WikiPedia: LarrySanger

EditorInChief? of NuPedia and (with JimboWales) instigator of WikiPedia. Ph.D. PhiloSophy, 2000, OhioState?. Home town is AnchorageAlaska.

Inflicted LarrysText first on Ohio State students, and now on WikiPedia.

Presently living in LasVegas for a few months and then it's on to RussiA? for a few more months; possibly Ireland after that. This is all possible because LarrySanger works online. You should be envious. He would be if he weren't he.

Yes, I agree, he is he, nobody would argue with me! :-P

He is he, but this is twee, we'd all agree.

Larry's favorite philosopher is ThomasReid, isn't he? Maybe!

I'm not envious because I live here, in RussiA?!

Requesting a SiberianHusky...that's all! RoseParks

Plenty of SiberianHuskys in AlaskA, Larry's home state. Larry's family used to have a SiberianHusky named Sheba, but Sheba disappeared when Larry was small.

Why are all SiberianHuskys named Sheba? I've had 3 different friends with them so far, and they are all named the same....

I don't know! -- Larry

Clearly you haven't met the SiberianHuskys I know...Tara and Sarah!!!

I'm going to treat this page like email, since it probably doesn't belong in the pedia itself. I found your lecture on TheProblemOfEvil quite enjoyable, and an argument occurred to me which I thought I might bounce off of you.

I suppose I might call it evil relativism. That is to say, evil is simply any event which lowers one's enjoyment (in the most general sense) - the lower half of our happiness scale. If we eliminated everything we consider evil - natural as well as man-made, *we* would certainly notice the difference. But say the temperature still was allowed to vary from 50 degrees F in the winter to 85 degrees F in the summer, and that one being caught outside in winter without a coat was the most unpleasant thing that ever might happen to us. We would probably never complain (indeed, many of us would relish that rare feeling of goosebumps), but would not our grandchildren consider this the most extreme possible evil?

If one accepts this argument, that evil is perceived relatively and is part of any effable universe, would this not nullify argument 4?

-J

It would be a criticism of premise 7 (that evil exists in the world), not of premise 4, as far as I can tell. The proposal is that evil is relative, and therefore, because someone in much worse conditions than we're in now would not consider the conditions we're in now as evil, evil doesn't exist. I don't really agree that this latter conclusion really follows form the premise that evil is relative, but I think you might be on to something here. I really don't know that much about this area of philosophy, to tell the truth. -- LarrySanger

Hey, Larry, where did you do your phil grad? --curious PhillipHankins

Ohio State--wrote my dissertation on epistemic circularity, George Pappas was my advisor with Marshall Swain a committee member.

Political discussion not allowed on this page. :-)

Folks, I've had a lot of fun with WikiPedia this week (Feb. 11-16 or so) but I am going to have to start limiting the time I spend on it, so I can work more diligently on NuPedia. :-) -- Larry