by Ryan Merkley, August 1, 2017 https://creativecommons.org/2017/08/01/bassel/ [see also our previous post http://positivists.org/blog/archives/5296] We are deeply saddened and completely outraged to learn today that our friend and colleague Bassel... Read More | Share it now!
Some Thoughts on Objectivity, Subjectivity and Interpretation (1)
This was a recent Quora question and it keeps puzzling me. Is reality subjective or objective? If it is subjective is every interpretation of it correct? It is not that difficult to reject this question as what it is: an assumption supported by an... Read More | Share it now!
Drei Tage in einer Facebook-Hass-Gruppe “vernunftorientierter Atheisten”
Was brachte mich auf diese Seite? Gar keine so abwegige Frage. Eine Rekalibrierung meiner politischen Koordinaten durch Facebook, nachdem ich mich mit mehr Spaß mit einem Facebook Freund unterhielt, der hier schon war? Vernunftorientiere... Read More | Share it now!
Three Days in a Facebook Hate Group of “Atheists Guided by Reason”
How did I get into this group? And where is it gone all of a sudden? It has left my Facebook stream of notifications – I did not receive a note that I have been excommunicated. The content is “no longer available”, as if Facebook has... Read More | Share it now!
All God’s Twitter Accounts
You are an atheist and fear that God might actually exist? A Christian, Jew or Moslem in fear that he might not? Relax and get all the the emanations collected on this site from all the Twitter accounts we have heard of. The scene is in silent turmoil... Read More | Share it now!
4 Years Later 400 Facebook Fans: Insight
We have silently taken the 400 fans threshold this week with our Facebook page. That is not very much and I will make this a silent post just with a bit of statistics and insight. We are making 100 new fans per year. You really do better with an... Read More | Share it now!
#MissingBassel – time to make your first Wikidata edits
We fear for the life of our fellow Wikipedian, Bassel Khartabil. Amnesty International has it that he is likely sentenced to death, his bed in prison is no longer his. What can we do when a fellow Wikipedian is in mortal peril? We can either wave our... Read More | Share it now!
Patheos | An Interview with Dale McGowan, managing editor of the Patheos Atheist Channel
The following is an interview with Dale McGowan, managing editor, of the Atheist Channel on Patheos – an interview about what is probably the most exciting web platform of inter- and supra-religious dialogue to be found on the web:... Read More | Share it now!
Saving Wikipedia (3): The questionable moral superiority of Wikipedia authorship
If there is one thing the early 18th century has taught me, it is that we are all eventually paid in the same three currencies. Whatever we do, we do it for physical pleasure, social prestige or money. Money is, of course, the most usual currency in... Read More | Share it now!
Saving Wikipedia (2): The medium of second-hand knowledge
Why is it that Wikipedia is a man’s world? Why is our community 90% male, mostly white, either young or retired, mostly nerds, people whom you will not meet in clubs, a high rate of temporary singles… and mostly amateurs in the fields of their... Read More | Share it now!
Saving Wikipedia (1): TIME for the fairy
The golden days of Wikipedia, the days of unlimited growth, are over. Yes, we are still getting new articles. But this is basically because we have a couple of open areas like plane crashes, new wars, new movies, new celebrities that generate this... Read More | Share it now!
Comte’s cerebral hygiene finally rehabilited – C. P. G. Grey’s viral message on viral memes
This video has gone viral. It is wonderfully concise and designed to be both haunting and self-reflexive. We are all subjected to these viral pieces of information. We see them, they trigger an emotion, and all we have to do is press share ore like... Read More | Share it now!
Quora – stupid questions do exist
Quora a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Quora aggregates... Read More | Share it now!
A new metric for Wikimedia
We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors. A project to measure Wikimedia’s success has been started. We can already start using this metric to evaluate new... Read More | Share it now!
An Interview with Eugene Goostman or How I failed the Turing test
The Guardian and the Independent spread news that a chatbot was able to convince the jury in a Turing test – or rather 33% of that jury (may we assume that the test was conducted with three jurors of whom one succeeded where I failed with the... Read More | Share it now!
We should take care of Wikipedia as our collective card box index | FAZ interview with Olaf Simons
The following is an (abridged) English version of an interview I gave for Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Wikipedia and why scholars hesitate to write for the online encyclopedia (their issue of April 9, 2014, last page). Friedemann... Read More | Share it now!
Promoting Science | An Interview with Hashem Al-Ghaili
Olaf Simons: Rumours have it that you are planning a temporary Facebook abstinence – can it be? Hashem Al-Ghaili: Yes, that’s right. Due to work pressure, I have to quit Facebook temporarily for a couple of months. I think that’s what... Read More | Share it now!
Like – Comment – Share
I do not remember for how long we had been avid readers of the newspapers. Of course, we would discuss them (more or less openly), yet basically most of us had been nothing but recipients for centuries. 17th- and 18th-century papers had been fed with... Read More | Share it now!
From the Twitter Stream
This short tweet surprised me in its sharpness @paperstargirl True only, right? People apply the normative argument when it does not concern them. Positivist when it does. @mahekoholic — Aashish C (@c_aashish) April 1, 2013 I opened a twitter... Read More | Share it now!
100 Facebook Likes
That is not exactly a number to celebrate, rather one to examine – in facebook terms it is a rather modest number. I opened the facbook page of global positivism on March 15, 2012 with a bit of curiosity about the new features facebook was to give... Read More | Share it now!