Note: I read and reply to comments on old diaries, so feel free to leave a message on any of my diaries, no matter how old they are.
Hi all. I've been a lurker at this site for a while now. A few years- yikes, I'm an old timer? I've been using DK (among others) to stay informed (and keep my people informed!), so I didn't have reason to participate actively. Well, I do now. Oh yeah, I do now.
I'm very much the planet amelioration ("make the world a better place") type, and I reckon many here are too. Also, I'm a big nerd (where my nerds at?), so I've been studying how to do this planetary amelioration stuff. This is what I'll be writing about here, so brace yourself for a funtastic mix of philosophy, economics, physiology, environmental science, math, and more. Given the current discussion on values, I suppose this is timely. I'll also be shamelessly promoting Felicifia, the online utilitarianism community I help run.
Did I really just say funtastic? Eeek. You didn't hear that.
Quick bio:
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born & raised. On the playground is where I spent... naw just kidding. I am from Pittsburgh though (Go Stillers!) and did play lots of sports, including on playgrounds. Raised Jewish, even got Bar Mitzvah'd, but Mom's Christian, so depending on who you ask, I'm not one of the "chosen people". Undergrad at University of Rochester; BS degrees in optics & applied math, for those who are counting. I can tell you more about Bose–Einstein condensates than you probably care to know. These days I'm studying electrical engineering at Northeastern University. I also teach high school math & science, mostly with Boston Public Schools.
Update, March 14, 2007: Starting this fall, I will be a PhD student in the
Penn State Geography Department. This is a career switch I've been planning for, well, a long time. I'm pretty excited about it and am looking forward to the program!
Let's see, what else... I listen to a lot of funk & old school hip hop and some breaks & jungle (techno). Used to dj some, but haven't recently. I write for Whats Up Magazine, an awesome local (Boston) street magazine. I'm a big urban enthusiast- city planning, architecture, etc. Used to be active at the ArchBoston forum ("quadratdackel") but haven't recently. And I like frogs. I don't know why. Just because, I guess. Gotta like something.
Blogospherically, I started out on DeanForAmerica and the Dean Issues Forum (RIP). I migrated to DK post-Dean, and I've caught most of the front page content since then, occasionally diving into the diaries. (I once was absinf.) Also read MyDD & BlueMassGroup a lot and occasionally venture elsewhere. These days I help run Felicifia, an online utilitarianism community (who me, google bomb? no...), running SoapBlox, which is somewhat of a Scoop clone. (Scoop intimidated me. SoapBlox has been great. Highly recommended.) Felicifia is somewhat of a concept site. More on that in a femtosec, but first...
About that planetary amelioration:
So... how to make the world a better place?
All depends on what you mean by "better" and in turn by "good". No, this isn't some Clintonian "meaning of 'is'" semantics misadventure. What is "good" is a basic question of ethics. We often say the decision to start the Iraq war was wrong. Was it wrong because war is fundamentally wrong (deontology) or because it caused many deaths, among other things (consequentialism)? Consequentialism here would allow for "just war" whereas deontology wouldn't.
Me, I'm a utilitarian, which is a form of consequentialism that advocates doing whatever maximizes "utility", which means "happiness", "quality of life", "well-being", etc. Basically, I try to improve quality of life on Earth (and hopefully beyond) as much as possible. For me, it was a very crude "I like happiness. Happiness is good." observation, followed by "more happiness is better" then "most happiness is best", which is utilitarianism in a nutshell. ('Help! I'm in a nutshell!')
From my perspecitve as a utilitarian, the most important issues are global poverty, animal (especially livestock) welfare, climate change, and existential risk. Preventing an "existential event" roughly means "saving the world". Deep stuff... definately worth the time of day. At any rate, this is a somewhat different mix of issues than DK or "mainstream media" focuses on, so I'll be arguing for why I think these issues are important.
Felicifia:
I started Felicifia to see if the awesome netroots energy (yinz are fabulous, really) can support a community focused specifically on improving quality of life on Earth. It's global in scope and focused on a system of ethics- like I said, a concept site. They say the progressive blogosphere doesn't stand for anything, but I sure do. Our community is young and small, but already it's opened my eyes to a lot. Online communities are great. (Aww...)
Felicifia is for everyone, including non-utilitarians. Perhaps you're curious. Perhaps you're not a utiltiarian, but you're still interested in improving quality of life. Perhaps you don't care about quality of life, but you really like frogs. OK, that might not be a good reason. Oh well.
So that's all for now. I'll be writing more some other day about a lot of the specific topics we're focused on and whatever else seems of interest to yinz Kossacks