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The revenge of the philosophy majors

nytimes.com

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Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#151

Post by port11 »

Wissenschafter wrote: post #138
cess11 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Philosophy was the first and will be the last academic subject." Hard no. Theology was first, and will forever be. Where was Plato's Akademia? In a chapel of Athena, goddess of wisdom. In Aristotle you'll often find that philosophy is actually a method of theology, it's a way to figure out the divine, and what is most or least divine.

I mean, theology and philosophy could be argued endlessly to be interchangeable, go ask Wittgenstein. He just argues that things that are 'truly argued' with language are philosophy, while things that are bullshit is more or less theology. I usually stick to the analytical stuff, the continental stuff was pretty traumatizing honestly, reading through Being-and-Time in a couple days on Adderall fried some brain cells…

I like the notion that religions prescribe a philosophy of life. That’s really all they are, with 1+ deities to justify the basis for it. Or, you know, you pick a philosophy that makes sense without the fear of god(s).

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#152

Post by ramesh31 »

port11 wrote: post #149
commandlinefan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with some professional coders who were philosophy majors - there's some overlap between formal computer science and philosophy for sure. I was sort of surprised when one guy started talking about using diagonalization to prove Godels theorem of incompleteness - I thought, "ok, I guess they do teach y'all a thing or two". On the whole, though, it's _way_ easier to bluff your way through a philosophy degree…

It was easier, I imagine. Now you can vibe code your way out, no?

>"It was easier, I imagine. Now you can vibe code your way out, no?"

Coding was always the easy part of a CS major. Claude won't help you on a proctored Differential Equations exam.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#153

Post by port11 »

Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

I had a mandatory philosophy course as part of high-school, and as lucky to pick a practical-yet-philosophical degree. You can easily pick up other skills, but it’s lovely to learn philosophy early on.

I spent my 20s trying to become a Stoic and/or finding ways to practice a secular form o Taoism.

I’m very, very grateful for these pursuits.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#154

Post by karmakurtisaani »

satellite2 wrote: post #126
cgyvbunji wrote: post #27

In summary, AI has tricked a bunch of philosophy majors into not only thinking it's more than linear algebra but changing their entire life trajectories because of their confusion. AI seems to be a very alluring tar pit for the non-technical. The sad part is how this negative externality of AI is being actively encouraged for political ends.

Sure, but is there any evidence that psychology and for that matter, any animal intelligence, is anything more than linear algebra?

I think it should be shown that intelligence is linear algebra. Not that it's not linear algebra. Russell's teapot etc.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#155

Post by Forgeties79 »

Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

> University was never meant to be a training-ground for jobs, it was meant to be a place to seek truth and knowledge.

Universities were historically finishing schools for the sons of rich families at one time. There was never some era where it was some bastion of truth and knowledge.

I am deeply passionate about the value of a college education and how beneficial an educated population is for basically every conceivable metric, but let’s not get too rose tinted about what universities were. The truth is important here!

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#156

Post by gopher_space »

commandlinefan wrote: post #146
Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

I've worked with some professional coders who were philosophy majors - there's some overlap between formal computer science and philosophy for sure. I was sort of surprised when one guy started talking about using diagonalization to prove Godels theorem of incompleteness - I thought, "ok, I guess they do teach y'all a thing or two". On the whole, though, it's _way_ easier to bluff your way through a philosophy degree…

The difficulty scale starts with o chem and then goes through all of the arts before it hits another STEM discipline.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#158

Post by asdff »

Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

>University was never meant to be a training-ground for jobs, it was meant to be a place to seek truth and knowledge.

Depends. US had the land grant system going back to the end of the civil war. It was very much oriented towards practical and marketable skills such as agriculture and engineering that were deemed to be in short supply. Still is in these land grant (now also sea grant and space grant) schools. Engineering departments will be massive with a huge campus footprint of a half dozen or more buildings. Liberal arts departments, not so much, relegated to the most ancient of buildings oftentimes.

To your point on being able to argue transferable skills, I think you got in at a great time. It is very difficult to do this now that there are a plethora of actual domain trained candidates for just about any role, far in excess of hiring needs. They can be choosy and wait for the perfect engineer trained in the stack in question. They don't have to settle for someone who took a unit of formal logic anymore.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#159

Post by pcrh »

>“We can do neuroscience on A.I. systems in a way that we kind of can’t with humans,” Mr. Long said, in that they “don’t have skulls.” The three jobs Eleos was hiring for would all be machine-learning research scientists who could design and perform experiments.

This is pretty interesting! I wouldn't know how easy such "surgery" on LLMs would be to do, if if they do have "knowledge" or "consciousness" as their proponents claim, there could be some profound outcomes from this.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#160

Post by [deleted] »

nezi wrote: post #140
Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

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