Ask Lemmy

The "we" thing is a good point, and even as I was writing this was thinking about the post the other day where someone was like "how can we get more redditors to lemmy" and a bunch of people were like, "we don't want that."

I'm thinking about anyone interested in the subject. There's never going to be universal interest in some philosophical project, and there doesn't need to be in order to have a positive impact. So I'm thinking of people who do have an interest in the sort of meta issue, how things "ought" to be.

I'm interested in practical, testable ideas, and at the same time I think there needs to be a philosophical underpinning to any type of project nurturing "beneficial" ideas, because otherwise how do you evaluate what's beneficial?

My philosophy is that existence is desirable, continued existence is desirable, and ever more elevated ways of existing. So going from "anything existing," to life existing, to animals, to conscious beings. The basic nuts and bolts are important then - is there enough food to live, is something going to kill me, and we've for the most part got these down (although not at a systemic level to eliminate homelessness, universal healthcare, etc). But I don't think we have any kind of grasp on long term sustainability - we're in serious environmental peril, the existence of any nuclear weapon is a threat, biological weapons, decline of democracy, even something like an asteroid impact.

So when talking about an ecosystem of ideas, for me at least its about ideas that will avoid or mitigate larger threats which are difficult for any individual to address.