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The revenge of the philosophy majors

nytimes.com

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Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#191

Post by gowld »

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…

A PhD is a doctor of philosophy. Science is a natural philosophy.

Philosophy is a broad, vague category.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#192

Post by calf »

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…

As a counterargument, it is a bad degree if philosophy led you to jump a foregone conclusion that "AI will surely render knowledge specialization by humans useless".

It is literally very badly taught if four years of such an undergrad degree program creates such students with lack of technical background to evaluate AI. It is like vibe coding except the soft sciences departments were already doing it all along. And I suspect it is part of the way philosophy as a program has to work, it is essentially pre-scientific so students that specialize in philosophy, of either the analytic or continental kind, don't actually do enough scientific research and/or some kind of real-world moral and social testing to balance that out. In that sense philosophy as an institution is medieval and for society to go back to that way due to AI would be an intellectual regression.

Basically the mistake here was to conflate the purpose of the university with philosophy, they are very different things. A philosocratic university would be incredibly problematic for humanity. Truth and knowledge in isolation, under a philosophical quarantine, was precisely one of things that thinkers of the scientific revolution like Noam Chomsky warned against.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#193

Post by birdcar »

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…

Wow dude, you seem like a tool.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#194

Post by cgyvbunji »

ur-whale wrote: post #161
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.

> In summary, AI has tricked a bunch of philosophy majors ... OTOH, their bank accounts is likely not complaining very loudly

That's not actually the part that bothers me, but it's good to caution about envy.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#195

Post by wcfrobert »

keiferski wrote: post #36
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I studied continental philosophy! Which is the opposite! Now I program to be less stochastic :) (Dropped out in my 3rd year to join the .com boom)

Aha, continental philosophy is definitely worth learning as well. I don’t share the disdain many analytic people have for continentals. However I don’t think it’ll make you better at writing clearly, unfortunately…

I like the _idea_ of reading continental philosophy, and then I opened up Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here is a random sentence from a random page verbatim:

"Spirit contains this actuality here because the extremes whose unity it is just as immediately each have the determination to be for itself its own actuality. Their unity is subverted into aloof aspects, each of which is for the other an actual object excluded from it. The unity thus emerges as a mediating middle which is excluded and distinguished from the departed actuality of the two aspects; thus it itself has an actual objectivity differentiated from its aspects, and it is for them, i.e., it is existent. The spiritual substance enters into existence, first while it has gained for its aspects the sort of self-consciousness which knows this pure self to be an actuality which is immediately in force, and therein it just as immediately knows that it is this actuality only through the alienating mediation. Through the former, the moments are refined into the self-knowing category and thereby are refined right up to the point that they are moments of spirit. Through the latter, spirit comes into existence as spirituality."

wtf is Hegel saying?

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#196

Post by Avicebron »

lapcat wrote: post #98
Avicebron wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up "Philosopher-King" from Plato. It explains a hell of a lot.

I don't think it does explain anything. I've seen no evidence that Thiel takes any particular inspiration from Plato. Rather, Thiel seems to be much more focused on Christianity and libertarianism, and those would be the sources of Thiel's anti-democratic predilections, not Plato's Republic. I think philosopher-king is more of a label that other people are trying to pin on Thiel. The Republic actually said that the p…

I think you're reading my comment too literally. The concept of philosopher-king has moved beyond literal reading of Plato and into the broader concept of epistocracy.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#197

Post by tristenharr »

I wanted to major in Philosophy but was worried I wouldn’t make enough money to support the lifestyle I wanted so majored in Computer Science instead. What irony.

Someday I hope to go back to school to get a PhD in philosophy with a focus on logic. :)

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#198

Post by tomlockwood »

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…

idk I have a BA Phil and have been a professional programmer for over a decade now. If you don't know how to search stackoverflow I'd agree. But I had to go to University to learn all the ins and outs of philosophy. Much easier to find the answers online for programming. Searching for "how to live a good life"? Many charlatans on this topic out there. As the academy gets hollowed out in favour of Profit, increasingly those charlatans have STEM degrees.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#199

Post by evantbyrne »

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…

Philosophy of science went hard and was hands down the most valuable course in my education. It's very strange that they don't force everyone to take at least some philosophy in university. Can you imagine living in a world where the average person not only thought about what they believed, but were also equipped to ask themselves hard questions about the nature of belief itself?

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#200

Post by bdhe »

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…

I'm struggling to find a counter argument in your response. You say it is a deeply prejudiced argument? Why? You say blinders? What are those?

What is a philosophical statement?

One tendency I've noticed is that people well versed in philosophy can communicate well. Just anecdotally. Not something I am seeing here in this response.

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