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“Are we all same and equal” or “Everyone is different and unequal”?
4 points by sharma_pradeep on Oct 8, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
“An unexamined life is not worth living” - Socrates

Recently I had been thinking, discussing & reading up lots of philosophical theories/opinions to form better understanding of individuality and group/society. Got me thinking "what if" we can get to know opinions of millions of people worldwide from different cultures on a topic? It can result in meaningful insights and an impact which can help us form better understanding of ourselves and society. It just have to be easy and concise to make it actually happen and make something out of it.

This weekend I had time to take this kind of discussion/research to new level.

We organized a weekend hackathon at our workplace and created a dead simple gamified version of online philosophical discussion.

How it works:

All you need to do is post your views about the current topic of philosophical discussion on twitter with #ThePhilosophicalGame. That’s it!

The benefits for philosophers :

* Discover what actually intellectuals in the world think about a philosophical question. Which can uncover many assumptions and have a better understanding of external world.

* Hone skills of presenting your arguments

The benefits for people who don’t care about philosophy:

* Analyze, develop and formulate logical arguments

* Uncover assumptions and suggest alternatives

* Aptitude to examine various angles of topics

* Ability to write and speak clearly and effectively

* Interpret and assess various thoughts and theories

More info is on the website which manages this game: http://thephilosophicalgame.ml #ThePhilosophicalGame

FAQ:

* How to check current discussion topic: http://thephilosophicalgame.ml.

* Every topic has two sides of the argument, you have to choose your side and post your thoughts about the same to make a strong case about your side.

* How to see which side is winning : http://thephilosophicalgame.ml.

* What society thinks about the topic can be seen simply at twitter #ThePhilosophicalGame

The same process repeats after couple of days on different topic.

Your feedback is valuable.



FWIW, imo, wisdom is not a superadditive function of sets of opinions, nor will asking a group of people their opinions and averaging it constitute wisdom (but rather, the exact opposite - de facto, the least time-tested opinion possible), but the attempt to introduce more people to philosophy is worth commending.

Also, try to make the questions as defined as possible ("people" = individuals/bodies/ancestors/nationalities/citizenry? "same & equal" = equal in measures of 'potential'/so-called 'purity'/granted and guaranteed rights/talents and skills/past accomplishments/future ambitions/dreams and hopes/preferences and desires/moral systems and reputation/underlying hardware/historylessness/memorylessness/tabula rasa/free will/popularity?); maybe also make the question a binary one with only a true/false answer, because there are other ways to nitpick the current answers as being non-mutually-exclusive (i.e. does different imply non-equal at both a mathematical but also a social level?)


Very helpful comment. Thanks @pizza

Opinions of a lot of people can help us form better understanding of external world(what others think about something). Isn't it?


Well, only in very specific circumstances: the circumstances in which it is more important to know the knee-jerk opinions of others instead of the opinions that will be selected over time because of non-change/survival due to pragmatic usefulness.

Consider that, for > 99% of the questions for which you might get an opinion out of people, the answers you receive will have never been actually applied in their lives - so, the answers you'll likely receive have never been empirically subjected to any real world test. The opinions that haven't been tested have a lower signal-to-noise ratio than those that have


The abuse of the words "equal" and "unequal" is a common phenomenon.

same != equal

different != unequal

I am for “Everyone is different and equal”.


Agree with you @NumberCruncher Tweet your thoughts with #ThePhilosophicalGame :)




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