I did the IB diploma program too. Except I live in Spain, so I had to follow both the Spanish education system and the IB diploma at the same time. We actually had three different philosophy subjects in two years: Philosophy, History of Philosophy and TOK. All three were absolute shit. Well, we did actually learn about the history of philosophy: we had to memorize every detail about ancient philosophers’ thoughts, from the presocratics (Thales, Pythagoras...) to Nietzsche (nothing beyond 1900 though). We didn’t actually learn much about actual philosophy (i.e. the basics of how the universe works, the principles of observation, deduction, induction, logic, reductionism, what words mean, etc.). So we could spend months talking about how Plato’s intelligible world, but we didn’t hear once about reductionism or cognitive science. I guess it really depends on what teacher you get.
Anyway, this has motivated me and I’ve thinking of writing a book in Spanish covering some of LessWrong’s basic topics to see if I can reduce the cultural gap a bit. Or at least starting a blog.
Also it’s worth mentioning that an IB diploma is virtually useless to access Spanish universities. I could literally have left my final exams blank if I had felt like doing so, with no practical consequences.
Anyway, this has motivated me and I’ve thinking of writing a book in Spanish covering some of LessWrong’s basic topics to see if I can reduce the cultural gap a bit. Or at least starting a blog.
This strikes me as an important thing to do. Good luck with it! (Incidentally, is there a demand for Less Wrong material in French? I expect I’m fluent enough to translate some of the articles.)
I did the IB diploma program too. Except I live in Spain, so I had to follow both the Spanish education system and the IB diploma at the same time. We actually had three different philosophy subjects in two years: Philosophy, History of Philosophy and TOK. All three were absolute shit. Well, we did actually learn about the history of philosophy: we had to memorize every detail about ancient philosophers’ thoughts, from the presocratics (Thales, Pythagoras...) to Nietzsche (nothing beyond 1900 though). We didn’t actually learn much about actual philosophy (i.e. the basics of how the universe works, the principles of observation, deduction, induction, logic, reductionism, what words mean, etc.). So we could spend months talking about how Plato’s intelligible world, but we didn’t hear once about reductionism or cognitive science. I guess it really depends on what teacher you get.
Anyway, this has motivated me and I’ve thinking of writing a book in Spanish covering some of LessWrong’s basic topics to see if I can reduce the cultural gap a bit. Or at least starting a blog.
Also it’s worth mentioning that an IB diploma is virtually useless to access Spanish universities. I could literally have left my final exams blank if I had felt like doing so, with no practical consequences.
This strikes me as an important thing to do. Good luck with it! (Incidentally, is there a demand for Less Wrong material in French? I expect I’m fluent enough to translate some of the articles.)
I believe the less wrong translation project could use more of both French and Spanish translators, but I’m not really involved in it so I’m not sure. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Translations_into_other_languages
Don’t count much on it though. It’s only a future project. It depends on how my next years in university go.