Chapter 1: What is the mission of The Jordan Harbinger Show?
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, thinkers to performers. even the occasional drug trafficker, former jihadi, economic hitman, or national security advisor.
If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and I always appreciate it when you do that, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more.
That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on this show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, we're talking to the man who helped build the only corner of the internet that somehow still works.
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, patron saint of, actually, let me check on that, and proof that trusting strangers on the internet can create something other than a raging dumpster fire. Wikipedia is one of the last places online where the wisdom of crowds consistently beats the stupidity of mobs.
It's a site you can edit in your pajamas at 3 o'clock in the morning, yet somehow it's more accurate than newsrooms with multi-million dollar budgets.
It's the place where passionate volunteers, many of whom could give Harvard professors a run for their money in bridge engineering or ancient Sumerian pottery, collectively create an encyclopedia bigger than anything the Britannica editors could have pulled off, even with a warehouse of Red Bull and a pile of graduate students. Today, Jimmy and I dive into how this whole thing even works...
how it hasn't collapsed under the weight of trolls, vandals, propagandists, and corporations with Scrooge McDuck-level budgets, and why trust in institutions, in each other, and in information itself is in freefall.
We discuss the crisis of parallel realities, why collaboration can raise humanity or imprison it, why transparency beats taking sides, and how assume good faith is not just a Wikipedia rule, it's a life skill that we've basically forgotten. All this and a whole lot more here today on the show. Now here we go with Jimmy Wales.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Wikipedia face with misinformation?
And they're like, wait, how though? And you're like, I don't know, satellites or something. And they're like, how much is this costing me? Nothing. And they're like, I don't even believe you.
Yeah. No, I remember the first, you know, I got an email from someone in Australia and I was like, I wonder what that cost the university. I'm like, does a computer there like dial long distance to hear? I mean, I didn't know anything about how it worked. And then I started to learn because I'm like, oh, this is fascinating.
Chapter 3: How is trust built in organizations according to Jimmy Wales?
Well, remember getting excited. You'd hear, you've got mail. And you're like, oh, who could this be? This is great. This is exciting. Hold on, honey. I'll be right there. I'll be down in a minute. I got email. I got to check it.
Got to check it. Yeah, those are the days, man. It's a Nigerian prince. He says, there's some money for me. Yeah, you're never going to believe this.
We're rich. Our problems are over. It is funny to hear you explain Wikipedia. I watched, in preparation for this, I watched a bunch of your interviews, and you've been on your book tour. You went to the UK.
Chapter 4: How did Wikipedia come about?
There was a journalist on, I think it was the Sunday Times, maybe, and it was like, but there's no editorial control. And you're like, well, there is, but they're volunteers. And he's like, well, no one's getting paid to write. And you're like, no, they're volunteers.
Yeah.
but nobody checks anything, it could be errors everywhere. And you're like, no, they actually check everything, and they argue about everything. If anything, they're maybe checking a little bit too much sometimes. And he's like, but they're not experts at all. Well, many of them are bridge experts, and they're writing articles about bridges. And he's like, but no one's making any money on this?
He's so confused. And you could just see his career sort of flash before his eyes, where he's like, how long do I have before retirement? Because if people are working for free, and the quality is decent... And they're doing it from all over the world. Like, my days are numbered here. Oh, that's funny.
Well, except, I mean, you know, it's interesting because one of the things I always say is nobody really works for free. It's got to be fun. You've got to have some reward from doing it, which is just like meeting other geeks who are into what you're into or just the process is just enjoyable to you and so forth. And it's really something.
I mean, you know how you stumble across a page and you're reading it and you're like, who wrote this? This is amazing. How did somebody know all this, and why did they bother? They're amazing people, and you just want to go, can I get you a candy bar or something?
If anybody wants to sort of see how this works, you can go to the talk page. I do this when I prep guests, especially guests that don't have a lot of information about them.
I go to Wikipedia, read the entry, but then you go to the talk page, which is where, for people who don't know, this is where editors who are helping maintain the page, they go back and forth on, do we include the fact that his... daughter is a famous person. Well, yes, but like minimally. Oh, and then you're like, oh, who is that? I better look that person up.
And it's like, what about the crime that he got accused? No, he was acquitted. This is just going to be a distraction. Let's keep it out of there. And you're like, oh, he was accused of a crime. I better use that.
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Chapter 5: How does trust impact creativity and teamwork?
And we're just going to let you do that. I mean, just the goodwill that you destroy by having that sort of paranoid approach to the people you work with. You're not going to get creativity. You're not going to get insight. You're going to get people working to rule and nothing more because they're like, these people are not proper people and I don't have to do this. And I'm looking for a job.
You're job hunting already. Now the reason I didn't move my mouse for five minutes is I went to the other non-work computer and looked for a job. Right.
Yes. Exactly. No, I mean, look, I'm not running Samsung or Microsoft, but I always just trust my team to get things done on their own time. And we got guys like Bob who's going to edit this in the show notes and he's going to do it at four o'clock in the morning Pacific time.
Chapter 6: What lessons can we learn from trust in organizations?
You know what? Fine. Fine. And my engineer, Jace, is in another time zone because he's new from the UK as well. And it's like he's going to do this at a weird time on a weird day when he's back from his vacation. And that's fine. The only time it's not fine is if something doesn't work. And that is so rare. Yeah.
In our business, it's so rare that something happens that is objectively like, oh, because you did this too late or at a weird time, that it's not worth, the juice ain't worth the squeeze to solve the problem with some sort of tyrannical solution.
Yeah, and like the main thing is, did it get done in the podcast out on time? Then the rest is not matter. Isn't that objectively? No, obviously, I'm not saying businesses, and you're not saying businesses shouldn't care about time and all that. Like, I mean, it's sort of like, yeah, the grocery store is open until... You know, these hours are those hours. So coming in at 4 a.m.
Chapter 7: How can we rebuild trust in our communities?
ain't going to help. Right. Yeah. The store is closed. Right. On the other hand, it's sort of like at every moment when you can think about, OK, is there a way I could just extend trust and build a better relationship with the people I'm working with or who are working for me? If you're, you know, a manager or whatever.
That's great because you're going to get so much more out of people and they're going to like it so much more like then it becomes part of their life to do a good job. Yeah. As opposed to you beating them down and there is like whatever.
The other thing it does is let's say I say something on this show that sounds like. It's iffy. It makes me sound, I don't know, casually, accidentally misogynist or racist or something. It's clearly not my intent.
Yeah.
My team will catch that. They will edit that. Yeah. And they'll go, you probably didn't mean to say like that. Oh, God, did I say that?
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Chapter 8: What advice does Jimmy Wales give for making an impact?
Well, you cut off one sentence and then you started another one. And it sort of sounds like maybe we fixed it. But if you are on their ass about everything, they're going to go, you know what? Every time we make an edit, he doesn't like he crawls down my throat. I'm just not going to deal with this. He said it. He said it. Let him deal with the consequences.
Yeah, no, that's great.
But it's like if you give them that trust, they'll go, I'm not going to get in trouble for changing this.
Oh, yeah.
And then you go, oh, my God, thank God you took that out of the video because that is clearly not what I meant. And they go, yeah, we got you.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. No, no, no. Exactly. But also with your listeners, if you say something a bit punchy and they know you and they're like, oh, he didn't really mean it that way. Yeah. Well, they might. Some people are crazy. I mean, it's the Internet, you know, but broadly speaking, you know, like track records matter.
In your book, you discuss what happens when companies or organizations take sides politically. I'd love to talk about this because I've only seen this go wrong, and maybe that's a selection bias kind of thing, but I feel like I've never seen a company come out squeaky clean doing this, ever.
They can. So I will give a counter example because I do think it's worth noting up front. So Ben & Jerry's has always been a socially active, socially conscious company. It's part of their brand. Mm-hmm. So nobody's going crazy at Ben and Jerry for being woke because it's Ben and Jerry. Like, if you don't like that, you probably weren't a customer anyway. And that's part of their brand.
It works for them. Most brands, most companies, the problem with it is basically, first, nobody really wants to hear from you on this issue. Like, I don't really care what Pepsi's views on trans are. Like, I don't care. Like, it's not what I'm... This is not the relationship. I just want to know... is your sugary drink killing me? Well, probably, but, you know, but it's delicious.
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