On Bluesky, Brian Dean of the RAW Semantics blog had suggested that a portion of the Wikipedia bio on RAW ought to be revised. Brian writes, "And while I'm momentarily online, I want to say I think this paragraph in RAW's wikipedia entry does him a disservice. The idea he wrote books 'on ESP, mental telepathy' etc comes from a poorly informed NYT obituary. (He *referenced* many things in his books of course). I hope someone corrects this."
The offending passage says, "In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".[6]"
Brian has written up a better substitute and posted it in the form of a fake FBI document, above.
When I looked at the Wikipedia entry, I noticed that the bibliography also needs updating, as it gets the title of Beyond Chaos and Beyond wrong and appear to omit some of the posthumous titles. Anyone can edit Wikipedia and I have done that myself in the past, although I think I'll wait and see if Rasa or someone else wants to try to fix the Wikipedia entry.
3 comments:
I'm not sure the "anyone can edit Wikipedia" notion is still true. Every edit I've ever made to Wikipedia-- all accurate, some as simple as grammatical corrections-- were all instantly changed back. I suspect only the annointed are allowed to edit. Be prepared to see corrections incorrected back.
What’s called the “offending” paragraph sounds completely accurate, to me. All those subjects get covered in CT 1 and elsewhere. Brian’s paragraph appears great too, but doesn’t mention any of the paranormal stuff. Perhaps they can both be included?
Just to clarify: Brian's rewrite does look far superior than the one from the Times which could maybe be edited. For instance, "extrasensory perception" and "mental telepathy" sound redundant.
Subjects RAW wrote a lot about not included in either include magick and skepticism.
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