Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#181

Post by tome » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #72

I studied some philosophy in college, and found the experience pretty disappointing. The field addresses some really fascinating problems, but I'm not too impressed with their answers. A typical assignment in philosophy consists of thinking about a really hard problem with no good solutions, picking one, and arguing for it. And since there are so few fixed points, almost anything is arguable. Really, it's a debater's…

> thinking about a really hard problem with no good solutions, picking one, and arguing for it. And since there are so few fixed points, almost anything is arguable. Really, it's a debater's paradise.

Sounds like the entire content of all non-technical jobs and a good proportion of the content of technical jobs.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#182

Post by aporetics » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #107

osullivj wrote: post #89

"Philosophy is the discipline whose adherents kick up a load of dust, then complain they can't see". Murray Gell-Mann. Mind you, I do have a degree in Philosophy from a faculty very firmly in the analytic school. Logic, metaphysics and ontology have been helpful in thinking about software problems. For instance, you can think of Russell's On Denoting ("the king of France is bald") as being about null pointers, or dan…

You forgot the precision of language usage and precision and clarity of definitions, which has been the foundation of math - the way to deal with meaningful abstractions, and then so called computer science, where naming, clarity and reduced to the essence (to an optimum) abstractions (ADTs) are the most important aspects. Classification (ontology) and labeling of a human language gives us meaningful type systems (Ja…

Lets replace language with an arbitrary (but precise!) 1:1 token system.

After all, etymology, idiom, metaphor, anacoluthon, etc., just muddy the waters of clarity.

And if clarity is what we value above all else, then we can ply our new arbitrary signification language to make all thinking about precise denotation of external entities and their logical relations.

Fuck Plato.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#183

Post by tome » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

ktRolster wrote: post #144

Houshalter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like philosophy but, the "debater's paradise" really gets to the problems with it. Arguments can never be settled, just dragged on. I like this quote about the history of science, before the scientific method. >...The scholastics saying that matter was this, or that, and justifying themselves by long treatises about how based on A, B, C, the word of the Bible, Aristotle, self-evident first principles, and the Great…

There is selection bias there, problems that do get settled stop being dragged on.

Yes. A lot of this discussion hasn't grasped your point. Philosophy did settle a lot of questions. They became natural history, physics, chemistry, even mathematics. The ones that are taught in Philosophy courses are the ones that haven't been settled.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#184

Post by drjesusphd » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

"First they came for the philosophers..."

We techies better be careful how we treat the humanities. The fact that our skills are in high demand is an accident of history. The powers that be find us very useful now, but that can change. There can come a time when the only reason to code or study math/science is out of passion, and then we'll be in the same boat as the philosopher. Then we'll have no moral high ground to stand on because we cannibalized the humanities in universities.

Of course, if you're just in STEM for the money, then by all means chase the next thing when that time comes.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#185

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

ktRolster wrote: post #142

organsnyder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you approach college as a consumer of the information fed by professors and books, the Public Library approach is probably a great value proposition (though I'd question whether that $1.50 provided any value at all... :-) ). However, a good education is much more than this. It includes the opportunity to engage in back-and-forth discussions with professors and classmates, building social and professional networks…

Not to mention: while public libraries are great and I love them, thy are often lacking in-depth knowledge. My local public library doesn't have a book on advanced logic design, for example. It favors a more 'general' collection, and thus books with heavy reliance on math tend to be omitted. Same with in-depth law books, they just aren't there.

You could go to a university library. Often they're open to the general public for a modest fee.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#186

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

RandomOpinion wrote: post #159

chestervonwinch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is there an assumption that what you study at university has to be in any way related to the job market? Because, like it or not, the majority of people's education is the means to obtain a job in a related field. People don't go tens of thousands of dollars into debt for some l'art pour l'art interest development; they do it because they expect the benefit from the degree (i.e., as a ticket into the job market…

>Because, like it or not, the majority of people's education is the means to obtain a job in a related field. The community college system is more than enough for those who view postsecondary education as a mere vocational program and doesn't require going "tens of thousands of dollars into debt".

Also, this depends on which country you're talking about. University education in some countries is free. It's also possible to get scholarships which subsidize some or even all of your tuition. Finally, there's often financial aid of various types, from need-based to aid to certain minorities, etc.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#187

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

cbgb wrote: post #179

tannhauser23 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What philosophy program is this? At my school the professors explicitly told us to write in active voice. Also, what material are you studying? It's been a while since I've been in school, but most analytic philosophy material I read were written in very clear and precise prose.

See, e.g., Quine's "Translation and Meaning,"[0] as well as the blog post I linked to further down the page. Not every philosophy program consists solely of analytic philosophy; continental philosophy writing is rife with passive voice. [0] http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/quine.pdf

There's a lot of poor writing in philosophy all around. Passive voice is far from the only authorial sin. Dryness, obscurity, long-windedness and lack of engagement with the audience are probably the most common.

This poor writing is certainly not limited to any particular philosophical discipline, or even to philosophy in general. Math and science tend to be just as bad (often even much worse, except sometimes on the issue of clarity -- at least as far as their intended audience is concerned).

I think the common laborous style comes from the desire to seem "objective", the tradition of presenting very long, drawn out arguments in a "logical" fashion, and the attempt to efface the author from the work (so as to make the argument seem to be self-evident given the premises, and not at all biased or based on one person's experience or opinion). That's hard to do in an engaging manner.

More recently, the practice of revealing who the author is and where he stands is starting to become a little more common. That helps to make the writing more engaging and helps the reader to make more of a connection with the author, but I think this still is very much a minority style. Most of philosophical writing is still mired in "objective" style, and it's difficult to foresee when or if it'll ever make it out.

PS: I'm guilty of this myself, and should really take some writing courses! :)

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#188

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #88

johan_larson wrote: post #72

I studied some philosophy in college, and found the experience pretty disappointing. The field addresses some really fascinating problems, but I'm not too impressed with their answers. A typical assignment in philosophy consists of thinking about a really hard problem with no good solutions, picking one, and arguing for it. And since there are so few fixed points, almost anything is arguable. Really, it's a debater's…

I started a course in philosophy during my first year of university. I studied CS (in the UK, where you don't typically go far outside your major) but I'd always been curious about the humanities and thought it worthwhile to learn about all fields of knowledge. I'd also read about philosophy for laymen books as a teenager. In the first lecture, I remember being surprised at how rational and logical the lecturer was.…

Anyone interested in Objectivism should read Nietzsche: the philosopher that Ayn Rand did a very poor job of trying to copy.

I kind of hesitate to mention them in the same sentence, however, as Nietzsche would have probably hated Rand and the Objectivists. Even Rand herself hated Objectivists. There are long rants from her about them in her interviews. But that still doesn't change the fact that Nietzsche was a big influence on Rand.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#189

Post by aporetics » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

saintzozo wrote: post #8

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline,…

After this, its clear that the time has come for philosophy departments to offer seminars in trolling.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#190

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

osullivj wrote: post #89

"Philosophy is the discipline whose adherents kick up a load of dust, then complain they can't see". Murray Gell-Mann. Mind you, I do have a degree in Philosophy from a faculty very firmly in the analytic school. Logic, metaphysics and ontology have been helpful in thinking about software problems. For instance, you can think of Russell's On Denoting ("the king of France is bald") as being about null pointers, or dan…

It's always made me sad when I come across people who's entire philosophical training makes them believe that philosophy is only about playing with puzzles like "the king of France is bald" or that someone like Quine's (or Russell's or Kirpke's) work is the epitome of philosophy.

It reminds me of Schoppenhaur's maxim that "every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world."

Dammit, there can be a lot more to philosophy than language puzzles!

Limiting philosophy to just playing with them is I think one of the main reasons that most people recoil when they come in contact with philosophy as it is practiced in most academia these days. They take that to be what philosophy is all about -- as that's how it's usually presented to them by analytics.

Most people have a lot of questions serious, which are desperately important to them, and which philosophy has traditionally engaged in. But analytic philosophy often either completely ignores them or provides only the most superficial treatment to them -- treating them as puzzles or games, or buries them in technicalities. It's really no wonder that such an attitude is a huge turnoff for people for whom these issues are real and of literally life-or-death importance.

So they recoil and go back to "folk philosophy" as some analytics condescendingly call it, and philosophy as is mostly studied in academia these days climbs every higher in to its ivory tower.