You both like Philosophy.
Stranger: Hi.
You: hello
You: heard of Coursera?
Stranger: I have, yes.
Stranger: Haven't used it, yet; still trying to balance my actual courseload first.
Stranger: I take it you use it?
You: mostly recently
You: US?
You: and what year
Stranger: DK, first.
You: WI, 1st.
Stranger: WI?
You: yes?
You: wisconsin
Stranger: Oh.
You: where are you from?
Stranger: Denmark.
You: aaaa
You: why philosophy?
Stranger: It's not, actually. Well, not primarily.
Stranger: Mathematics, mostly, with some philosophy courses later on.
You: ogh, courses you're taking?
Stranger: I don't have the philosophy bit quite planned out yet. I'm not sure how they'll place them, scheduling-wise, next year, which is when I'll be taking them. And I can't have them overlap with my crucial maths courses.
You: have you read "philosophy"?
Stranger: As in what, exactly?
You: anything
Stranger: Actual textbooks? Rather few, I'll admit.
Stranger: Original works? Not that many either; I'm not too big on historical philosophy - a large part of it is dualist hogwash, which holds no appeal to me, or attempts at constructing yet another deontological system of ethics - but a bit.
You: no I mean, literally anything
You: but besides that
You: here's something that I am all about:
You: First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it?
Stranger: If we can prevent one loss of utility without causing another? Obviously.
You: haha
You: Second premise: Extreme poverty is bad.
You: ?
Stranger: Obviously.
You: Conclusion: We ought to prevent some extreme poverty.
You: do you think about extreme poverty at all?
Stranger: Seldom. Monkeysphere and all; scope insensitivity is a bitch.
You: looken what you said up...
Stranger: Monkeysphere is the, uh, rather informal term :-P I couldn't remember the technical name.
You: Dunbar's number
Stranger: Oh, right
You: is scope insensitivity something to do with proximity...and such?
Stranger: Well, I mean, people just can't intuitively feel scope.
Stranger: I mean, how much would you give, money-wise to save this poor bird from getting caught in an oilspill and dying?
Stranger: And how much for these ten birds?
Stranger: Or these hundred? Thousand? Ten thousand?
Stranger: It doesn't increase proportionally, which, reasonably, it should.
Stranger: If people will give 5 dollars to save a hundred birds, they might give 10 to save a thousand.
Stranger: And that's significantly less dollars per bird.
You: 19K children die daily due to poverty
You: so what's your point?
Stranger: My point is, people are all "Oh, it's sad that a child is dying", but they can't intuitively feel how large a number nineteen thousand is.
Stranger: It's just a bunch of numbers or letters to them.
You: yes.
You: but why push it to the back of your head just because of the numbers
You: either way: that is a large amount of people
You: is it not?
Stranger: It is.
You: what do you propose to do about it
You: (not necessarily yourself--now, that is)
Stranger: I don't propose anything. I know too little about psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics.
Stranger: The best I can hope to suggest is improved instrumental rationality on an individual level.
You: side note: damn you have better diction than most people I know
You: what about looking at
You: http://challengesofworldpovertynotes.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-challenge-of-world-poverty.html
You: (MIT open course ware)
You: or
You: https://www.coursera.org/course/changetheworld
You: (in 2014)
Stranger: I... might.
Stranger: At the moment, I'm mostly doing the thing I mentioned myself. Namely, trying to improve, so to say, the sanity or usefulness of my actions.
You: utility--right?
Stranger: I find that LessWrong usually helps a fair bit there. I mean, they've got a bit of a libertarian slant, with which I don't agree, but they
Stranger: *they've also mostly got a ban on politics, 'cause they know people start acting senselessly around that.
Stranger: Yeah. Well, instrumental rationality, which is about acting in such a way as to increase utility.
You: funny, because
You: http://utilo.blogspot.com/2013/08/custom-shortcuts.html
Stranger: http://lesswrong.com/ :-P
You: "utilo" is the name that was not taken for my other blog
You: (i'm already reading it)
Stranger: :-P
Stranger: Fair enough
You: so just making the right choices (in a reductive nutshell)?
Stranger: Yeah, pretty much.
Stranger: And, I mean, once you've got that down, you're a fair bit of the way.
You: this is interesting
You: But what do you read?
Stranger: At the moment, I'm still slogging through A New History of Western Philosophy. I felt it was about time I got a solid foundation in at least the historical bases of various philosophies. I mean, yeah, fair enough, I find most of them discredited and relevant, but eventually _someone_ will cite _someone_
Stranger: And I had A New History recommended to me as reasonably thorough.
You: name?
You: Adam
Stranger: Anthony Kenny.
Stranger: Assuming you mean the author
You: you
Stranger: Oh. Eh, call me Mel.
You: got a facebook or email?
Stranger: Uh, not really. Well, I've got emails, but I check them, like, once every three weeks
You: search facebook for Adam Uraynar
You: that's me
You: see you in another life
Stranger: Bye!
You have disconnected.
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