday at 8pm.

02:35:20.000 So subscribe, smash that notification bell, hit the like button.

02:35:22.000 It's all greatly appreciated.

02:35:24.000 And did you want to shout out anything, Larry?

02:35:26.000 Mention maybe your book or social media, follow you?

02:35:29.000 Sure, OK.

02:35:29.000 Well, OK, go ahead and buy my book, please.

02:35:33.000 I don't think you're intending on buying it.

02:35:37.000 I'm hawking it.

02:35:38.000 It's on Amazon.

02:35:40.000 The e-book is also on Gumroad and Amazon.

02:35:45.000 What is it called, the book?

02:35:46.000 It's called Essays on Free Knowledge, the Origins of Wikipedia and the New Politics of Knowledge.

02:35:52.000 And a lot of things that we've talked about actually are in this book, especially in the last new chapter, The Future of the Free Internet.

02:36:01.000 Cool.

02:36:03.000 Thank you for the book.

02:36:04.000 Yeah, sure.

02:36:04.000 I want to encourage people who are interested in the Encyclosphere project, especially if you're technical, Even if you're not, and you're just interested in this stuff, sign up.

02:36:18.000 We're starting a seminar slash deliberation about the policies of the future in Cyclosphere, probably beginning next month, I hope.

02:36:29.000 No promises, but it's going to be free.

02:36:31.000 Donations are encouraged.

02:36:35.000 And it's going to be serious.

02:36:36.000 We're going to have, like, Bill Ottman has already agreed to talk in the week that we're going to do about decentralizing social media.

02:36:47.000 And so sign up for that seminar.

02:36:50.000 Sign up for the Encyclosphere.

02:36:52.000 It's encyclosphere.org, just like it sounds.

02:36:57.000 And well I've got a lot of other things going on.

02:37:01.000 You have social media accounts too, right?

02:37:03.000 You have at least a Twitter account.

02:37:04.000 Lsanger on Twitter and you can like follow my RSS feed feeds actually larrysanger.org and then I have my micro feed or that actually the future the future name for it actually is going to be mini feed that's what it's going to be mini feed as it lives on startthis.org Really appreciate you coming, Larry.

02:37:31.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:37:31.000 And I'm looking forward to working with you in Cyclosphere and involving that in this Fediverse more and more, man.

02:37:38.000 You guys can follow me at iancrossland.net and at Ian Crossland across pretty much every social media platform.

02:37:42.000 So hit me up there if you ever want to message me or anything and get involved.

02:37:46.000 Thanks.

02:37:46.000 Super fun conversation.

02:37:48.000 Thank you for coming, Larry.

02:37:49.000 I feel like I learned a lot, even though this is way out of my field of expertise.

02:37:53.000 I am Sour Patch Lids on Twitter and join me on my quest to have more followers than the actual Sour Patch Kids account.

02:37:59.000 We'll have fun with that.

02:38:00.000 We will see you all tomorrow, but don't forget to sign up at TimCast.com, become a member, because we have a lot of really cool stuff in the works.

02:38:07.000 Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you all next time.

Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - April 15, 2021

Timcast IRL - James O'Keefe BANNED On Twitter, Will SUE w-Wikipedia Ex-Founder Larry Sanger

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