EDIT: Oops, in a tired state I got muddled between this AMA post and the original introduction of dath ilan made in an April Fool’s post in 2014 (golly, that’s a while back)
When this was published, I had little idea of how ongoing a concept dath ilan would become in my world. I think there’s value both in the further explorations of this (e.g. Mad Investor Chaos glowfic and other glowfics that illustrate a lot of rationality and better societal function than Earth), but also in just the underlying concept of “what would have produced you as the median person?”
Perhaps mundane, but I’ve gotten great social utility in asking this as a getting-to-know-you. More importantly, it helps me think about my values, ideals, and beliefs about good rules and systems for society. I can ask, in a planet of me’s, how would they do this? This formulation in similar to Duncan Sabien’s In My Culture but more productive due to make you think about how the entire society functions.
EDIT: Oops, in a tired state I got muddled between this AMA post and the original introduction of dath ilan made in an April Fool’s post in 2014 (golly, that’s a while back)
When this was published, I had little idea of how ongoing a concept dath ilan would become in my world. I think there’s value both in the further explorations of this (e.g. Mad Investor Chaos glowfic and other glowfics that illustrate a lot of rationality and better societal function than Earth), but also in just the underlying concept of “what would have produced you as the median person?”
Perhaps mundane, but I’ve gotten great social utility in asking this as a getting-to-know-you. More importantly, it helps me think about my values, ideals, and beliefs about good rules and systems for society. I can ask, in a planet of me’s, how would they do this? This formulation in similar to Duncan Sabien’s In My Culture but more productive due to make you think about how the entire society functions.