Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

Unfortunately, I found even the standards in philosophy as a field to be quite low, which is why I stopped pursuing its study in an academic setting. But, yes, I think many people have noted that there are particular fields in the social sciences which are mostly BS, partly because those fields are heavily based on ideas that use pseudo-philosophy as their foundational basis.

> Reality is subjective and so should philosophy be.

There is no reason to believe reality is subjective. If it was, why would you appeal to a shared, objective reality to convince us otherwise? Even if it was, that still wouldn't mean that philosophy "should" be. Declaring what something "is" doesn't show you how it "ought" to be.

> Nobody knows what is going on here and anyone that thinks they do is lying.

Of course nobody has a perfect knowledge of it all, so lets not pretend this is an "all or nothing" deal. There are an awfully lot of well informed people who have learned quite a bit about the human experience, better and worse ways of navigating through life, and take great pleasure in sharing that hard-earned knowledge.

> What is right for me may not be right for you. Learn what is right for you through trial and error.

You mean you like vanilla and I like chocolate, right? Or do you mean to say for one person it can be legitimately "right" to exploit others (emotionally, economically, whatever) so long as their experiences affirm it to them?

> Failure is the best teacher to find out something will not work.

No, finding and learning from good teachers (and/or those who already made some mistakes) are the best teachers. Failure is necessary, as there is no trying without failure, but it is not inherently a superior model for learning.

> Nobody should follow anyone else. You should be the leader of your own life as it is your experience.

Of course at the end of the day you need to build and put trust in yourself as the architect of your own life, but attempting to do that without ever following and emulating others you admire (friends, families, figureheads, and even celebrities) is pure folly.

> The goal is not self indulgent thinking, the goal is to stop thinking.

This is an awful lot of thinking to convince people to not think. Is this also not self-indulgent? Every statement is about "you, your experience, your subjective reality" and push you to close yourself off from working with others to figure life out.

> To go with the flow.

How do you both discount having faith in others to support you (e.g. nobody knows, learn whats right for you, nobody should follow) and go with the flow?

> To trust in yourself and believe that you can do what you set your mind to. To remove the fear of I cant and the fear of failure.

Amen! The worst part of thinking you can't and that its not worth trying is that you might just convince yourself you're right and created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

> It is as simple as that, no philosopher or book can tell you that. Only experience can.

I'm afraid I must revert to disagreeing. Philosophers (both the kind who call themselves that and those who are too practical to don such a title) and books can create worlds and scenarios that challenge us intellectually and emotionally to question the current boundaries of what to accept and reach for in life.

> You can read all the books in the world, but you do not gain any true understanding until you put words into action and actually experience it.

Amen again! As Hamlet said "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.". All the ideas and dreams in the world are useless until to attempt to put them into action.

The core tenets of that particular groupthink are the rejection of the "mainstream media" as corrupt/"biased"/irrelevant (usually in favour of some guy publishing daily 60 minute rants on YouTube), an unhealthy obsession with IQs in general and its variability between races and/or genders in particular, and the unwavering belief that Flat Earthers and Holocaust Denialists are the result of a lack of information on the respective subjects.

"Self-Indulgent" is a perfect term here: these people expand the universe of possible sources to almost infinity, which is laudable, at least in theory. But in the necessary next step of cutting it down to the amount one can actually handle, they fail to preserve the diversity of the input signal.

From the rich buffet that is on offer, they pick 15 cheeseburgers.

Upon reading the first paragraphs I thought the author was engaging in completely arrogant "my philosophy is better than yours" and "only experts can understand philosophy".

Your comment that 80 percent is bullshit explains a lot. And the idea that practitioners can't agree on which 80 percent even more so.

My impression is that philosophy is simply a means of framing our existence in such a way to reduce internal stress over the realities we face. From that perspective it makes perfect sense that one can adopt different philosophies and reject others.