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The revenge of the philosophy majors

nytimes.com

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Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#221

Post by kensai »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #155
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 conceiv…

That's a very harsh take. Most of us would not be alive by the end of the century to personally witness or attend the 1000 years of the University of Bologna, but that goes enough to say how ancient these institutions are: meaning their role obviously changed over time.

Historically, universities BECAME bastions of truth and knowledge, particularly with the introduction of Alexander von Humboldt's ideas for research. And that was already happening by the mid-end of the 19th century. You can not seek seriously truth and knowledge before the establishment of serious metrics and research methodology.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#222

Post by zrobotics »

calf wrote: post #186
EoinB wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something to ponder... I have a PhD in mathematics and have worked in tech for more than 30 years as a programmer. I went to a Renaissance era university in Scotland which is required by law to require of me a broad education rather than something very specialised. Because I entered the science faculty, as an undergraduate, I had to balance that with something from the humanities and I chose Philosophy, naïvely think…

I was born a philosopher, people were telling me to study philosophy when I was in high school. But instead my formal education choices took a more circuitous route that included the fine arts, physics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, and eventually theoretical computer science. However even I can see that philosophy as a field is flawed and generic advice to tell students to go philosophy is incredibly…

So you've never actually studied philosophy or mathematics formally, yet you can succinctly claim that philosophy is easier than math? FWIW, I hold math and CS degrees, and fulfilled as many of my humanities requirements with philosophy classes as I could (although I didn't take anything beyond a 300 level course, and grad level is where both math and philosophy explode in difficulty).

For me at least, I found CS the easiest, followed by math, with philosophy the most difficult and challenging. With philosophy, you need to be as rigorous as when writing a mathematical paper, but at least with math there is a highly structured and rigid format. I can easily see why mathematics, for a very long time, was considered a subfield of philosophy.

Personally though, I'd challenge framing entire disciplines as easier or harder than each other, I think that's an individualized thing. Some people could easily find philosophy much easier than a computer science course. For me, I'd really struggle and probably couldn't complete a fine arts degree. I've just never been able to draw or paint, it's just a skill I've tried but failed to be able to develop. So in general understanding an art degree is the easy degree to BS your way through, but I'd find a fine art bachelor's degree harder to complete than a math PhD. At least unless it was a degree that didn't require any studio classes, so maybe art history?

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#223

Post by tonic_note »

I find it so exhausting how the analytic and classical traditions are the de-facto face of philosophy in the US. The Continental tradition has a _ton_ to say on the topic of AI, and is likely where you'll find the answer to your questions about why the vibes feel so bad in the post AI world.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#224

Post by dmitrygr »

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…

> with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary,

I will take the other end of this bet

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#225

Post by Forgeties79 »

kensai wrote: post #221
Forgeties79 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conceiv…

That's a very harsh take. Most of us would not be alive by the end of the century to personally witness or attend the 1000 years of the University of Bologna, but that goes enough to say how ancient these institutions are: meaning their role obviously changed over time. Historically, universities BECAME bastions of truth and knowledge, particularly with the introduction of Alexander von Humboldt's ideas for research.…

Not saying that’s all they were. I’m just saying they’ve been many things throughout history.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#227

Post by appreciatorBus »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #62
appreciatorBus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If service to others and to society mean anything to you, working in Starbucks or any fast food job will teach you more about humanity and human society than most college grads learn from a humanities degree.

It’s difficult to articulate the tedium and monotony of a Starbucks gig. There’s so little intellectual stimulation available in that setting. If you managed to learn more from your fast food than your humanities degree, then I think that’s on you for not paying attention at college (perhaps because you were exhausted from your job?).

If you find that sort of work, tedious and monotonous, then I think that says more about you than the job. I’ve been a janitor, a barista and a software developer, and they all are fascinating and fulfilling in different ways. Of course if purely measuring on status, comfort and financial renumeration software dev currently beats them all handily, but to imagine there is nothing you could learn, nothing interesting, nothing fulfilling in other types of work is pretty arrogant. The lefties might even call it privileged.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#228

Post by appreciatorBus »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #59
appreciatorBus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If service to others and to society mean anything to you, working in Starbucks or any fast food job will teach you more about humanity and human society than most college grads learn from a humanities degree.

Helping a mega-corporation make an extra buck is not "service to society". If you meant doing a service job at a small business, where you can have real ownership over how it treats its customers, I would agree with you.

The mega corp is making 3.98% profit. Sure you could focus all your time at Starbucks on that 3.98%, but most of us would focus on the other 96% which is helping customers.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#230

Post by noman-land »

Philosophy, and more specifically, epistemology is one of the most important disciplines in the world and it would do a lot to help our societal discourse if people studied it from an early age. Most people never ask the questions of what knowledge actually is and what constitutes knowing something vs assuming something vs motivated reasoning, bias, etc.

I know that many people don't care about Knowledge™ and are more motivated by winning but perhaps it would be easier to counter these people if the language of knowledge was more broadly spoken, understood, and internalized.

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