First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers • Hacker News Board

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#21

Post by jff » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

One thing that struck me strongly when taking a Philosophy of Technology course at my university (part of a concentration in philosophy) was that these philosophers really had no understanding of the technology they were trying to discuss. They'd simply latch on to something they heard--I recall "cybernetics" was one such topic--and misconstrue a bunch of news articles about it, then publish papers at each other defending and attacking their varied misconceptions. I also found that a lot of these papers included early content devoted to explaining how philosophy is super important to science/technology--but why should we bother listening to them if they can't even get the facts right?

There can be interesting things to find in philosophy, but until they actually bother to learn more about a subject instead of running off to write a paper because they came up with a great metaphor to explain what they think a gluon is, I don't see much value in their philosophizing on actual practical/scientific things.

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#22

Post by marbletiles » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

The philosopher, quoted: Philosophy teaches you how to think, to ask questions, this is useful to society. The university should keep it.

The blogger, replying: I am unpersuaded. Philosophy does not give you answers. Oh, but it does teach you how to ask questions, that is useful to society.

The straw man, beaten: ouch.

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#23

Post by jchrisa » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:10 PM UTC

I studied Philosophy at Reed College. The department there is biased toward the analytic side, which means I mostly studied set and number theory, reference and meaning of language, and other somewhat technical questions.

I'm absolutely certain this was better preparation for my current career (writing Erlang and making dorky music videos about CouchDB) than anything I could have learned in a CS program. Maybe other folks wouldn't be adequately prepared to be coders, by learning the basics of predicate logic and theories of naming, but it certainly worked for me.

If CS is practical, Philosophy is more practical. :)

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#24

Post by kapy » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #13

kmm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, what question does philosophy conclusively answer?

Philosophy doesn't answer the question, it teaches you which questions to ask.

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -Picasso

First time I saw that quotation, I thought it showed an amusing lack of understanding. Now I see the point; we need to know what questions need asking before we can begin to build anything of value in response.

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#25

Post by loevborg » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

MaxGabriel wrote: post #10

I've always found the most persuasive argument for philosophy that it helps kids prepare for law school. Philosophy has some of the most difficult (imo) readings, and as the original Boston Review article mentioned kids in philosophy get the best average score on tests like the LSAT. However, I've personally found my philosophy classes pretty much useless and despised postmoderism

The best thing about philosophy is that it helps kids prepare for law school? A backhanded compliment if I've ever seen one!

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#26

Post by sp332 » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

F_J_H wrote: post #5

From the article: This is a key point to understand: philosophy, as a discipline, does not provide answers. Well, notwithstanding the fact that it certainly provides some answers, philosophy is more oriented towards learning how to come up with answers, and more importantly, learning how to recognize if the answer you’ve come up with is right or wrong. I have forgotten much of what my first year philosophy professor…

There was an article posted a while back that illustrated this perfectly: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2443316 The article asks: Is Sugar Toxic? Some readers complained that the article doesn't answer the question, but they missed the point. The author spent a lot of time and effort doing research and interviews and putting together information to make a better question. The author just asks a question really, really well.

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#27

Post by dfc » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

Did anyone else see the headline and immediately think about the article from yesterday encouring people to become a technologist and get a PhD in philosophy?

I cracked up when I saw the title; I was expecting it to be a reply to the other article:)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#28

Post by brudgers » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

F_J_H wrote: post #5

From the article: This is a key point to understand: philosophy, as a discipline, does not provide answers. Well, notwithstanding the fact that it certainly provides some answers, philosophy is more oriented towards learning how to come up with answers, and more importantly, learning how to recognize if the answer you’ve come up with is right or wrong. I have forgotten much of what my first year philosophy professor…

When philosophy starts coming up with answers, we start calling it something else, e.g. what we call "psychology" grew out of philosophy over time as modern theories of the mind evolved from Kant to James who was trained as a physician and exposured to the empirically grounded Pragmaticism of Peirce (who was himself a working scientist).

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#29

Post by bluekeybox » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #14

The author makes an unjustified claim: I don't know what the tariff for higher education at UNLV is nowadays, but you can be damn sure that every $50,000-a-year Philosophy major at Harvard is subsidizing a hell of a lot of electron microscopes for the glamorous—and much less profitable—Molecular Biology majors. This is nonsense. The materials scientist who bought a $1M electron microscope received a grant for roughly…

As someone with a BS in Molecular Biology, I have to say that there is nothing glamorous about that degree.

Re: First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

#30

Post by sophacles » Sun, Jul 24, 2011, 5:49 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #14

The author makes an unjustified claim: I don't know what the tariff for higher education at UNLV is nowadays, but you can be damn sure that every $50,000-a-year Philosophy major at Harvard is subsidizing a hell of a lot of electron microscopes for the glamorous—and much less profitable—Molecular Biology majors. This is nonsense. The materials scientist who bought a $1M electron microscope received a grant for roughly…

Ahh yes, classic argument technique: reply to nonsense with nonsense[1]! Fantastic move. Oh wait.. there is one thing tho, which I presume you're OK with: it's a total logical fallacy.

The nonsense here is the perfectly reasonable part of overhead, like that it covers electricity for the microscope, legal, hr, accounting and so on offices that need to be done for any organization, buildings to house the stuff, people to keep the lab clean, and so on. The 40ish% overhead you describe is pretty darn low, considering the overhead percentages in a lot of companies that take contracts are 2-4x over materials and skilled labor time.