Larry Sanger: Difference between revisions

In high school, he participated in debate, which Sanger says influenced his views on neutrality due to these debates exposing him to different issues and arguments from both sides:<ref name="Schwartz2015" /><blockquote>And so I'd look up articles about those things, and I was always furious when I came across an article that failed to present one side fairly or at all. The worst instances were when [the author] would just come out and say what their position is. It just struck me as being really unfair.</blockquote>Sanger graduated from high school in 1986 and attended [[wikipedia:Reed College|Reed College]], [[wikipedia:academic major|majoring]] in philosophy.<ref name="Alan_Boraas" /> In college he became interested in the Internet and its potential as a publishing outlet.<ref name="Wade Roush">{{Cite news |last=Roush |first=Wade |date=January 1, 2005 |title=Larry Sanger's Knowledge Free-for-All |url=https://www.technologyreview.com/2005/01/01/231769/larry-sangers-knowledge-free-for-all/ |access-date=March 25, 2007 |work=[[Technology Review]]}}</ref> Sanger set up a [[listserver]] as a medium for students and tutors to meet for tutoring and "to act as a forum for discussion of tutorials, tutorial methods, and the possibility and merits of a voluntary, free network of individual tutors and students finding each other via the Internet for education outside the traditional university setting".<ref name="Tutor-L">{{Cite web |last=Sanger |first=Larry |date=August 30, 1995 |title=Tutor-L: Higher education outside the universities |url=http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/NH/95-09/95-09-01/0018.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091123051329/https://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/NH/95-09/95-09-01/0018.html |archive-date=November 23, 2009 |access-date=March 25, 2007 |website=Internet Scout |publisher=scout.wisc.edu}}</ref> He started and moderated a [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] philosophy discussion list, the Association for Systematic Philosophy.<ref name="Marshall Poe" /><ref name="Schwartz2015" /> In 1994, Sanger wrote a manifesto for the discussion group:<blockquote>The history of philosophy is full of disagreement and confusion. One reaction by philosophers to this state of things is to doubt whether the truth about philosophy can ever be known, or whether there is any such thing as the truth about philosophy. But there is another reaction: one may set out to think more carefully and methodically than one's intellectual forebears.</blockquote>Around 1994, Sanger met Jimmy Wales after subscribing to Wales' [[mailing list]] titled Moderated Discussion of [[Objectivism|Objectivist]] Philosophy (MDOP).<ref name="Schwartz2015">{{Cite news |last=Schwartz |first=Zach |date=November 11, 2015 |title=Wikipedia's Co-Founder Is Wikipedia's Most Outspoken Critic |url=https://www.vice.com/read/wikipedias-co-founder-is-wikipedias-biggest-critic-511 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151114004055/http://www.vice.com/read/wikipedias-co-founder-is-wikipedias-biggest-critic-511 |archive-date=November 14, 2015 |work=[[Vice (magazine)#Website|Vice]]}}</ref> Sanger received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Reed in 1991, a Master of Arts from Ohio State University in 1995, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000.<ref name="Glyn Moody">{{Cite news|last=Moody|first=Glyn|date=July 13, 2006|title=This time, it'll be a Wikipedia written by experts|url=http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1818630,00.html|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070222023201/http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1818630,00.html|archive-date=February 22, 2007|access-date=March 25, 2007|work=The Guardian|location=London}}</ref> Beginning in 1998, he and a friend ran a website called "Sanger and Shannon's Review of Y2K News Reports", a resource for people such as managers of computer systems who were concerned about the [[year 2000 problem]].<ref name="Marshall Poe" />

Larry Sanger has a [[wikipedia:doctorate|doctorate]] in [[wikipedia:Philosophy|Philosophy]] from [[wikipedia:Ohio State University|Ohio State University]].<ref name="Glyn Moody" /> His professional interests are [[wikipedia:epistemology]], [[wikipedia:early modern philosophy|early modern philosophy]], and [[ethics]].<ref name="Alan_Boraas" /> Most of Sanger's philosophical work focuses on epistemology.<ref name="Wade Roush" /> In 2008, he visited [[wikipedia:Balliol College, Oxford|Balliol College]] of the [[wikipedia:University of Oxford|University of Oxford]] to debate the proposal "the Internet is the future of knowledge", arguing wikis and blogs are changing the way knowledge is created and distributed.<ref name="Andrew Keen">{{Cite news |last=Keen, Andrew |date=June 2, 2008 |title=Andrew Keen on New Media |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/andrew-keen-on-new-media-837997.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080605023100/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/andrew-keen-on-new-media-837997.html |archive-date=June 5, 2008 |access-date=June 8, 2008 |work=[[The Independent]] |location=London}}</ref> Sanger has frequently written and spoken about collaborative content.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Larry Sanger |url=http://blogs.britannica.com/author/lsanger |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200701172049/http://blogs.britannica.com/author/lsanger |archive-date=July 1, 2020 |access-date=April 8, 2022 |website=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] Blog}}</ref> Sanger has argued that [[Liberalism|liberal]] and [[Centre-left politics|left-leaning]] views dominate in [[Academic bias|academia]], [[Criticism of science|science]], the [[Media bias|media]] and tech companies such as [[Facebook]] and [[Twitter]].<ref name="Spence 2021" />

In January 2002, Sanger returned to [[wikipedia:Columbus, Ohio|Columbus, Ohio]] to teach philosophy at Ohio State University.{{sfn|Lih|p=210|ps=none}} In December 2010, Sanger said he considered [[wikipedia:WikiLeaks|WikiLeaks]] to be "enemies of the [[wikipedia:United States|U.S.]]—not just the government, but the people".<ref name="The Wall Street Journal">{{Cite news |last=Crovitz, L. Gordon |date=December 6, 2010 |title=Julian Assange, Information Anarchist |url=http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989004575653113548361870.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101217055334/http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989004575653113548361870.html |archive-date=December 17, 2010 |access-date=December 22, 2010 |work=The Wall Street Journal |publisher=[[Dow Jones & Company]]}}</ref> In September 2021, in response to U.S. President [[Joe Biden]] announcing a [[COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the United States|COVID-19 vaccine mandate]], Sanger tweeted "Nor I.#IWillNotComply" in agreement with political commentator [[Tim Pool]]. In an earlier tweet, Sanger claimed that [[COVID-19 vaccine]]s are "not a [[vaccine]]".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Slisco |first=Aila |date=September 10, 2021 |title=#IWillNotComply trends on Twitter after Joe Biden orders vaccine mandate |url=https://www.newsweek.com/iwillnotcomply-trends-twitter-after-joe-biden-orders-vaccine-mandate-1627723 |access-date=September 10, 2021 |work=[[Newsweek]] |language=en}}</ref> In March 2022, Sanger said that "[[Decentralization]] is a necessary but not sufficient condition of [[internet freedom]]", arguing that both [[Federation (information technology)|federated]] and [[peer-to-peer]] decentralized networks "can still be captured and controlled in various ways and rendered un-free".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bassett |first=Caitlin |date=March 30, 2022 |title=Could Decentralization Fix Twitter's Censorship Problems? |url=https://mindmatters.ai/2022/03/could-decentralization-fix-twitters-censorship-problems/ |access-date=March 31, 2022 |website=MindMatters.ai |language=en-US}}</ref>