WOW philosophy

This is what we do and why.

What we do and why

We provide wisdom from the crowds, for the crowds; from the people, for the people. This ain't your grandfather's morality. You don't need a traditional church or a government to tell you what to do. You can decide for yourself what to do. However, it would surely help to have the accumulated wisdom of an entire community of other folks doing their things.

Humans generally think and formulate our philosophies in plain language. So we do too. For robots, that's another story.

We organize and analyze many possible combinations of moral agents, action situations, behavior options, ethical systems, and more. Through this effort, we aim to gain a realization of what works and what doesn't. To guide behavior. This is the purpose of what we do, which is to build a big modern moral resource.

A few quick points

• Many possible approaches to behavior exist. One generally useful system is called consequentialism.
• WOW: from bucket list to bucket life. Because life ain't just a bucket list.
• We also think that humanity may be at a turning point, and helping to navigate this is important.
• In the ongoing trend towards personalization, let's design our lifestyles!
• One page reminders: because moral codes, effective ones, tend to be very complex, yet our simple minds should have something simple to help remember.
• Can we make a wonderful wisdom system?
• Diversity - of languages, purposes, methods, etc.
• We take ourselves seriously, but not too seriously!

What makes WOW unique

WOW operates at many different levels. At its most basic, we do seemingly elementary operations. Should a man love his wife according to conventional wisdom? Answering such a question may sound absurdly simple. Yet, when we make compositions out of millions of such answers, and analyze how and why these "should" beliefs operate, we can create virtually any imaginable ethical system. Supposedly the highest pursuit of humanity!

So you can see that this seemingly simple system actually has boundless possibility. In fact, we can even create new philosophies beyond any which have existed before. What if you had your own personal philosophy, and it stacked up well against Hume or Pythagoras or the United Nations or whoever? What if you could draw on millions of the smartest and most caring minds -- the greatest wisdom -- of our age? That is our promise: the best wisdom.

Maybe some people have a wise old uncle, maybe some people have a board of directors to turn to, maybe some are born with a gift for making good decisions. But for the rest of us, we could use somewhere to turn to with the accumulated wisdom of many people from all walks of life.

We think that having access to good wisdom will enable people to make smarter choices, and live better. Perhaps "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise" (Ecclesiastes 9:11), yet we think that anyone can benefit from wisdom, even if only to take a few minutes off their marathon time or for an extra crumb.

Moreover, we want to help people with wisdom for all stages of life, now and in the future. This applies to the little questions, like "Should I wear a two or three button jacket on my date?", to the big questions, like "Should I believe in a god?" Not only that, but we believe that in the future, possibly within our lifetimes and arguably even now, artificial agents will play a significant role in the world of human affairs, and that they will need new moral guidelines. Not only that, but we see the opportunity to create whole new worlds, almost dreamlike in their promise, and at this cusp in human history it is immensely important to forge a new understanding of what we should do.

A new light. Clarity. Vision. Whatever you call it, we believe that the world, now and in the future, stands to gain a lot of value from our improving wisdom.