"Cool. Is that one of the things everyone got at your school or was it an optional module?"

"Everyone at my school studied a language but not everyone studied Kularan."

"Neat. What were the other core things? That's one of the big things schools vary on, here."

"Math, history and civics, military prep - it was a military prep school, not everyone does that. Literature and film. Philosophy."

"Gosh, philosophy as core, I know some people who are really in favor of that. Just logic and proofs or the more experimental stuff too?"

"...life philosophy, not, uh, math philosophy."

"I'm not sure that translated. Do you mean, uh, the thing with situations where how good the outcome is for each person depends on what both people do and you figure out what decision-making process works best if everyone has it, and stuff? That's also math but it gets taught in civics classes."

"...no, not that either. Maybe you don't have a word for the kind of philosophy we study."

"Or we call it something I haven't thought if. Or we haven't invented the whole field yet! Teach me a bit and I'll figure out what I would call it?"

"Ibyabekan philosophy underlies the entire culture, really. Doing without money and so on."

"Maybe it's economics, then? What are some of the key things that little kids learn?"

"Oh, in elementary school it's things like, the Glorious Leader protects us, we all work hard for Ibyabek, everyone contributes and deserves the same respect even if their job looks simple, everyone has food and shelter and medicine no matter what."

"Sounds like socialscripts! Lots of schools have that as core for little kids. What's it turn into for older kids?"

"It blends into history, a little - Ibyabek was colonized by people who were very unequal in money and power and we learn about the ways in which this was bad for people and why the revolution began and the principles on which Ibyabek as it is now was founded."

"Governance as socialscripts for cities! What a cute concept. Does the decision theory--that second kind of math I was talking about, with the decision-making-procedures--get mixed in with that too? And what are your principles besides 'everyone should have enough resources to sustain themselves indefinitely'?"

"I'm not familiar with that kind of math. We emphasize cooperation and diligence and loyalty and paving the way for each new generation and equality."

"I don't think our society has favorite virtues that everyone agrees on in the same way. Like, there are people who think the most important thing is seeing everything life has to offer and people who think it's the pursuit of excellence and people who think it's self-knowledge and people who think it's leaving the world better than you found it and people who think it's knowing as much truth as possible and people who think it's creating beautiful things and people who think it's being compassionate to everyone."

"I understand that Earth has several political units so it would make sense if you aren't in consensus."

"I would bet that even if we agreed on our most important virtues we'd still want lots of different polities because of having different preferences on other things. It's not the only thing people sort on when deciding where to live, for example."

"Large portions of Ibyabek are too hot to be habitable outdoors."

"As in, people end up picking where to live based on how well they can handle the weather, or as in, nobody lives in the hot bits and you have to have fewer larger cities? How many people did you say were on the planet again?"

"Fewer larger cities. There is a spaceport in a very hot area but it isn't a large city. Ibyabek has about a hundred million people."

"Wow, yeah, I can see how that would constrain your city-picking options. We're at three point four billion, so if someone thinks 'I want a city where there's a really good card game scene and it's usually overcast and it's normal to be on deepfocus and perfume is illegal' they can have that."

"Card game scene?"

"Collection of people who play card games and organize card game events and stuff. I was simplifying a bit, there; most people who are excited about card games are primarily excited about a small subset of them and mostly just care about being able to play those ones."