Larry Sanger - Wikipedia Is Broken and No One Wants to Admit It

0:00And personally, sorry for what you've gone through, because of Wikipedia, I'm sorry to have unleashed this on the world, I did not intend for this to be an engine of libel as it has become. We were being ripped apart on Wikipedia. I just couldn't believe it because I think we all just assumed it was this transparent, trusted source of information equal to the truth. A fair number of accounts that will libel you mercilessly with no recourse. You can't sue them because we don't know who they are. When COVID happened and lockdown happened, we were one of the few channels that started asking hard questions. We had the second largest YouTube livestream in the world. And that episode was banned and deleted 10 minutes after we finished it. Spy agencies are very much engaged in shaping public opinion in one way or another. It was shocking. We didn't think that there would be a censorship regime and Wikipedia was definitely part of that.

1:02The Twitter files, which were pretty much ignored completely by mainstream media, it was pretty shocking what they found. Now when we go look back, we realize that they were getting those directives from government. When the government gets in the business of massaging what the people shall believe, that's very disturbing to me. How we can turn Wikipedia around. All I'm proposing is that there be an editorial assembly to make needed changes to Wikipedia. Neutrality is acknowledging that people are ultimately going to end up carving up reality for themselves and we ought not to impose our views on others. Hi, it's Brian Rose from London Real. You probably know that we've just recently been re-platformed on YouTube after 25 months completely in the dark. The truth is I really need your help. What I really need you to do is click on that subscribe button right now.

2:06Like this video and maybe even leave a comment or share the link with friends. We're really fighting against an algorithm that's tried to keep us quiet for so long. And the more subscribers we have, the more people watch our content, the better guests we can bring you, the better content, and we can continue transforming lives. We've been doing this for 14 years now. I want to do this for another 14 years, but I really need your help. So click on that subscribe button, like the video, leave a comment, share this, and we're going to continue to bring you more and more great content. Thank you. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Larry Sanger, the philosopher, internet pioneer, and co-founder of Wikipedia. You helped build one of the most influential knowledge platforms in human history, shaping how billions of people access information every day. But you also became one of the earliest and most outspoken critics, warning that neutrality, truth, and open inquiry were being replaced by ideology, narrative enforcement, and institutional capture.

3:11Since leaving Wikipedia, you have focused on philosophy, free speech, decentralized knowledge systems, and the deeper question of whether truth itself can survive in a digital world dominated by power incentives and artificial intelligence. Today, I want to explore how knowledge became politicized, why trust in institutions collapsed, how AI is accelerating epistemic failure, and what must be built next if society wants reliable information again. Larry, welcome to London Real. Thanks for having me. Let's get into it. This sounds fun. Yeah, let's jump into this. So, you know, in 2011, I walked away from my job as a banker in London, and based on my inspiration of Joe Rogan, who at the time wasn't even on YouTube. I mean, very few people knew about Joe. I was into my fighting and mixed martial arts. I knew him as the commentator of the USC, but I was watching his podcast when he was literally on a sofa with his friends on you stream.

4:13It was so low-tech, it wasn't even funny, Larry. And I decided to start my own Joe Rogan in London, and we called it London Real, because I always thought London was a tremendous brand name, and I thought I would just grab it. And, you know, this was in 11, and I still remember getting our first Twitter account. And again, you know, social media is still new-ish, you know, Instagram didn't exist back then, Facebook. It didn't even have like a business page. You had to kind of co-opt a personal page. And, you know, it was still the early days. And, you know, it was something we kind of grew up with the internet. We kind of grew up with this publishing. And I remember in the early days, you know, just being recognized by something like Wikipedia would have been just a tremendous honor and a sign that we were now relevant, you know, as a show. And, and, and of course being recognized by mainstream media was something we kind of always wanted as well. And so fast forward to 2014, 2017, 2020, when COVID happened and lockdown happened, we were one of the few channels that started asking hard questions and having guests on that started going against the mainstream narrative.

5:26And, famously, on April 6, 2020, we had the second largest YouTube livestream in the world, second only to Trump's coronavirus briefing that day from DC. And that episode was banned and deleted 10 minutes after we finished it. And I had gone nine years, Larry, never had a single episode taken down from YouTube. We were in their partner program. I would go down to the studio. They would take us to lunch. And we started an all out war. And it wasn't just YouTube. It was systematically Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, everybody was taking us down. And then soon I realized that we were being ripped apart on Wikipedia. And I just couldn't believe it because I think we all just assumed it was this transparent trusted source of information equal to the truth. And I started finding out firsthand how it wasn't. And Larry, I would tell people how it wasn't. And they thought I was crazy. You know, they're like, oh, you're just a conspiracy theorist. I was like, no, no, no, there's people on there that have it out for me that that that won't allow me to change things or even update what I think are facts. And so I'm really curious what you make of our experience there.

6:38Just feeling that and it started right around 2020. I will say that I may or may not confirm that I ended up having to pay someone just to hold my wiki status quo, Larry. So to be as less liblist and slanderous as possible. We couldn't change it. But this guy was a vigilant there just to make sure it couldn't get worse. And I, I've had to live with that for the last few years. So that's been my experience. I'm curious. What's your take on that in many other stories like it? Well, your story is fairly typical. I've heard a lot of such stories. Peter Schiff actually reached out a couple of months ago and said that his story of being investigated by the government and then entirely exonerated was not properly told by Wikipedia.

7:40The fact that your bad mouth and, well, I'm not really sure how you are bad mouth exactly by Wikipedia is certainly par for the course if you challenge the narrative generally speaking. In fact, there are podcasts, I suppose, that can be used as sources on Wikipedia, not very many of them. I'm sure that London real is not one of them. If it's even on the perennial sources page, that would actually be a win for you. If you could actually be cited as a source. And, you know, that would be something to have your your guide look at. It is absolutely true that people who can afford it will pay and and have maintained their pages. But, you know, PR firms that specialize in working on Wikipedia and it's required essentially otherwise they will absolutely take you apart and and libel you mercilessly with no recourse part of the problem here is that you're dealing with anonymous people.

9:02You can't sue them because you don't know who they are and you can't sue the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the owner of the platform because of section 230 protections. So, yes, I'll tell you what I've told many people before. I'm personally sorry for what you've gone through. I'm sorry to have sort of unleashed this on the world. I did not intend for this to be an engine of libel as it has become. It's a real shame. I think you've been encoded as saying that, you know, when you when you started with Wikipedia, you also like to remind people that the media landscape was also very different than when a lot of people today would not would openly say I can't even believe the New York Times. Nobody was really saying that in 2010. Where are they?

10:08And that changed, I think you said to Tucker Carlson, that kind of changed overnight at some point and then you saw Wiki kind of change with it. I wonder if you could speak on that because, you know, it's not entirely your fault, I would say. Definitely not. Well, actually, I think that the history of the media landscape is really fascinating and this is the sort of thing where we can, if you're old enough, you can just think back about how it has changed. If you've been reading enough news since an or watching news since the 1980s or 90s, then you've actually seen it unfold. So in the 1980s in the early 80s in the United States, it was that the news was entirely dominated by the big three plus PBS and NPR. And that that was where you got your news from they presented a unified front. It was like a media monoculture. And then along came Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, which upset a lot of people, of course.

11:20And then soon after that with the the internet, when when the internet became well widely used enough, it actually made this started making a difference to the media landscape. So the in the 2000s, you started to see things like world net daily and well, any number of other news sources. About times got a start around then, I suppose. And, and, and of course Joe Rogan and others. And then they just kept building and building. Now, as we know, MSNBC fairly early on, I don't know, even though it was launched as a sort of opinion news, I don't think it was in the earliest days. I think it pivoted to something more like the Fox News model.

12:23And, and for a good decade or more, it was just Fox News and MSNBC that were essentially purveyors of opinion, masquerading his news. And then about 2013, 2014, there were a number of high profile panels and at the UN and other international organizations that began loudly decrying the riots. There were a couple of ways of misinformation. And this made a big difference. People, I think, don't realize just how enormous that was as a sort of watershed moment of how our society really changed. Because after that, it became like overnight, okay, to attack free speech as such. You know, I remember just being shocked at my erstwhile liberal friends, mocking free free speech as freeze peach, right back 10 years ago or so.

13:36Again, overnight, basically in in the days of Brexit and Trump's first election, all of the media began to be just as opinionated as Fox News and MSNBC. It was really shocking to a lot of us, of course. And I suppose the youngest adults out there today don't even remember a time when when most of the media was actually making an attempt to be more traditionally unbiased, I guess, even if they weren't succeeding very well. So now we get to the point in 2017, I believe it was maybe 2018 on Wikipedia, a page was was started called the perennial sources page and it was a list of various media sources of various kinds.

14:43So not just broadcast news and newspapers, but all kinds of blogs and nonprofit organizations and and think tanks and whatnot. They were all listed there as as major sources and they were color coded. The ones that were color coded green could be used with without attribution except in footnotes. So the things that they said could be repeated in Wikipedia's own voice, even if they were quite biased, right. The things that were in yellow generally were discouraged. It's like yellow means caution and it and basically those things you certainly had to attribute any alleged facts to those sources. And then there were two or three other gradations of of credibility on the perennial sources page.

15:44There was red and gray and if something is red, basically, it's a no go. You're not allowed to use those sources except perhaps to characterize what the source information about the source itself. And then use the source as a source of information about itself. And then the the grade sources that would include things like bright bar and any number of others. This is not to slam light bright bar. And be used even even as a source for for themselves. They were in the software. It's impossible to link that the software will stop you from linking to those sources. What happened as a result of of this effort to organize the Wikipedia's opinions about how different sources could be used.

16:53It quickly became obvious that the liberal center left sources could be used or progressive sources, generally speaking, unless they were extremely radical anti establishment. And basically all conservative sources between again 2017 or so and I don't know maybe 2021. They were they were all essentially blocked from being used. And the only ones that that are called conservative are ones that are very much establishment conservative. So we're talking about the Wall Street Journal and the telegraph. And beyond that, very little. And that's that's essentially what has happened. Basically, Wikipedia went from being a

17:57attempt to represent the broad landscape of opinion on every subject to being a mouthpiece for the establishment. Yeah, all the while without people realizing it was happening and all the while being pretty much the number one search rank on Google and arguably 10 times. I don't know maybe more. I'm curious what you think the number is more relevant, more important, more effective at changing public opinion than any other news organization in the world. Yes, certainly gets a lot more traffic than any other newspaper and people do spend quite a bit of time. I think people get more into the weeds reading articles for, you know, the New York Times or whatever, perhaps. But people do the same on Wikipedia as well. I haven't I'm not aware of any studies of impact or anything like that. But I think it is safe to say that Wikipedia is

19:05considerably more influential than any other single media source, more influential than the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Times, the BBC, you know, and so forth. Yeah, I mean, I remember obviously Google, when if you ever put your name your organization in Wikipedia would almost always be in the top three. And then recently maybe a few years ago before the AI came in, Google would usually do a quick summary in that right upper right hand column and that was almost always best based on Wikipedia. And then of course now we've got the AI models and their first go to or the go to that's been around the longest is again that Wikipedia. I remember I was on a call with like about a hundred really high level influencers and ultra wealthy people and Alex Jones came up because he had just interviewed me. And one of the guys said, oh, Alex Jones, I just chat GPT him and this is what they said.

20:07Dubai real estate is exploding and the biggest money is being made where almost nobody is looking. In premium luxury transformation projects that have historically delivered 40 to 90% annual returns. That is incredible. For years these opportunities were locked inside private networks. You never saw them. You never had access until now. I've spent 15 years on Wall Street and five years studying Dubai up close and today for the first time ever you can invest directly alongside my team. We have just received a brand new project with real potential for outsized returns and early allocations always feel fast. Click the link and apply now. Your opportunity starts today. And I looked at him in front of all these people and I said, are you serious? Are you literally just going to trust what chat GPT tells you? That's what you think about the world. You don't realize there's so much more going on.

21:10These were supposedly intelligent people, wealthy people, that that's what they were getting their information from Larry from the chat GPT, maybe the Gemini, which is probably taking a chunk of it from the wiki, which again was co-opted. And so I was just surprised that people didn't know what they didn't know. Right. I mean, we have to practice digital hygiene. I mean, this is something that we should be teaching to our children routinely and perhaps there's a slightly older generation that developed their instincts about how to consume media back in the days of the big three. And just expecting there to be some source that they can consume, learn what the truth is, and I just believe it. And unfortunately, it doesn't work that way anymore. We actually have to have to consume more sources of a wider variety. I think if we want to be reasonably confident of any conclusion.

22:24And when it comes to our opinions of the sources themselves, like Alex Jones, then of course, yes, we should consume them a little bit and form our own opinions. Yeah, I was interviewed by Alex Jones a couple of months ago, and I was surprised that he was, first of all, a good interviewer and a second of all, apart from a few obligatory nods to the conspiracy outlook. Nevertheless, I think an informative, interesting interview. And look, I know I'm biased. Every human is biased. But then I also know when I try to look at something objectively, I'm like, look, Alex is a lot of things. He's got some crazy ideas. But also, if you look at his track record, he's also got quite a pretty good record of predicting things that, you know, what happened many years before or calling things out before they ever happened.

23:37And I just don't think he ever gets a fair shake on those kind of woke or left leaning places like Wiki and some of the others. So, yeah, I'm kind of looking at fairness. Look, I know you have some thoughts on how we can turn Wikipedia around. And I really want to get into that. But I was literally yesterday, Larry, talking with my 22-year-old daughter who's going to school in Boston, and she was over here visiting me. And Wikipedia came up. I'm not exactly sure how. And I brought up the Grocapedia. Now, of course, I'm a little biased, okay, because I've been censored. And I guess I am probably right leaning. And I'm definitely freedom of speech leaning. And I'm suspicious of kind of a lot of the things that happened, especially the censorship on the internet, et cetera. And so I said, well, Grocapedia, it's AI-based, you know, it's clearly neutral, which I know objectively that's not true either. And my daughter, who's, you know, looks, she goes to an institution of higher learning in America.

24:41So, you know, it's filled with probably left-linging views. You know, she went off on Elon Musk on one. And I'm just trying to listen a little bit more than anything. And so I'm curious, what do you think of a Grocapedia? And I think you put out an article on that, which I kind of read through. And then what do you think of also the concept of that where people are kind of trusting an AI to tell them the truth? This kind of goes back to my opening, you know, it is truth possible in a digital information age. So, I'm kind of impressed by Grocapedia, Wikipedia should watch out. It's still early days. We don't know what LLMs can do ultimately through iteration and just iteration of the current crop of LLM technology might be enough to make an encyclopedia that is better than we can do.

25:42But let me get into some of the details. So when I looked at the article about myself, a subject that I know quite a bit about more than the Grocapedia or Wikipedia, I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of facts that were not even in Wikipedia that had been essentially left out. So Grocapedia is not just a copy of Wikipedia. They may follow the structure of articles. That's something that a lot of people have observed. But the fact that they are open to using a wider variety of sources makes a big difference. On the other hand, being an LLM, Grocapedia draws inferences, which it really shouldn't. Because there is in an LLM, you know, artificial intelligence, mind, a connection between science and a religious unbelief, apparently, the fact that my father was a marine biologist was taken as the explanation of why I ended up being at agnostic for most of my life.

27:09Well, it's true that I ended up an agnostic for most of my life. And it's also true that my father is a marine biologist. But Grocapedia, the engine that generated the article falsely, wrongly inferred that the one thing caused the other when they really had nothing to do with each other. And so it's interesting, a really interesting problem to figure out how to get rid of such bad inferences. There's a lot of problems right now. It is still early days. They didn't even go through the article enough times to catch all of the repetition. So like three different introductions to my PhD dissertation and the article, just for example. So I've looked at a number of other articles and that seems to be par for the course. The articles on Grocapedia are as well written as could be expected from an LLM.

28:18So they have a slightly predictable, slightly turgid, long-winded style. It's readable enough, but you wouldn't want to read through the whole thing. It would be quite a chore. But then that's also true of Wikipedia. So it's not really doing worse than Wikipedia in that respect. But I will say this, you know, they've grown already by their own accounts. I don't know if it's really true from 800,000 articles to 1.8 million articles, which I can tell you is quite an achievement. Obviously, they've put some very talented people to work on the project. So, you know, given Elon Musk's track record, it's not surprising at all. There's one other thing that I wanted to say about Grocapedia. And that is that I took the introductory sections of articles on 10 different topics.

29:31And I, from Wikipedia and Grocapedia, and I fed them both to chat GPT, a neutral third party. And I had chat GPT rate the bias of the two different articles, not telling the, I did some massage to make sure that it couldn't say which was which. In fact, I didn't even say that it was from Grocapedia and Wikipedia. Okay. On average, the bottom line is the Grocapedia articles were considerably more neutral than the Wikipedia articles. Now, these are political hot button topics where the Wikipedia articles are all very much biased. And Grocapedia, in a couple of cases, took the opposite tack, essentially it was biased in the opposite direction.

30:31But for the most part, it was simply less biased. And we, perhaps we should talk a little bit about the very idea of neutrality versus objectivity. That's something that I, that's a hobby horse of mine that I like to talk about is actually relevant today, I think. Yeah, let's talk about that just, just to finish off with the X platform, I was really curious what you thought Larry of the community notes on X, you know, and this is talking that that Elon believed I thought was maybe the solution to moderation, which I think obviously is one of the biggest problems on Wikipedia and many other places you could argue, you know, the editors of the New York Times have the same problems. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the theory of community notes is that you allow the, the opposition to your point of view to correct errors on both sides. I don't even know exactly how that's done, but I believe it's done that way as a way to show how neutral that is. I'm curious what you think of it and what you know about it. And if you actually seen that proof and then I'd love to hear your thoughts on neutrality.

31:45I can't prove that it's successful. I can give you my opinion that it is pretty successful. So the way it works, my understanding is anyway, that when somebody submits a community note for evaluation, then if the opinion is divided generally speaking on partisan lines, then it's just ignored. But if people who have traditionally voted against each other in similar disputes, I don't know how that's ascertained, then, but they agree on this case, then it's promoted and shown to the general public. So I actually am in the community notes program. So I have some insight into how it's working on the back end and people submit a lot of different competing community notes on hot button topics. And you know, it's, to my mind, it works well.

33:02Simply because a lot of times there is an objective fact that has been left out of somebody's ex post tweet. And it's possible for large numbers of people to acknowledge that, yes, indeed, you know, there is this study or there's this news report or there's this statement by the person concerned that throws light on the situation. It's, it's helpful. It is. Sometimes almost like a blatant piece of misinformation that might go go by in kind of the maelstrom of posts, all of a sudden, it's like, no, that video was not a drone attack on children. That was from a science fiction movie. Or, you know, it'll just come out and say, no, actually that footage is of Maduro 12 months ago, not 12 minutes ago. And then it's just a nice piece sometimes where you're like, oh, oh, oh, and in that sense, I think it's quite helpful.

34:05I guess maybe that ultimately could be game too, because I know when you set up Wikipedia, you know, this concept of, you know, moderators, you know, it's, it's a bit like communism, it works great in theory. But in practice, it always doesn't work. So just real quickly, before you go to neutrality, you mentioned various actors. And I was wondering if you could talk about, you know, your thoughts that there are many, many actors on Wikipedia from intelligence agencies globally to PR firms to all sorts of other people with agendas that spend a large portion of their time editing posts on Wikipedia, which I would argue. Your average American would not ever believe that's happening. Perhaps not, but we are told, right? And we have some evidence of this happening, right? And so I don't, I don't claim that Wikipedia is controlled by the CIA CIA. No, I don't claim that I've never claimed that.

35:09I don't know to what extent it might be true. All I'm saying is we are told that spy craft has changed in the last generation that previously it involved collecting information about the enemy. And, and perhaps a little bit of propaganda on the edges through things like, I don't know, voice of America or whatever. But now we are told that spy craft to a very great extent means using whatever tools are at our disposal to affect public opinion in the interests of national. Right. And that means them that it and it has been established historically that that spy agencies and I don't just mean American ones either are very much engaged in the business of shaping public opinion in one way or another.

36:27Right. If that's the case, why wouldn't they be spending time on Wikipedia? Why wouldn't they cultivate relationships with the most effective players, even hire them? Now, so I think some of that has to be happening. And in fact, one of the former CEOs of Wikipedia is on the record essentially saying that she has engaged in conversations with government agents. But surrounding the COVID stuff, basically, so they tried to coordinate, she admitted what sort of information would be shared on Wikipedia so that it was in line, the implication was so that it would be in line with government dictates.

37:33And that's very disturbing to me as a libertarian free speech kind of person when the government gets in the business of massaging what the people shall believe that is a problem. The extent to which it is actually going on on Wikipedia, we don't know. We do know that there is it's a fairly big business that you know PR firms are doing like what you have done paying people to massage your reputation on Wikipedia, you wish you didn't have to do so. But the fact that apparently if you can afford it, you do have to do so in lieu of being able to sue someone, but you ought to be able to do but can't. And that means that other entities, including government and corporate entities, can use the same sort of PR tactics. And again, surely do they wouldn't be doing their job as PR people would they of course not.

38:47And it's probably great ROI whether you're a PR person or whether you're an intelligence agency, you know why send 100 agents in the field when you can get 10 people online changing narratives. It just makes sense. And yeah, look just to kind of finish out what happened to us in 2020, you know, obviously Elon famously bought Twitter. And I remember one of my favorite quotes. He said I didn't buy a company. I bought a crime scene. And then he put out, you know, the Twitter files, which were pretty much ignored completely by mainstream media. And a lot of people actually never even read that stuff. But of course we were up on it because we had felt, you know, that censorship. And it was pretty shocking what they found, you know direct requests from actually many, many levels of government. I don't even know how they could keep their heads together there in San Francisco when you've got, you know, multiple different parts of the government asking you to take this down to quiet this person to do this to that.

39:48And I always used to joke I can't wait for the YouTube files because we were actually a deep platform from YouTube in 23. Dubai is the fastest growing real estate market on earth. And the biggest profits are not happening in off-plan speculation. They are happening in luxury transformation projects that have historically delivered 40 to 90% annual returns. Yes, 40 to 90%. That is incredible. For 15 years, I worked on Wall Street. And one thing became clear, the biggest returns always go to the people with access. That's why I created the Dubai Luxury Property Circle. A private investor membership that gives you direct access to curated, fully audited Dubai real estate deals that were once reserved only for insiders. And right now, we've just received a brand new, very exciting project with the potential for outsized returns. When these open, they fill immediately. When they close, they do not reopen.

40:50Your annual membership gives you access to every deal we source, private walkthroughs, market intelligence, and an invitation to our Dubai investor day. If you want to put your capital to work in a way that actually builds real wealth, click the link, apply now, and speak to my team. This is your moment. Don't miss it. After having a lot of open arguments with them in 2020, funny enough, it was actually the BBC that put pressure on YouTube to take our videos down. And so there's also to weird actors. And then we systematically were taken down, Larry. Like I said, it was Dropbox, PayPal, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, pretty much in the same week. And honestly, I wouldn't allow myself to think that there could ever be a single actor because I'm not some crazy conspiracy guy. That's Alex owns right. So I honestly wouldn't even allow myself to think that. And I was angry. I was pointing fingers at the platforms themselves. But now when we go look back, we realize that they were getting those directives from government.

41:59And now Facebook said that Google's now said that YouTube settled with Trump. And we got re-platformed almost three months ago. And we had 2.2 million subscribers, half a billion views, a 14 year history, 14,000 videos. We were not small potatoes. And now we're back. And now, Larry, I posted every single piece of content that in 2020 and 2021 got removed, got me strikes. I even made a movie called We Will Not Be Silence about what YouTube did to us. That is now on YouTube. And they haven't said anything. And so it's just incredible for me to watch what can happen also from one regime to another. And the truth is, I've said this to people that that are on the left. And I said, look, if Trump wasn't elected, we wouldn't have our channel back. And a lot of these things wouldn't be happening. And I guess that also goes to show us I had someone left say, well, that goes to show you that we have to make sure these tech companies aren't monopolies. And I was like, well, that's another way of looking at it too.

43:06Anyways, just interesting to see what happened there. I guess we'll never know how much they pressured Wikipedia, but also since there's the moderators in there, you'll never know what was also going on on that level. Yeah, I remember those days and being shocked at, yes, there's the full court press against various players, you know, yes, it was shocking. We didn't think in 2013 and all the years before that that there ever could be such a thing happening in the United States of America. The idea that that that would be a censorship regime and that we would actually have to learn the concept of censorship. Of course, it's not going to be called itself. It's not going to call itself that is truly shocking. And Wikipedia was definitely part of that.

44:14We have evidence of that the extent to which it's happening behind the scenes, the most influential people on Wikipedia saying to be pretty disciplined about keeping their mouths shut about what is going on. And I think there there has to be quite a bit of quite a few paid players. There's a lot of paid editing going on. There's a fair number of accounts accounts in the hundreds, not the thousands that appear to be working full time on Wikipedia. That would be a lot of money to be made there. Exactly. Exactly. And then of course, we don't know who those people are and all the more we don't know who is paying them. Let's just quick as a quick aside, how do you feel about being the guy that created this incredible platform that for a while was lauded is just just amazing resource.

45:25And it truly was an incredible resource that just didn't exist at the time. You couldn't find these answers on Google. You couldn't find these answers on YouTube and yet Wikipedia could tell you so much. And then to watch it kind of get co-opted into something is probably the opposite of what you wanted. And then also have people reach out to you and blame you for that. And then maybe hopefully you've come full circle and resolved yourself. I'm just curious what that emotional journey was like for you. I've been pretty philosophical about the whole thing. I have been bothered almost distraught, I suppose, on behalf of people whose reputations, even whose whose income has been taken a hit. I've been working on this for years for things that happened long after I left. But I try to do what I can, I suppose, to help. But realistically, there hasn't been a lot.

46:29And one of the main reasons why I started the nine theses reform project was to, again, try to make a difference to make the world a little bit better. I think that Wikipedia, if it is improved in the ways that I've listed in the nine theses, it, it's, well, could make a difference to the world. Perhaps there would be fewer people libeled, perhaps the information would be fairer. And so, yeah, I think it's important that we try to fix it if it all we can. Can you give me the dates when you were actually involved? And then I'd love to get the nine theses or a summary of those because it seems like your theses don't just apply to Wikipedia, right? They apply to all information in the future. Yeah, basically January 2000 to March 2002. So very, very early days, the prior project to Wikipedia and then the first 14 months of Wikipedia itself.

47:47My, my involvement was absolutely key, not only that I bring the idea of a wiki and cyclopedia to the table, I also set up the most important defining policies of the early days. The neutrality policy, the fact that we're focused on in encyclopedia, as opposed to many other things that you can use a wiki to produce. And seeking sources for information and a lot of other rules. So, in the end, though, a lot of the biggest changes that were made that all happened after I left. So I can't really take the blame for the ways in which it was co-opted from an operational standpoint.

48:57So how do we change it? Right. Well, it'll be relevant in three years, if things like Wikipedia catch up and LLMs come in, do you think it still will be? The jury is out, actually, at this point. It's, it's possible. I don't think it's very likely, but I think it's, it's possible that, in three years, we'll be not only larger than Wikipedia, but more provably, more reliable. We'll have a better track record measured against the research by fact checkers, et cetera. So we'll see, though, right? There's a lot that is up in the air at this point, as far as I'm concerned. So it's still worthwhile. I don't think Wikipedia is going anywhere anytime soon.

50:00And it is worthwhile to spend time. In fact, I'm going to be spending time on Wikipedia this year, actually getting my hands dirty, making edits on Wikipedia. So just to go through the list, you can find this list on LarrySanger.org, the first link to the nine thesis, you can just find it, you can click through, not just to the paragraph long elaborations of the thesis, but also to essays supporting each one. So the, the thesis themselves have basically two parts. There's a problem and a solution, essentially. The, the, I'll just go through them very quickly, maybe not even all of them. Number two is that we should enable competing articles. So on Wikipedia, there, there are,

51:04there would be, in fact, many thousands of active users. Now, the number of really active contributors to Wikipedia, any given month is more along the lines of hundreds, not thousands. There would be thousands of people if you enabled them to write competing articles, you know, so that if, if you don't like the article about Venezuela or about Donald Trump or about gold or whatever, then you could write another one from that, that would draw on a different framework, as, as I say, I won't get into the details, but Wikipedia right now definitely uses what I call a gasp framework, which means globalist, academic, secular, and progressive gas.

52:04Right. Quite a list. And so it's usually because when you go search on Google Trump, you're going to get articles from epoch news, maybe you'll get articles from New York Times, you'll see a bunch of different opinions. And as long as you don't trust the AI to just spit out what the truth is, then that's, then you get to see different points of view. And you're saying why not have that on Wikipedia itself. And exactly why not. The third thesis is abolish source black lists. So we discussed earlier about how Wikipedia basically blocks the use of certain conservative, especially conservative sources and anything that is remotely anti establishment is generally blocked. That should not be. And I simply advocate that Wikipedia should go back to its former practices until about, I don't know, maybe 2010, 2015 of allowing a wide variety of sources and attributing the claims made by them to those sources and allowing the people to make up their own minds.

53:24Obviously, which is a good way of describing the neutrality policy, by the way. So the fourth thesis is to revive the original neutrality policy and a good way to sum up what the original neutrality policy was all about is when there is a point of debate or dispute. Wikipedia doesn't take a recognizable side, allowing the user to make up his own mind based on a fair representation of all the competing views. That's what neutrality is supposed to be. It does not have to do with objectivity neutrality is not objectivity objectivity is like scientific logical rational attempt to to limb the reality at the joints to carve it at the joints.

54:25And so that we have only truth and no falsehood. That's what objectivity is all about neutrality is the the strategy of the media strategy of acknowledging that people are ultimately going to end up carving up reality for themselves in different ways. We ought not to impose our views on others. And we should give them the tools that they need to make up their own minds. That's what neutrality is about. And I'm simply saying Wikipedia has abandoned that as a policy and they should take it up again. Let's see, skip another one. Number six is reveal who Wikipedia's leaders are. So if you look at the groups of Wikipedians that have access to tools, they give them more authority on the platform. I'm talking about the the arbitration committee, which is kind of like the Supreme Court of Wikipedia, the bureaucrats who have the ability to do that.

55:35They're the bureaucrats who have the ability to create new administrators administrators who themselves have the ability to block accounts. I think three of the highest-powered groups of Wikipedians, you count them up. There's 62 such people or there were last summer. And of those 62, 85% are anonymous. We don't know who they are. They don't give sufficient information a lot of times. They don't even say what their nationality is. They don't give a first name. They don't give us a picture, et cetera. Maybe they are known to each other, to some extent. But but the point is, you would think that that the most powerful people in this platform, which is in some ways the most powerful information platform in the world.

56:38You would think that they would take personal responsibility for the decisions that they make, but they don't. So I think that the Wikimedia Foundation should indemnify them, should enter into a formal relationship with such people and require that they reveal their identities. And of course, if somebody doesn't want their identity revealed, then they can feel free to resign from the position. So I think that would be very reasonable. Right. The problem is there is simply no one that can be sued on Wikipedia for the abundant libel that happens on Wikipedia. So ultimately, the Wikimedia editorial staff volunteer, though it is, has to sort of grow up and own up to the influence that they have.

57:48I know you've been said in the past that it's basically become a commercial entity and it will probably take in $184 million in donations last year. We're estimating that the servers are going to cost less than 5 million. First of all, curious, first of all, as a org, does it, does it have even more legal protections than a corp? And then second of all, yeah, what kind of questions does that bring up when it's bringing up that much money? Not to mention the side hustles, some of the moderators might have that might eclipse the $184 million. I think it probably does. In fact, again, considering the number of PR firms that specialize in Wikipedia, the fact that such organizations are apparently pretty wealthy with offices in New York City and so forth. You would think that there are some very well-paid people who are not admitting that they're paid at all working on Wikipedia or simply making strategy decisions behind the scenes and instructing the people who are actually in control of the accounts, what to do with the accounts essentially.

59:03That sort of thing can actually make a big difference. In other words, strategizing about how to deal with problems on Wikipedia can make a big difference in the outcome of disputes that are going on on Wikipedia. So, does that answer the question? Yeah, it did. And had you finished with the main thesis that you wanted to cover? Well, just a couple more requests. So, the general public has no way to rate or give feedback on Wikipedia articles. Why not? I mean, all the other big platforms do. If you can't rate Wikipedia articles, why not? You would think that there would be a big system for peer review on Wikipedia. Outside peer review, there isn't one. Why not?

1:00:04Okay. And it's so unique because it's so old, Larry. It's because you started it back in 2000 that before any of that stuff happened, and since it became so relevant and so important, it's almost like it got grandfathered in, you know, to where it didn't have to do those things, and now it doesn't need to. So, it doesn't, but you're right. It's extremely archaic and in internet norms. Right. Right. And even by 2002, when I was like after I left as the chief organizer of Wikipedia, I still made a proposal back then to basically make a review rule for experts, and it was thrown back in my face. So, Wikipedia, even at that early date, had become very insular. Most people will never see this opportunity. You buy luxury transformation projects, have historically delivered 40 to 90% annual returns. That is incredible.

1:01:07These were once reserved only for insiders with access. I spent 15 years on Wall Street, and I learned this. The biggest returns always go to the people who get the call first. Now, you finally can't. We just received a brand new project with major upside potential. Allocations move fast. Click the link, apply now, and speak to my team. This is your chance to see what others never will. So, and then finally, I would say that to adopt a lot of these sorts of changes, it might ultimately be necessary for Wikipedia to adopt a legislative process, which they have never had. There is no editorial board. There is no editor in chief. There is no one at the control, so to speak, of Wikipedia. You can say they like it that way, and that's how it's supposed to be. But the fact of the matter is, when it comes to making significant changes, needed changes to the way that Wikipedia has run, it really can't be done.

1:02:20Institutionally, you have to follow this very arcane, disintegrated process, which ultimately doesn't have the authority to make big changes like allowing competing articles. Is that going to really ultimately be made official, even if a bunch of people on the platform want it. Ultimately, I think perhaps it would have to be the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. There isn't even any established process for those people to make editorial changes. So, all I'm proposing is that there be an editorial assembly, so-called, that would actually have the institutional authority to make needed changes to Wikipedia.

1:03:28Who could do something like this through? I'm thinking of Google. What is their relationship with Wikipedia? Could they come out and say, look, we've made changes in our YouTube. We've made changes in this. We've made changes. We've addressed the errors that Gemini made when they depicted the founding fathers as African Americans. Now we want to address what everyone says about Wikipedia. Lord knows we support them with our search. Is that the, for me, that seems like the only type of entity that could push something like that through unless it was legislative from DC. Curious for your thoughts on that and what what their relationship is. It is rumored that they have a very close relationship, but probably the basis of such rumors is just the fact that Google has given to Wikipedia quite a few million dollars. I don't know what the total sum is over the years.

1:04:28Right. I don't think it would be Google that would make the, you know, they might propose a change, get behind it. I think legislature, legislatures of various countries might actually propose and get some, you know, whip up public support. I think a lot of grassroots public support of the idea might make Wikipedia rethink the idea, but ultimately the entity that would adopt such a thing would be the Wikimedia Foundation. And they are ultimately responsible for the rules that the platform operates under whether, whether they like it or not, whether I mean the Wikipedians like it or not, they don't, in fact, like the very suggestion that the board of trustees would would actually impose something from above on them.

1:05:39Rebellh, strenuously against any such thing. Of course, I think a lot of that is K-fabe, a fair bit of that going on. Nevertheless, yes, I do think that the board of trustees ultimately would have to get behind this and the board of trustees in turn could be influenced by various. Various, various players, governments, what not. So I don't really know what the way forward is, I can say this, I have heard from a number of different, you know, famous people who have said that they would sign on to and a letter of protest against Wikipedia. To the effect that they take issue with the way that they have been treated by the platform and how the platform is run.

1:06:53And I think that if copies of that were sent to the board of trustees and Congress and other entities, a high level public discussion could begin. It doesn't just have to take place among the lower rank and file on the Wikipedia platform. Because Wikipedia is really that influential. It's actually the sort of thing that kind of demands a diplomatic international solution. I almost hate to say that I shouldn't put it that way. It doesn't demand such a solution. And it would be better if it didn't have to be subjected to it. I'm just saying that if the problem cannot be solved in any other way, then perhaps some pressure will eventually have to be imposed by by governments.

1:07:57And again, I am about as strong a free speech kind of guy as you can imagine. So I don't like the idea of the government stepping in and saying, you shall adopt the following policies. But one thing that is very possible is, and that is to make a legislative carve out out of section 230 for the Wikimedia Foundation. So the Wikimedia Foundation has basically been relying on section 230 to allow Wikipedia to be an engine of defamation. They apparently like it that way. And that ultimately is a creation of the government. Right. The fact that the Wikimedia Foundation cannot be sued for the libel that occurs on the platform that they own is something for which Congress is responsible.

1:09:09Yeah, very much so you know what would do it quickly Larry is if if Trump sued them, and it would probably change things quickly. I mean, again, he did it to YouTube, he did it to Facebook, they quickly changed policies. And sometimes it's the catalyst that gets them to update their system to something a bit more current. Because if you wait for Congress to make the change to 230, that could be decades it seems. Right, right. Larry, you've mentioned decentralization in the past. We spent the last four years pretty deep into the blockchain community. We've invested about $25 million into various startups. I've had the big players on like Michael sailor and the rest. And of course, blockchain talks about how decentralization is the future. And again, they've even tried to start social media platforms recognizing the problems that we face with what they call these Web2 institutions.

1:10:10Like YouTube and censorship is one of the perfect examples. Of course, you know, blockchain as struggle begins more much momentum as we had wanted. And sometimes the decentralization without a clear leader stops progress if I'm honest. And this concept of a Dow or a decentralized autonomous organization. Again, a bit like socialism in theory sounds good, but sometimes you need to Steve Jobs at the front crack in the whip to get things done. And I'm just curious if when you thought think about decentralization, have you looked to some of the things happening in blockchain and what might you have in mind? I actually worked for ever a paedia back when it was called ever a paedia for a couple of years. And helped them get and psychopedia was actually after it was started, but to work on some of the policy and to promote it.

1:11:11The idea of a blockchain and psychopedia is interesting, but there are issues with it. We don't need to go into the details there. I do have something that I think is quite relevant here. The idea of decentralization is great because it implies freedom. If the decision making authority to set policy and decide which content is going to be published is spread out, then everyone has a role to play. And that is empowering to people. That's how it's supposed to work. But most blockchain companies are are in fact not decentralized in any meaningful way, as a matter of fact, they they like to talk about having a decentralized network.

1:12:22But most of the actual activity is going on on their servers and nobody else has made a copy or very few others have made a copy of their data or anything like that, and they ultimately have control. You know, we were talking about decentralization long before crypto was a thing at all, and the crypto simply co-opted that. In fact, Wikipedia itself, I remember I used the word decentralized and applied it to Wikipedia itself. But on the theory that it really mattered that people could work on Wikipedia as and when they wanted to without taking orders from any one entity. So it's decentralized in that sense. I actually think that true decentralization really is empowering. It's just that there's not a lot of money in it.

1:13:23If you if you want to make a lot of money, generally speaking, it's hard to know how to do it short of Bitcoin and and something that has an objective, appropriately objective value. And and you know that really it never was the point of decentralization. You know, back in the 1980s and 90s in the original web, the internet itself is decentralized. And that was a the reason why internet libertarianism was so big, especially in the 1990s. Was was that the the internet was radically decentralized anybody could register a domain name and you couldn't tell people what they were going to put up there if it was unless it was illegal and then maybe they would be investigated by the FBI or whatever.

1:14:28But yeah, and so what I think needs to exist as far as a free decentralized and psychopedia is a network of all of the encyclopedias. And I actually has have started such a thing I call it the encyclosphere take off of the blogosphere right and the idea is we. We make copies of all the free encyclopedias. There are more than just Wikipedia and we put them in the as we file format zwi means z zipped wiki it's like a it's like a zip file, but it's for wiki content. Collect it all in one place, but then allow anyone to make a copy of of that and we've we've actually proven that you can have as we files shared with each other and different different selections of encyclopedias held by different servers.

1:15:35So about a half a dozen people have done that that would be a truly decentralized encyclopedia network and again people are going to get rich from that probably maybe they're somebody will find a way but it's the public comments see that's that's the thing what we have forgotten I think is that the true decentralization is simply the public comments that's what it is. And well if you think to your basic economics the comments is not a thing that people ought to be able to especially profit from right if you if you are then you're ruining it that's the tragedy of the comments. I think that we're very early still in blockchain and you know I know some of the players that are out there building you know education. And the one thing about the blockchain is beautiful is its immutability and you know for example Satoshi Nakamoto inscribed you know on some of those first blocks back then I think it was the front page of the FT when there was the financial crisis and you know that can never be taken away if someone in North Korea.

1:16:47Describes can actually validate a block on Bitcoin they could actually inscribe something there that can never be taken away we know the way back machine on the internet can be tampered with at least that's the rumor. So you know that that in itself in addition to what you're talking about with the decentralization could prove extremely valuable in the future when it's in certain powerful interest to literally erase history. And look I know a lot of the players and there's been ups and downs and it's a very volatile the whole to industry by nature of it and the price. But I would see something 10 20 30 years from now definitely being decentralized with a blockchain component that would be information base i'm sure it will. It's it's i'm not ruling it out i've never said that it's impossible it's just that i think what they're the whole blockchain community is fighting now is the the bad reputation of all the the shit coins right.

1:17:51So yeah that's that's really hard to. It's hard to persuade responsible investors to part with their money after being so many people being burned. So it's in shame reading a book right now called 1929 that's unfortunately written by the very leftist Andrew Sorkin but it's an interesting tale of what happened a hundred years ago and. Just fascinating to hear about all these bank failures that happened and all these local banks that weren't very well capitalized and people lost all their money and. You know things we would never conceive of Larry where in the beginning of the banking world that was something that was much more common and so yeah look it's been an ugly few years of blockchain and it's a shame because. It's such a beautiful empowering technology but it's it's had its ugly years like i think a lot of things do in the early days so yeah i'm optimistic look i wanted to close on on learning a little bit more about your spiritual journey you know you don't hear a lot of.

1:18:56Philosophers that end up you know becoming spiritual i don't think either one of us are spring chickens and i'm finding in my later years i'm much more open minded to the concepts of religion that i was when i was 12 years old and my mom dragged me to sunday school. I even all grace sometimes the table on my kids are looking at me like who is this guy just kind of curious if you can tell us about your journey and you've been public about it and i've also noticed there's a real emergence of that in America from Tucker Carlson to you know Donald Trump of all people who would probably tell you he was the last guy that was religious maybe being shot at helps but i don't think it's just that either and there seems to be a real resurgence of that. Maybe even globally. If you buy ultra luxury property deal search tenfold in five years that's a 25% increase every single year for ten years it's like a statistical impossibility but it's happening here.

1:19:57142,000 millionaires relocated last year most of them came to the United Arab Emirates. I'll take you by any day of the week over London Miami and LA it's that good here. If you're a billionaire and you move to Dubai where you live is a statement so what is a luxury transformation it's simple it's a targeted upgrade of a premium problem you go by a villa that's 15 years old and you turn it into an ultra luxury up to date place to live and you sell it for a premium you walk in and you've got a beautiful house it's furnished it's got a concierge service it's got your super cars in the basement you need sex or eight of them we got you covered it's got your kids already accepted to the local schools. And they're already getting visas for your chauffeur your gardener all your maids and all your nannies it's done for you we can turn these around in 12 months 16 months max high performance returns 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 even 120% return out there. I worked for 15 years on Wall Street I've never seen anything with this low of a risk getting this high return never ever this is the most powerful money making an opportunity I've ever seen and I've seen it all.

1:21:05And that's where to take advantage of this is to go to our website right now I want to build that TV forward slash Dubai and book a call you've got to pull the trigger folks you can't sit there and keep watching the world go by. I think you're you're right I when I was in the process of conversion I was noticing this already on X that that already there were a number of people not just high profile people but new people who were announcing that they were turning to Christ. So I was an agnostic for three and a half decades basically from about the age of 14 or 15 until well 2020. And I I've always regarded myself as first and foremost a philosopher all three my degrees are in philosophy and very early on in my life I made it my life's goal to seek the truth essentially.

1:22:20And I thought there was nothing more important that people waste their lives away and and destroy their lives because they believe false things ultimately. And for that reason I thought it's extremely important to make sure that that we know what we believe why we believe it and that there are reasons for for our beliefs are correct and but as a result I became a skeptic methodological skeptic in other words I as a point of methodology I simply was agnostic about everything and that of course of course included. But God I thought that the arguments for the existence of God were not very good. I still think that the arguments for the existence of God individually are not very good but taken together actually they are remarkably good which perhaps I can explain.

1:23:24But let's just to to make a very long story short and people can read this on my blog on Larry saying or dot or how a skeptical philosopher becomes a Christian I think that's what it's called. It's about 45 pages so long form short book but it's free and I got married and I noticed that I would be willing to die for this woman and I had a couple of boys and I noticed that I'd be willing to die for them. Now when I was in my late teens and early 20s I fancied myself something of a follower of iron ran not not too much I didn't I was a skeptic after all so I didn't really go in for everything that she said. But it was interesting because I did tend to think that that ethical egoism was was correct ethical egoism is the view that if you want to understand why we should do what we should then ultimately the only explanation is in terms of our own rational self interest right.

1:24:47And it seemed to me it was not in my rational self interest to sacrifice myself for my boys I will have no interest if I'm dead right. And yet it's the right thing to do well that means then that I'm acting in their interest and they actually have a value independent of me it's very important. And so because iron ran as influential as as she is a lot of people I think a lot of libertarian types became well unbelievers whether the you know agnostic or atheist. Do to her influence but here I was I was like rebelling against iron ran's influence there I said well what else was she wrong about. Similarly I thought I had no concept of God at all like what what was the idea that of a creator who with a thought bring something into existence from nothing I have no.

1:26:02A concept of such a mind because my mind can't do that all my mind can do is like you know grab something and and pick it up and that's how that's what my mind does it sends a signal to my hand and and. But that's not creating something out of nothing so I have no concept of what God is in his most essential activity of creation and then. We started thinking about the whole idea of of you know virtual reality of ring world type scenarios where technology after the singularity has developed for billion years or something like that what really would be possible with mental prosthetics brain prosthetics then with a thought perhaps you could make a planet pop into existence. And then I said well if if I can conceive of that I might not conceiving of God so basically one by one the various reasons to disbelieve fell by the wayside and then the straw that really broke the camel's back as far as my resistance was concerned was.

1:27:20The Epstein stuff which I was apprised of in 2019 I didn't realize I was absolutely news to me that there were any number of high profile pedophile rings it's not just some and you can learn about these in the mainstream media. And they don't they aren't talked about as much as they should be to my way of thinking it's you know human trafficking including the trafficking of children for sex is a is a thing and the people who are involved in it as a friend of mine impressed on me are have let's just say a strange sort of religion and at least at least some of them some of them I'm sure are merely. You know creeps and he he was pushing these various occult books on me and saying if you really want to understand how they think then you need to read these things I said well being a skeptic I think such things could be true.

1:28:38I didn't believe any of them because can I'm a skeptic but I left open the possibility that there might be a spirit world for example and I said well if I'm going to read these I'm going to take them at all seriously then I'm I'm conceiving at the possibility of a world in which there really are demons and whatnot. And in which case I want to keep any such spiritual doors firmly shut and I know that I would be on the side of the angels in that case that's for sure. So I said I finally concluded that if I were going to read anything along those lines it would be the Bible itself because the occult is an inversion of a twisting of a reaction to the Bible. And to Christianity and traditional Judaism.

1:29:38So a few months passed by and December 2019 I decided just as bedtime reading not actually related to anything any of that directly. I decided to pick up the Bible and I at first I thought I was just going to read a little bit here and then but now and then I got really fascinated just in a few days and after a few weeks I was I had adopted a 100 day reading plan or 90 day reading plan took me 100 days. And by by the time I had gotten through it by the spring of 2020 I believe that God exists I rethought all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God so I have a PhD in philosophy I used to teach philosophy of religion and I was entirely aware familiar with the main traditional arguments for the existence of God.

1:30:50I the following thought basically occurred to me there's a lot of thoughts that have occurred to me on this that really made a difference but the one that made the biggest difference is the best argument to draw from something like the first cause argument that the universe could not have just sprung into existence all by itself doesn't make any sense had to have some sort of cause. It isn't that God exists which is the cause that just doesn't follow like what's God right it's all that follows from that is something that is independent of the universe of the of what we call creation. Would have have to have some sort of explanatory relation to the universe right and it would have to exist to necessarily. But the thing is this is the thought if you combine that conclusion that there is a necessary being that it's activity whatever it was created the world if you combine that that conclusion with the conclusion of many other of the traditional arguments for the existence of God the whole can serve as what philosophers call an argument to the best explanation.

1:32:14So the idea is there is an explanation of all of the data which when people are thinking about religion they sooner or later acquaint themselves with with right and that is that not just God but the God of Christianity exists. I'm now writing a book I'm like 650 pages into it called God exists and I don't have a publisher yet I've actually had offers to publish publish it but it's too long and I'm not going to make it shorter. So I finished writing this and then maybe I'll write a popularization but I'm just basically recording the sort of philosophical grounds on on which I've changed my mind about God but since then took me five years to pick a church but I'm now in the conservative or traditional branch of the Anglican church in the United States.

1:33:27It's called the Anglican church in North America and I go to church every Sunday and I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and that he died for my sins and that that's one of the most important and worthwhile ways that we can spend our time is to read the Bible to study and understand God's Word to us. That's incredible. My daughter is actually a philosophy major so I'm sure she's going to enjoy listening to this. They say a sign of a man's intelligence is how often he can change his mind so yeah my congratulations because very few people would be able to do that and it gets harder for most people the older they get you know I think it's a really healthy sign. It's one of the core principles here in London real I've had so many people come on my show that I fundamentally disagreed with Larry that my skin would bristle when they would go on their diatribes but I always tried to get myself to shut my mouth and listen to their point of view and and I almost always would find myself changing my mind months years to go past to consider these opinions and that's why we've

1:34:47always had conversations with different people and that's why I was always shocked when people tried to silence us because I thought you really do want to listen to as many points of you as possible again the solution to what people call bad information is always more information nevertheless information so yeah great to hear you say that yeah I remember when dr. Jordan Peterson came on my show in 19 and I look I I was a student at MIT and you know there's a lot of religion going on at a place like that and I was always very scientific okay maybe I was too co-opted into science at some point and but throughout this show I've had some great experiences with people like dr. Jordan Peterson who at one point he said Brian he's like the stories of the Bible are in our DNA he said something like that and it just it really took me back and I thought wow these are it's almost like human technology these are lessons that are built into who we are as people and you know they're kind of reflecting back to us who we really are and so I'm still on my journey obviously but it's constantly changing and it's quite fascinating and I think it's really good for people to hear people

1:35:56like you talk about that so yeah thank you for that I love the title nice and simple and I like the fact you're not going to make it any shorter that makes me happy too my my mother read it I was I was shocked I mean she never reads anything that I I write and especially if it's like philosophical and she up and she said she read the whole thing so yes I was I was amazed at how viral it it was you can never tell what you you're right is going to go viral and I definitely did not expect this to but it did you know it's an interesting time Larry you know it some would argue that we we stopped you know we stopped you know worshipping deities and we started worshipping you know concepts and you know we we replaced you know following religions with following you know other forms of thought right feminism

1:36:58different parts of science etc and and maybe deep down on an unconscious level collectively we're all realizing that that maybe that's not right maybe we're not finding what we're looking for and maybe we need to revert back with something that that's kind of been fulfilling people over thousands of years and we're created you know to to to fill this need so it's an interesting time and we're seeing it now play out on social media and the more people talk about it it seems like there's more people listening so yeah very interesting times yeah I think that's the there's been a backlash against socialism in the in the last generation I mean especially in the last 10 years since Obama made it socially acceptable on the left to to you know advocate for socialist

1:38:01policies you know one of the basic things that has been said about socialism generally is that it makes a god of the government or of society and and some of the backlash that you describe could be a backlash against that our notion that you know the sort of rituals and core values and and credos that that we accept are determined by some anointed class of social organizers essentially a new kind of priestly class of of socialists you know that that can appeal to perhaps some some young people and and to collectivists generally but for those of us who have actually paid attention

1:39:09and reacted as as they should in my opinion to things like the the COVID nonsense that that really helps us to you know reorient ourselves like the idea of of a government or media or some professional anointed expert class as it were lording it over us is is simply wrong right and and if we're throwing that away if we're rebelling against that way of organizing society then there is a god shaped god shaped hole in our in our souls and in the way that we interact with each other I think the Charlie Kirk's assassination and the reaction to it sort of um

1:40:13revealed that Dubai is in a moment that will not last and the biggest money is being made in luxury transformation projects that have delivered 40 to 90 percent annual returns that is incredible I spent 15 years on Wall Street and I know this when an opportunity like disappears it never stays available for long we just received a brand new project with major upside potential allocations will fill fast click the link apply now and speak to my team this will not last forever yeah no it's it I was just thinking of turning point when I was just talking about this resurgence and I mean 10 years ago you couldn't conceive of something like that happening of young people especially rallying around the conservatism and the religious aspect and and people outpouring like that and it's it's a it's a beautiful thing and I've had many many different discussions you know over the years about this and it's it's always illuminated me each one more

1:41:16and more and more I mean some some argue that the basic tenets of United States of America you know only only apply if it's if it's based on a layer of religion without that you know none of that stuff applies you know it applies on the assumption that we're going to behave in this Christian manner and without it you know that the principal's kind of fall out the window and other concepts that I had never really considered or pondered because they didn't come up in my my history books at school so yeah I think whatever you do Larry you're going to have to do a podcast series alongside the book is that a deal well I appreciate that I'm actually this year going to ramp up my blog at least I have never actually monetized my videos my blog or or my ex ex posts and I'm I'm finally doing that and so you'll probably see me do some more podcasting eventually I don't know if I'd be very good I don't really have the face you know for it I think there's a lot

1:42:22of examples of people without the face that are doing great so all right yeah all right so if people want to obviously read your blog posts and your extended ones it's LarrySanger.org other ways for them to follow you or stay in touch with you on excel sander um beyond that well yes there's the knowledge standards foundation if they want to put their name on the mailing list we don't we don't spam you that's for sure that's at encyclose fear just like it sounds like encyclopedia but it's encyclosefear.org and if you're a developer um we we might be starting some new projects or you might pick up where we have left off on our mattermost forum and you can find a link to that on encyclosefear.org but that's where any

1:43:24sort of activity for the the knowledge standards foundation is taking place on the mattermost forum all right fantastic uh Larry thank you so much for your creations and also your uptick activity about your creations and then these ideas and your feces on how we can turn it all around such an important time right now especially as we start leaning more and more on these kind of one stop shop one answer LLMs we need to really maybe condition ourselves to um like you said look for the three different articles on the new generation of Wikipedia or ask the LLMs their sources uh not just to worry about the hallucination factor but also making sure that we really get the truth in a in a world that's getting more and more digitized and sometimes I laugh to myself i mean Alex Jones calls his show info wars the future will be an information war and that's pretty much all it will be so um your ability to discern the truth your truth is probably going

1:44:26to be the single most important thing and uh i think your thoughts on it are excellent so thank you so much Larry appreciate this and uh all the best with a new book all right thank you appreciate it excellent take care everybody we'll see you next time on London Real bye hi it's Brian Rose from London Real you probably know that we've just recently been re-platformed on youtube after 25 months completely in the dark the truth is i really need your help what i really need you to do is click on that subscribe button right now like this video and maybe even leave a comment or share the link with friends we're really fighting against an algorithm that's tried to keep us quiet for so long and the more subscribers we have the more people watch our content the better guess we can bring you the better content and we can continue transforming lives we've been doing this for 14 years now i want to do this for another 14 years but i really need your help so click on that subscribe button like the video leave a comment share

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