Jon Cogburn's Blog

Slate interview with Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia)

I went to graduate school with Larry. He's a pretty singular personality. While finishing his dissertation he taught himself fiddle and started jamming every week with the Columbus bluegrass and Irish fiddle scene. In a short time he got good enough to teach lessons. He also ran a web page on Y2K related stuff that ended up getting cited in several books. And he and Ty Lightner (of Yvonne Craig fan site fame; one of the first such sites on the internet, one that he started half as a lark, but that ended up getting him face time with much of the cast of the original Batman; Ty is now a computer programmer and one of the top Netflix reviewers in the world) and I used to go to the great performances put on as part of the choreography MFA degree at OSU sometimes once a week.

His dissertation was on epistemic circularity. It's really interesting how that work played a role in the way Wikipedia was initially set up and then with Larry leaving it. Here are some of the many money quotes (whole interview HERE):

Yeah, I can imagine that the social dynamics get pretty ugly. But my understanding is that you left Wikipedia over deeper philosophical schisms.

I had lots of deep philosophical schisms with Wikipedia in the end, although also some agreements.  The first problem was what we were just talking about: reigning in all the bad actors, doing something to reduce the number of trolls and the amount of time we spent dealing with them.

The other problem was that there needed to be some sort of mechanism—it didn't have to be anything like editorships or review before publishing or anything like that—but some sort of low-key role for experts in the system.

Why did you feel so strongly about involving experts?

Because of the complete disregard for expert opinion among a group of amateurs working on a subject, and in particular because of their tendency to openly express contempt for experts. There was this attitude that experts should be disqualified [from participating] by the very fact that they had published on the subject—that because they had published, they were therefore biased. That frustrated me very much, to see that happening over and over again: experts essentially being driven away by people who didn't have any respect for those who make it their lives' work to know things.

Where do you think that contempt for expertise comes from? It's seems odd to be committed to a project that's all about sharing knowledge, yet dismiss those who've worked so hard to acquire it.

There's a whole worldview that's shared by many programmers—although not all of them, of course—and by many young intellectuals that I characterize as "epistemic egalitarianism." They're greatly offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought to matter is the content [of a claim] itself, not its source.

Things to do if you want to live longer

Nice Daily Beast article HERE. They didn't mention anything about driving, which as the number one killer of people in their teens and twenties, has one of the biggest impact on death rates. Anyhow, here are the things they do list, with the percentage effect on your chance of being dead within 20 years.

There's some interesting philosophy here. Given how literally toxic getting laid off is (you are 15-20% more likely to die within twenty years if you are laid off), shouldn't this be reflected in criminal proceedings against people whose criminal behavior results in lots of other people losing jobs?

Also, lots of these things effect men and women differently. For example, being Mormon is much better for male mortality rates than for women. Should this inform feminist critiques of Mormonism? More strikingly is the effect of marrying a spouse more than 7 years younger than you (which decreases mortality for men and increases it for women).

Also, it is really important not to confuse correlations with causation. For example, a lot of the sleep data is probably the result of the fact that people who sleep too much are likely to be sleeping off hangovers. So there is a common cause for sleeping too much and increased mortality, rather than sleeping too much causing increased mortality. I strongly suspect the optimist/pessimist thing is the same thing. If a large enough percentage of the pessimists and optimists are being rational, then whatever is causing the pessimism and optimism is whatever is causing decreased and increased mortality rates. This being said, I'm going to express all of the following as if they were causal, because it's more fun that way.

1. Don't get laid off: +15-20%.
2. Get and stay married: +20%.
3. If you are a married woman, not marrying someone over seven years younger than you: +20%; if you are a married man, marrying someone over seven years younger than you: +11%.
4. Do not  more than 8.5 hours a night: +15% (but sleeping less than 4 hours is horrible too).
5. If you are a woman, have a waste less than 35 inches; if you are a man have one less than 40 inches: +25%.
6. Be an optimist: +55%.
7. Sit less than 8 hours a day: +18%.
8. Go to church regularly and do the social stuff involved: +25%.
9. Be a Mormon- men: +6.7%, women: +3.2%.
10. Be rich: +15%.
11. Drink two glasses of red wine a day (and no more): +25%.
12. Don't watch television: -8% for every hour a day consumed.
13. Live in Hawaii (life expectancy 81.3 versus Louisiana with 74.2).
14. Be a woman (outlive men by 5.1 years)
15. Be literate: +50%.