EGO
Hey, Philosophy. How can you help ensure the future of humanity?

PHILOSOPHY
Hi Ego, old friend. Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Your question assumes that I can help ensure the future of humanity. We should test that assumption before proceeding to answer the question. If the assumption is wrong, any answer to the question will also be wrong.

EGO
Dude, you always do this! Look, I really just need an answer to the question. You see, there’s this competition — it offers fame and money, and to win it I need to answer that question.

PHILOSOPHY
Ego, you always to this: rushing in and wasting a lot of time and effort answering questions based on wrong assumptions, producing answers that cause a whole lot of trouble. Remember all the wasted time and effort, and all the trouble caused, when you answered the question, “How can I use Social Media to make money?”

EGO
Well, at the risk of being falsely modest, I did have some help from Advertising and Computer Engineering. O, wait a second — you’re criticising me. I think you’re forgetting just how well I answered that question!

PHILOSOPHY
Ego, please, do try to listen. I was acknowledging how well you answered that question. My point was that given your intention, you asked the wrong question. You started out with the intention, “Make the world more open and connected”, but then asked a question that neglected to include that intention in its formulation. And so, when your admittedly brilliant algorithms began making truckloads of money by encouraging misunderstanding and outrage between people, you blinked and congratulated yourself on how well you’d answered the question.

EGO
Hey, I never meant to create social discord. My intention was to make the world more open and connected.

PHILOSOPHY
And yet look at what has happened, because you neglected, and continue to neglect, to examine the assumptions on which your question is based.

EGO
You always criticise my interest in money.

PHILOSOPHY
No, I just identify your underlying motivations, and you don’t like it when I do that. Whether being motivated by money is a bad thing or a good thing — that’s an interesting and complex issue that I’ve been debating with myself for millennia. One particularly interesting idea I had, if you’ll allow me to say, was that the combination of self-interest and a free market would lead, paradoxically, to the greatest good for all. But then —

EGO
I thought that was Economics.

Economics is one of my children. Hard-working lad. 

PHILOSOPHY
Economics is one of my children. Hard-working lad. Picked up my idea and really ran with it. He still consults we me now and then, you know.

EGO
You must be very proud. But …

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