[SPEAKER_00]: On today's episode, I've got on a very interesting guest.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is one of the co-founders of Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Larry Sanger.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to meet you, Zubi.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great to meet you, Larry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've done a very brief intro there, Larry, but for people who may not be familiar with you and your work, please introduce yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, my training is in philosophy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have a, like, all three of my degrees are in philosophy.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I got into internet stuff in, I guess, 1998.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I started actually making money from websites and then an acquaintance of mine, Jimmy Whales, hired me to start free in psychopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that was my job for a few years.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I got Wikipedia started, which is now my claim to fame.

[SPEAKER_01]: And since then, I've done, well, I went back to do a little more college teaching and then worked on a variety of, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: educational and reference websites, other sorts of projects.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I am doing now is I am the president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, which is organizing the encyclous sphere, which is basically a collection of all of the encyclopedias in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: At least that's what we're trying to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've got over 60 of them now.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in the last nine months, however, I have pivoted slightly to a project, which I guess we're going to talk about a little bit, which is the nine feces on Wikipedia, which is essentially a reform proposal for Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hear that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I know over the years you've been a very vocal critic of Wikipedia, despite being one of the people who helped to make it happen from the inception.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are your major complaints and criticisms with Wikipedia?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I had a certain vision for a free encyclopedia when I started Wikipedia and it really has not come to pass.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's been a disappointment to me that my vision was not really implemented.

[SPEAKER_01]: A large part of this is that I wanted something that people from all around the world could learn from.

[SPEAKER_01]: without being indoctrinated in one point of view.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted it to be a big tent neutral sort of resource, which it isn't, I think.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's my disappointment really was with the failure for Wikipedia to satisfy that sort of gold of mine.

[SPEAKER_01]: There was more to it than that, though, in 2005 and the years since then, a number of famous people have approached me with complaints about their Wikipedia entries, and I think the [SPEAKER_01]: Um, complaints is really inappropriate, it's, uh, I feel responsible for that to a certain extent.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of the reasons why I continue to speak out, um, although I took a break for quite a few years, um, the reason that I've started speaking out again is because that the complaints have become, um, [SPEAKER_01]: really, you know, shrill on both points on Wikipedia's bias, the fact that it has become kind of an engine of defamation, both of these points are really disappointing to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hear that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know what you mean when you talk about bias in Wikipedia, but I would imagine that the average every day person on the street or online who uses Wikipedia might not even know what you mean by that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when you say that Wikipedia has a bias for the layman, for someone who's not in the cultural commentary space or the political space, how would you explain that and demonstrate that to them?

[SPEAKER_01]: We can put it this way, which period represents a certain outlook on the world, which is found among elite Westerners, especially who are secular, academically trained, which in itself is good, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's within a narrow sort of academic tradition.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of viewpoints, I would say the majority of the world's viewpoints on the hot button topics of the day, and also just the ordinary religious disputes that people have around the world are not [SPEAKER_01]: well reflected, not fairly reported on by Wikipedia in my opinion.

[SPEAKER_01]: So just to take an example that I developed in my nine pieces, [SPEAKER_01]: there's an article on Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yahweh is the name of my God.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you open up your Bible and and you see the words, the Lord, written in your Bible, then that is actually a translation of Yahweh or Jehovah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so that's the name of the Christian and the Jewish God, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: What does the [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the title of the article is Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's all it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not theories of Yahweh or something like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what it says about the God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The head of a pantheon was the head of a pantheon of ancient Jewish gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the God that I worship is not the head of a pantheon.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are no other gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: and yet this has been claimed because this is the leading theory about the origin of of Java or Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, that's a good example I guess it is biased in favor of a certain [SPEAKER_01]: um, narrow academic outlook on the topic without taking accounts of what billions of people around the world think to the contrary.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just one example.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of other examples, whenever it comes to issues of politics frequently, Wikipedia will take one side, particular political characters are dismissed as conspiracy theories, for example.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there tends to be a long heated section [SPEAKER_01]: the mistakes that people have made or the purported mistakes they have made in articles about politicians.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is all very, very general, I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of examples that I might give, and we could go into the particular examples if you like, but those are just some general types, I guess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a couple of questions actually, and I think the first example you used is a very interesting one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a fellow Christian.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know that you're a Christian yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a fellow Christian, so I think our beliefs around God and who Yahweh is and what that means would be rather similar.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, to play devil's advocate part in the pun, given that we live in a world of 8 billion plus people, and there are thousands of different religions and different beliefs and people believe in different gods or no God and have all these different perspectives, even within a single faith, even within Christianity itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are many different denominations and sex and ideas and beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: So my question is, if the goal [SPEAKER_00]: is neutrality and not having any bias.

[SPEAKER_00]: How would that conceivably be achieved on that type of topic?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially when you have so many absolutely conflicting viewpoints and ideas and perspectives, what would a neutral article look like in that case?

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, it would not simply state what the Christian view is as if it were a fact.

[SPEAKER_01]: It would attribute that view to the Christians.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if the Jewish view of Yahweh is slightly different, then it would say that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There might be different sections, you know, comparing, and, in fact, and other articles about God on Wikipedia, it actually will do this, and it does, as far as that goes, I think that's the correct approach.

[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, you don't try to make generalizations when no generalizations can be made.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you can't say anything that everybody agrees to about Yahweh or very little, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And yes, and one thing that I think some Hindus believe is that that Jesus, for example, at least is is one of the avatars of Brahma, or I think.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's one of the things that they say sometimes.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would be recorded.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole idea is you're learning about an encyclopedia that is neutral is what people believe so that you can basically make up your mind for yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's essentially what a neutral article does is it gives you all the resources that you need all the references and all the summary statements that you need to do more in-depth research.

[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, if it's a really detailed article.

[SPEAKER_01]: encyclopedia as Wikipedia very well could be it's pretty detailed for sure but it could be even more so and then it would go into every last little nuance of particular perspectives right so you'd be able to learn about a lot about the the Hindu or the Muslim perspective on the [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hear that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in its current form, what would prevent someone from making those changes or additions?

[SPEAKER_01]: What prevents it is the people who are now at work on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you go to [SPEAKER_01]: make a change on Wikipedia, although they call themselves the Encyclopedia, anybody can edit, you better not, because if you try, then your account may be deleted unless you do it in a very very particular way.

[SPEAKER_01]: You would have to, essentially, if you're new, especially you'd have to ask permission almost.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe if you made a few sorts of very lightweight changes, nobody will mind too much.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you make any changes to like the definition and any change at all to the first paragraph, then on the discussion page for the article, [SPEAKER_01]: people will be all over you, you know, criticizing you and threatening you with blocking.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they have essentially made up their mind about how the article should read and you can debate with them and that does happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the problem is that because the positions are now entrenched and they are entrenched in a way that reflects only what is the historical critical method.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it's called in religious studies and Bible studies.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the historical critical method, which is essentially a secular approach to the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if your approach does not reflect that, [SPEAKER_01]: then you're basically swatted down and said, well, you're not really welcome here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Although you might not be told so in so many words, they might be a little bit more diplomatic than that, but that's essentially what you will be, what it will be implied.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a welcoming place [SPEAKER_01]: Perspective is held on at any particular page, but it actually does depend on what page you go to, also, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So a Christian, you and I might be able to go to other articles which about which, you know, secular scholars have relatively little interest and you might actually be able to just go to town writing things there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: What is the danger, socially, culturally, politically, for humanity of Wikipedia having a particular bias?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a huge question, isn't it?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's different kinds of dangers.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say, [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, why should people care?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why should people be worried?

[SPEAKER_01]: I get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this really trying to mitigate the potential harms and they're already present harms is the purpose of the nine thesis, which I have on LarrySanger.org.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want the completeness or to that question, go to go to LarrySanger.org and at the top of the page.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a link.

[SPEAKER_01]: to the 9th season.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all laid out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say the biggest problem that Wikipedia now poses for the world at large is that it has become [SPEAKER_01]: basically a communications conduit for the establishment, for the power establishment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not, it's a particular establishment, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It is the Western globalist establishment, the point of view of the New York Times and the BBC and Agents, France, press, those sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you are not in line with the way that those outlets report the news, then you're not welcome there, but from the readers perspective, the problem is that you will simply be left in the dark about [SPEAKER_01]: all other perspectives, to a great extent, not entirely.

[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, they'll try to report about different perspectives.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the way they report about the different perspectives is precisely from what I call a gasp perspective.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a globalist, academic, secular, and progressive.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the idea is, there is a particular line on politics, science, culture generally, that a very small number of people are pushing in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: The problem that I have with that is that it doesn't really respect individual autonomy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't really consistent with a really robust democracy.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's as if, well, no, this is a literal description of what has happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: The world has one main encyclopedia, and it sort of sets the agenda, sets a state's the facts for everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: That just makes me uncomfortable, you see what I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: That it shouldn't work like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: represents all of humanity must reflect all of humanity in all of its great diversity, intellectual diversity, as well as ethnic and other types.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does this make sense?

[SPEAKER_00]: how you do this whilst maintaining a level of accuracy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So not just the neutrality, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But we all know that there are people with all sorts of views on all sorts of things, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them are fact, some are factual, some are counterfactual.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just, you know, wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: And lots of things are opinion and perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I'm wondering if you have an article, okay, let's say on a political or cultural or social issue, or also ones that can easily be contentious, of course, are biographies and profiles of individuals, whether they're historic figures or well-known people alive today.

[SPEAKER_00]: how do you have that article and have it reflect lots of different people's views and opinions, but also maintain accuracy is what I'm wondering, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's take a simple obvious example, [SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump, you have all sorts of, all sorts of views in opinions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I mean, I guess, as I think about this, of course, you could just stick to very hard facts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is when he was born.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is who he is.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are some of his, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So you could do it by, I guess, avoiding anything that is potentially contentious or potentially subjective.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then it might be a little bit dry as well, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That won't work.

[SPEAKER_01]: That won't work.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's...

[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to describe, it's very hard to execute.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the general rule is, if there is any area of contention, if people are inclined to disagree on some point, then the article doesn't take aside.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the basic rule of neutrality.

[SPEAKER_01]: What that means then is then you describe the different sides.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the Encyclopedia, the entry about Donald Trump, for example, does not need to take sides on whether Donald Trump was a good guy or a bad guy, a truth teller or a liar, whatever, all you need to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: And again, it's not easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: attribute the different views about Trump, to him, and this actually is what good journalism is all about.

[SPEAKER_01]: So good journalism is really difficult, by the way.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like extremely hard people don't appreciate this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the main things that makes it difficult is every [SPEAKER_01]: has to be correct if it's going to be good journalism, and it has to be correct in tone and so forth, and one of the things that journalists learn fairly early on is that in order to describe [SPEAKER_01]: how a Democrat thinks about Trump's view of immigration, for example, alongside the way that a Republican thinks on the same topic is very difficult to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have to mention one view first, and the other view second, you have to decide which [SPEAKER_01]: people to quote on this object, you have to introduce all sorts of facts, but in a way that is either acceptable to both sides or is properly attributed.

[SPEAKER_01]: This requires a lot of research.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the article about [SPEAKER_01]: Trump on Wikipedia clearly.

[SPEAKER_01]: They've done thousands of hours of research.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it represents.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's a very long detailed article, but it only takes one side.

[SPEAKER_01]: Very clearly.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it takes a very strongly anti-Trump position.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the pro-Trump position is simply not reflected.

[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, there are other perspectives on Trump.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're absolutely right.

[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't just like, you know, there's the Republican and the Democrat perspective.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's also foreign perspectives, which are important.

[SPEAKER_01]: and those should be represented as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it becomes sort of a matter of strategy for a globally neutral encyclopedia how to just organize the information.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like where do you begin?

[SPEAKER_01]: But it all has to be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the basic point is each different controversial point of view is attributed to its owner.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the basic rule.

[SPEAKER_01]: and making it work is difficult.

[SPEAKER_01]: See, here's the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the people who contribute to Wikipedia are not interested in neutrality as such.

[SPEAKER_01]: They view Wikipedia as a battleground, and they want their point of view on Trump or whatever the topic is to be the view that is stated by Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: I always thought this was a problem and I thought that such people who are actually actively pushing a particular point of view should just be, you know, deleted from the project because they're not helping.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I hope that answers the question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it leads to more of them, which I guess is good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, something that's burning in my mind is wondering, is it easier, and perhaps even more practical, simply for better alternatives to be created?

[SPEAKER_00]: rather than to attempt to reform Wikipedia from the inside out because it sounds like ironically at this point it sounds like a bit of a conservative problem, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a metastasized.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, you have this thing that has existed now for a couple of decades and it has some super high ranking officials basically referees.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not totally democratic.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it's just ossified, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: People have a certain viewpoints.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's similar to how I think about universities, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people have a problem with universities and their left-wing bias and 90-something percent of the professors are left-wing and a lot of different topics, everything's coming from a left-wing, progressive perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: I personally think the solution to that is, I'm just like, look, you're not going to be able to change these things from the inside out, so you're going to need to create alternatives, you're going to need to create competitors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wonder with this situation, okay, I understand the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: But would it not be easier and more practical in perhaps a better use of time to say, okay, look like Wikipedia maybe it's okay for some things, but it clearly has this issue and this bias, let's create an alternative, and if it is genuinely a better product over the course of time, [SPEAKER_00]: I would certainly like to believe that more and more people, it'll take time, it's not going to be an immediate thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, the King can be de-throne, so if Wikipedia is the king right now, we've seen a lot of kings in the internet age get de-throne by better competitors, so that could happen, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's a really big...

[SPEAKER_01]: question, basically, and it's when that I've been thinking about for a long time, I started a competitor back in 2006 called Citizensendium.

[SPEAKER_01]: You probably haven't heard of it, and we started at the time when Wikipedia was [SPEAKER_01]: basically blossoming, becoming the behemoth that it is today.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Wikipedia really sort of sucked the air out of the new project.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we had other challenges too.

[SPEAKER_01]: suffice to say that for various reasons, some of them organic, some of them artificial, the internet tends to have one of each type of website or project, and this is especially true of open source projects.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Wikipedia counts as one of those.

[SPEAKER_01]: So generally, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you look at like open source operating systems, there's one that's really dominant Linux, open source browsers, there's one that's really dominant Firefox.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are others, but they tend to be also ran, because there's this, there's an effect where the biggest project tends to collect more and more people because they want to have a bigger impact on the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there is a tendency toward a natural monopoly, especially with open source projects, and that phenomenon has happened to Wikipedia, and it's hard to battle against it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wikipedia really is the 800 pound gorilla, [SPEAKER_01]: Nevertheless, I started Wikipedia, you know, 24 years ago when we were saying the exact same thing about encyclopedia Britannica.

[SPEAKER_01]: How can you possibly go up against Britannica?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you'll never be bigger than Britannica and never be better, you know, more popular, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's not impossible, but generally it is going to require some some hook, something that will actually make the competitor better.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a few ideas on this, and then I'm going to get back to why there is a reform proposal on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I've been doing since 2019 and I've been talking about it for even longer is I've been organizing what I call the Encyclosphere, which I think I mentioned this before, it's a collection of all of the Encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: all of the free encyclopedias anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea is the whole is greater than the biggest parts of the superset is greater than the largest of the set.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, I think, very true in order to make the encyclosphere as useful as Wikipedia, though it has to have a constantly up-to-date, really deep copy, including all of the history of Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is a tall, actually expensive order, and there's a lot of other things that need to take place.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, we've got over 60 encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you actually go to encyclosearch.org or encycloreader.org you can see windows into independent windows into the encyclist sphere.

[SPEAKER_01]: So encyclist search has 30 encyclopedias plus another 30 only in metadata.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's links to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can still search all of the articles.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, I think, very useful in ways that Wikipedia isn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: It does, in fact, give you perspectives.

[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like another search engine, though, to be honest.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to be as useful as possible, it would, we simply have to have a lot more money to collect all of the encyclopedias and to digitize all of the old, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, public domain and psychopathias make some deals with a few others and so forth.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's an entirely non-profit project.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's one thing that I've been working on, and it's been underfunded, but we've made some great progress.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing that is possible here is, and well, I mean, of course, there is [SPEAKER_01]: is more mature, and I think it might already be the case, perhaps it's even been announced, I don't know, but that other AI companies will have their own encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a very interesting question, whether the best of the AI and cyclapedias will end up being better than Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, I wouldn't say that crocapedia is better than Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not as big as Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has a lot of information that Wikipedia doesn't have.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is because of Wikipedia's idiosyncratic policies that just [SPEAKER_01]: um, ensure that some information simply is not in the, uh, in the, uh, in the encyclopedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back then to the basic question, why have I proposed a reform rather than simply promoting the encyclist sphere?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I have been promoting the encyclist sphere for the last five years.

[SPEAKER_01]: People have not paid a whole lot of attention to it because, well, I'm not actually proposing anything new.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually trying to promote all of the other encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: and just give people tools to contribute to the some total of all of the encyclopedic knowledge, not just that in Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a good idea, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess it doesn't make people that excited, at least not yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for now, anyway, Wikipedia continues to be like it or not, [SPEAKER_01]: Wikipedia, they say, is the encyclopedia, anybody can edit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's actually true if you make an account, you can go in and start editing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, which, [SPEAKER_01]: articles you actually can edit and how you edit and so forth really depends on how you play the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: You might not even be able to touch the Donald Trump article for example until you've done a certain amount of editing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how that works.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty sure it's protected and so anyway, the idea then is right now the number of people who have real authority and who are working on Wikipedia very much, remarkably small.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say in the hundreds every month.

[SPEAKER_01]: if you were simply to recruit several hundred.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wouldn't take very many, just as I say, just several hundred conservatives and libertarians and just people with different points of view.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's a lot of Israelis and a lot of Hindus that are complaining about Wikipedia as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: You recruit enough of those people and you will [SPEAKER_01]: basically drown out the current voices that are on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not impossible.

[SPEAKER_00]: With these people be paid, how would they be incentivized?

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's a good question.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why, how is anybody incentivized to work on Wikipedia?

[SPEAKER_00]: I actually have no idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's something I've always read.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's, what they will tell you is there are volunteers.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think the most active people on Wikipedia are volunteers.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're actually being paid by somebody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, to be sure, there are people who are, [SPEAKER_01]: you know, their retirees or their perpetual students and they don't have, you know, a lot of requirements they live in their, you know, parents, basement, or whatever, and they have all the time in the world to make it a full-time, unpaid volunteer gig, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But I actually think, given the amount of [SPEAKER_01]: influence that Wikipedia has in the world that the people who want Wikipedia to read a certain way are certainly going to hit up the people who can make things happen on Wikipedia and pay them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Say, look.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a very lucrative offer for you if you simply use your influence to push a certain line and, you know, here are your marching orders.

[SPEAKER_01]: You do this and you will receive a certain amount every month.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure there are a lot of deals like that going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of the more active people, not most perhaps, but a lot are probably working for PR firms at some level.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe if not directly, then indirectly.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're incentivized, you can say, by the, [SPEAKER_01]: of purely economic incentives, so then you might say, well, that doesn't that mean that people on the other side are up against well-funded opposition from various sources.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but, you know, again, we're not talking about very many people, and I'm sure we can feel [SPEAKER_01]: Um, a few hundred board alternative perspectives, you know, people, uh, board people, um, who have lots of time on their hands, who take alternative perspectives, who could write for Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally possible, and, and for that matter, it's also possible, and I'm not saying that this is, this is against the rules, but this is what the other side does.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not recommending this, but I'm saying you as cowards possible for people to be incentivized, well somebody who takes another point of view could actually plow money into presenting the other point of view on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: It shouldn't work that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: But how if the, especially if the leaders of Wikipedia are anonymous, how can you stop it?

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is actually one of the main reasons why in the reform proposal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thesis 6 is revealed who Wikipedia's leaders are.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, if you count up [SPEAKER_01]: the most influential accounts, the ones that are the most power in the system, based on the definition, the one that I came up with said there are 62 such people, the power 62 I call them, 85% of them, 85% are anonymous, only 15% share their real name.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what if we were to require that such influential empowered people in the system have to use their real names and disclose any quick question Larry, when you say that do you mean by force of law?

[SPEAKER_01]: By policy on the Wikimedia Foundation website.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the Wikimedia Foundation owns the platform.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they can impose their will if they wish on such things.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in this case, they should.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I understand your perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: My question is, if I think from their perspective, if all these things are true, why would they want to do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: What would be the incentive for them to go along with this?

[SPEAKER_00]: If they want their bias to be reflected, especially, [SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing if they're trying to be neutral, if they're genuinely trying to be neutral, then I can see why they'd want to go along with some of these points, but if it is so captured to the point that it's like, no, we want our worldview being reflected.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's not a...

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a lot of people just think their world view is the truth, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like most people think their world view is simply the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: The regardless of what their world view is.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm wondering, this is why I bring up the point of competition.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why I think competition is probably a more effective avenue because competition forces change.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've been on social media for 20 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw Twitter through lots of different incarnations, YouTube through many different incarnations, Facebook, Instagram, and so on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I remember in from about 20, 16 until about 2022, the walls on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and so on were closing in, right, more and more people were getting banned, more and more people were getting censored.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, they de-platformed a sitting US president, which is completely insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then during all the, all the COVID stuff like it went crazy, they were [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, in this case, Elon Musk bought Twitter, and eventually rebranded it to X, but that didn't just change Twitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: That changed the entire social media landscape.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, YouTube is less sensorious now than it was three years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: Facebook is less sensorious now than it was three years ago, because the competition forced all the others to get their act together.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, in the absence of that, just as it is with the status quo, I understand all the policies and ideas and proposals, but my view is just like, well, if you're someone at the top of that Wikipedia pile, you're in that power 60, and you generally have the sort of consensus of people who think similar to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think they'd be like, you know, like why on earth after consolidating this over two decades, why on earth would we want to suddenly change it, especially in a way that may be ideologically opposed to what we believe?

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question, and I actually think that [SPEAKER_01]: that competition.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm making just the sort of argument that you're suggesting there to Wikipedia now.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not part of the 9th E-C's, but I'm making it now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I didn't know that the gracapedia was going to be launched.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, Elon Musk announced gracapedia the day after the 9th E-C's dropped.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he announced it as a comment to somebody who [SPEAKER_01]: sharing an interview that I did with Tucker Carlson about the nine theses.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think that's how Elon views.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I haven't talked to him about this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't talked to him directly about anything to be quite honest.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nevertheless, I think that is clearly how he thinks about [SPEAKER_01]: the competition for Wikipedia, to which I say, look, if you actually want to go head to head with Grokopedia and keep up with them, then you're going to have to make some changes.

[SPEAKER_01]: An example of an argument that I make along these lines now is Wikipedia has been avoiding [SPEAKER_01]: the use of primary sources.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a little inside baseball, but it's pretty important when we're talking about an encyclopedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where you allow the information to come from that matters, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: if you're talking about a newspaper article that is citing other people or that is summarizing some study or whatever, then the original people and the study are the primary sources and the news article is a secondary source, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: A textbook that summarizes a lot of research.

[SPEAKER_01]: as a secondary source.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what Wikipedia tries to do is go to the secondary sources, and when the information in the secondary sources is generally rich enough, then people are limited to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: On only under very narrow circumstances, can you, in a Wikipedia article, cite a primary source?

[SPEAKER_01]: The rules against citing primary sources on Wikipedia, which is crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.

[SPEAKER_01]: Especially when you're talking about academic articles and scientific articles, because, you know, if you, [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at any specialized academic or research encyclopedia of any sort, you'll see right away that what it's doing is summarizing the latest research, and of course it's primary research.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wikipedia is basically declaring that it can't write a lot of those articles.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some of them maybe, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It really depends on whether the secondary sources quote the primary sources enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then you can cite the primary source yourself on a Wikipedia article.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a mess, and the reason then that Wikipedia has sort of reached a level of growth limit is that if you want to keep growing robustly, then you have to actually go to the primary sources.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now here's why I'm going off on this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know that Elon Musk, [SPEAKER_01]: is his eyes on big university libraries with massive collections of journals and wants to go in and essentially train grock on those on that material.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or at least train the grock of pedia [SPEAKER_01]: article writer, software, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That wouldn't necessarily mean to train growth itself, which is like another question.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when it comes to training, you know, basically mining all of that for information in the way that a human [SPEAKER_01]: Encyclopedia article would do, but just using AI to do that, that would be like a special kind of right that Elon Musk would be going after.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would be very important for him to get.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as he gets such rights and starts going through all of that material systematically, for all I know, he already has an agreement.

[SPEAKER_01]: but I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, as soon as he has that, he can make something that's like an order of magnitude or two larger than Wikipedia and then it's game over.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So we're talking a lot of articles on very, very specialized topics that you wouldn't be able to find on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you might say, well, Wikipedia is already so vast.

[SPEAKER_01]: What are you talking about?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why does there need to be more information?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if you ever, if you ever specialize in anything in an academic field or any, [SPEAKER_01]: hobby or whatever and you look it up on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times you actually do reach a limit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the limit is the limit of secondary source material.

[SPEAKER_01]: on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is just an example of something where Wikipedia's policies are hand-stringing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll just give you another example.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, one more.

[SPEAKER_01]: More relevant for more people, I imagine.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know how I was talking about the Yahweh article.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it would be entirely possible for a Grocapedia to be instructed to go and I actually haven't read the article that Grocapedia generated.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tested it using chat GPT.

[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, it was a little bit more neutral than the Wikipedia article, but not a lot more.

[SPEAKER_01]: If they were to go through and have more robust neutrality instructions about Yahweh, [SPEAKER_01]: Then the resulting article would be much more useful for a lot more people.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's just an example.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right now Wikipedia gives you one approved point of view on everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to learn about global warming, you can learn everything that the establishment wants you to think about global warming on the page, [SPEAKER_01]: Well, whatever they call it, global climate change or anthropogenic global worrying, he knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, grocapedia, on the other hand, will have the full gamut of perspectives.

[SPEAKER_01]: which a lot of information, which is well-sighted, based in research, representing real data, right, and in other fields that represents real scholarship, real practical experience, but primary source experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Drop a video will have that information.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wikipedia will not.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a huge advantage to Grocopedia, or to any other sufficiently large competitor.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_01]: This is one reason also why I have been encouraging people to write a lot of articles for other encyclopedias generally.

[SPEAKER_01]: get just go into the same long tail of articles that Wikipedia has gone into.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you should explain what the long tail is or I can, because it's really important when it comes to encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we want articles on the long tail.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reason why Wikipedia is so big and so popular is that it has articles on the long tail of topics.

[SPEAKER_01]: and all we need are a lot of other articles in other sources and search engines will find them, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the reasons why Wikipedia is so popular is you look up articles on any specialized topic.

[SPEAKER_01]: The only encyclopedia article you will be able to find about it that's free will be from Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as another resource has an article on that topic, it will tend to move up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, that's true.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've noticed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Wikipedia ranks very, very high in search engines, whether it's a niche topic or even just a mainstream topic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you look up any popular or famous person, Wikipedia's probably going to be number one or two, sometimes their website might beat it, but oftentimes Wikipedia will even beat the individuals website if they have one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's true, and that is actually, some people believe that Google has, it's thumb on the scale or it's continuing to artificially [SPEAKER_01]: a wrongly unfairly advantage Wikipedia due to whatever the successor of page rank is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the old page rank algorithm that was used like 25 years ago, it doesn't work that way anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how it works now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Something like that is probably still in play.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the main reasons why Wikipedia has is rank so highly in the results that Wikipedia articles is not because the Wikipedia articles are necessarily better articles It's because Wikipedia basically just has so many links in to it and it's just it's basically [SPEAKER_01]: It's advantage is in its reputation at this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's, you know, it's such an interesting topic and I think the thing that's most complicated about it, like so many other things, is on multiple levels and multiple fronts, you're battling essentially with human nature.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the human nature of the people who are at the top of Wikipedia and who are these, you know, couple hundred or contributors or referees who hold a lot of power, you're battling also with ignorance and apathy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I would wager that most people around the world, [SPEAKER_00]: don't know or don't think that Wikipedia has a specific bias.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd certainly say that most people who would lean more liberal Which could be you know half of the population at least half of the population that uses Wikipedia if not more They probably would deny that it has any type of bias and then even those who do think it has a bias and know it does [SPEAKER_00]: you're there's mostly going to be apathy, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Unless it's someone who's like really, really involved in this area, most people, kind of like we are with news outlets, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like most people know, if you're remotely tuned in, we all know different news outlets have their biases, this person has their bias, that has its bias and whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you just have a bit of a discerning eye.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, I find Wikipedia to be a very useful resource for a lot of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm aware that particularly on certain topics, it has the exact bias that you've mentioned, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I like the gas acronym, and I think that that's very accurate.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm reading an article, say I'm about to interview Larry Sanger, I might go on Wikipedia and type in your name.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to read it, but I'm going to read it and I'll be a little bit discerning and I'll be discerning, knowing their bias, just like if I were reading an article from the Guardian or from CNN, or even from Fox News on the other end, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just aware, okay, this one has this bias, so I'm going to read it through and my brain naturally sort of filters out certain things, but.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think most people don't know or most people don't care.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's very difficult to deal with these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very similar to actually what was going on with even the Twitter censorship a few years ago or the censorship on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_00]: For example, [SPEAKER_00]: Um, the average person who uses YouTube all around the world is not like, oh, YouTube has like a left-leaning or they're banning certain creators or this or that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, most people are just like, it's just YouTube.

[SPEAKER_00]: They just think it's neutral.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, they're probably not following creators who are so on the edge that they're liable to get banned for anything anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they probably aren't even aware that people that hundreds or thousands of creators lost their accounts over the last decade is probably not even on their radar, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's just like, well, you know, I remember a seven years ago when there was like kind of a call to boycott YouTube or to like push people towards different platforms and so on and yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's extremely hard because from the creator perspective, someone who puts out stuff on YouTube, like I've had people be like all Zubi, you should like you should totally ditch YouTube.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, okay, so I should ditch 90% of my audience and my listeners and my viewers like, that is where they are, whether or not I like it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe ideologically I would prefer that something that is more neutral and less opaque about certain policies is where all the eyeballs and ears are.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if that's not the case, it's going to be really hard to get people who are creating there and building an audience and who have been there for, in my case, over 15 years and you suddenly kind of expect all these people to jump ship and it's, I don't know, it's hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is where you really need like, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: alternatives, and they have to be good, they have to be really good alternatives, and they have to be competitive, and they have to have a lot of volume, a lot of high quality content on them, so that they can get those, get those, some of those network effects, because all of these things ultimately your networks and the bigger the network is, the more valuable it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just thinking out loud here, but I think it's complicated.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an advisor of BitShoot, actually.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not an advisor of very many things, but BitShoot is one.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one thing that you could do is release your videos there, six hours before you release them on YouTube or something like that and you know, people who are like following you closely that they have they have a, you know, profit sharing.

[SPEAKER_01]: program too that they're rolling out.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's worth supporting the little guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's actually really important even if it's relatively few people who are doing so.

[SPEAKER_01]: I encourage people to write for other encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another competitor that I would be remiss not to mention [SPEAKER_01]: That's what it's called, J-U-S-T-A-P-D-A, Justapedia, as in Just Us and in Psychopedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was started by a woman who is a retired journalist, [SPEAKER_01]: who is very, very good at the Wikipedia process but just got disgusted and it was like pulling teeth to add facts on anything that was contrary to the negative even if they were cited from multiple sources and approved sources and so forth.

[SPEAKER_01]: The ideologues really do circle the wagons when they notice somebody who seems to be against them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it's a big problem on Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, obviously, you're quite right that in that work effects aren't necessary to make real competition.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I do think Wikipedia had, I don't think it was created just by Google, for example.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people have said this, but one of the main reasons why Wikipedia grew as fast as it grew is quite simply that, [SPEAKER_01]: that was this massive opportunity that people could immediately see, Google is not responsible for that, Google just allowed people to find the website, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you've got some new idea, which is really cool and an improvement over what all already exists and people want to start using it or getting involved in it, they will be motivated just because it's new and cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all you have to do is get enough people, you know, excited about something that is new and cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it will grow and grow and grow until it actually becomes a real competitor.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to actually [SPEAKER_01]: making a real competitor of Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: I frankly think that it's entirely possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have not tried the following thing, which is, I think, really important.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have not yet plowed millions of dollars into the knowledge standards foundation and collected all of the encyclopedias kept them up to date like every hour, making sure we have the latest information that is pushed to each of those free encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it really does become a one-stop shop.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, and I'm not talking about a particular website here, by the way, I'm not, I'm not like trying to unify all of the competitors of Wikipedia into a single organization.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is not the suggestion.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm describing the encyclosphere, and this is intended to be a decentralized network.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have two different servers built by two different programmers that communicate with each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're able to exchange encyclopedia articles.

[SPEAKER_01]: They have a shared data format called the ZW file format so they're able to share articles back and forth between them.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if we were to have a dozen nodes of this sort and they all have their different, you know, collections of encyclopedias, some of them have all of them, I suppose.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then the encyclosphere would exist in multiple copies.

[SPEAKER_01]: and all around the world and then it would become much more feasible for search engines to make use of and make their own constantly updated copy of the Encyclist sphere.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it becomes much more feasible to actually push that data instead of the Wikipedia data.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for that matter, I've got to plug in for WordPress, so some people have blogs, their websites that run on the software called WordPress.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a plugin that we have written that will push an article from your blog to the encyclopedia, and it will appear on encyclopedia search, and we can set up encyclopedia to receive the article as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea is it can propagate across a decentralized network, and then it will work in a way that actually represents a greater competitor of Wikipedia, greater because it will include all of Wikipedia, but it will have [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of other perspectives because it's got a lot of other encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what I think, again, this would require millions of dollars which we have never spent, but would be well spent, we could collect articles in other languages, other encyclopedias.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't know how many.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what foreign languages do you know there?

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we're in Dubai if I may ask.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry, well, how many four languages are here in the world?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you personally, Ruby.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, me personally, like how many languages do I see?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, what are the languages?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one with perfect fluency and decent Spanish and basic French.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's me personally.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought maybe because you're there, you might know Arabic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I had, I wish I had there, but I don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well anyway, so the deal is, there must be at least a few free encyclopedias that are not Wikipedia and French in Spanish and Arabic and so forth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't it be interesting to have those auto translated into English?

[SPEAKER_01]: and for us English speakers, and of course the ones that are written in English can be auto-translated into French and Arabic and Chinese and whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of this becomes increasingly easy in the age of AI, you know, and you know auto-translation is becoming cheaper.

[SPEAKER_01]: OCR is also getting cheaper and better, so the information contained in books can make the transition to digital much faster and cheaper.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the point is, I think, going forward.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally possible if somebody were willing to plow the money into it to actually essentially allow the network that already exists to emerge in a way that it would be useful to search engines and to just the general public, and then people would be using that.

[SPEAKER_01]: and different windows into the encyclist sphere.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wouldn't be any one website or any one app, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: At least I hope not.

[SPEAKER_01]: it would be any number of them because it would be an open network, you see what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it ought to exist.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the old-fashioned decentralized internet.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the real competitor to Wikipedia.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a grocopedia for that matter, as far as I'm concerned.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because grocopedia can be one of the items in the [SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Larry, um, in the interest of time, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to pause it out here, but where, where can people find and follow you online?

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, my blog is LarrySinger.org.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can read the nine thesis there.

[SPEAKER_01]: uh...

encyclist fear dot org if you want to learn about the encyclist fear uh...

if you want to follow me on x uh...

i've i'm about to break ninety thousand followers now so uh...

skills uh...

ill singer is my handle there not really [SPEAKER_01]: don't really participate much elsewhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a lot of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do make videos for BitShoot though, so you can find me there too.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Larry Sanger, thank you for the gift of your time in Wisdom, and I appreciate you coming on the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been great talking to you.