Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

#81

Post by asdflkj » Thu, Dec 10, 2009, 6:08 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #59

gjm11 wrote: post #18

Maciej Ceglowski, who is posting in this thread but evidently too modest to blow his own trumpet, wrote what seems like the definitive response to Paul Graham On Painting back in 2005: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm .

I never bothered to refute that at the time, but as a matter of fact practically everything he says there is mistaken. E.g. that no one painted alla prima till recent times, when arguably the most famous exponent of this style is Franz Hals, who worked in the early 1600s. It's a strange situation. If someone writes an essay attacking you, you either have to respond, in which case you're letting someone else pick your…

Besides idiots and trolls, there's a third large group of people who are brazenly wrong: those with psychological issues.

Re: Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

#82

Post by foldr » Thu, Dec 10, 2009, 9:29 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #80

foldr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you disagree then [citation needed]. I think you are confused about where the burden of proof lies here. You are asserting the worthlessness of the entire cannon of Western philosophy (and quite possibly other branches of philosophy too). This is an incredible assertion. By the way, why do you "exclude logic"? Logic has always been a central element of philosophy, at least since Aristotle. >To be clear Philosophy…

This is an incredible assertion. And yet you can't site a single example of progress. Thanks for telling me what skepticism is. no I showed an example of "modern" skepticism that is over 2,000 years old. Think about this ~2,300 years ago people were having the same basic argument as we are having today I can think of no other field which has stagnated to that degree.

Regarding skepticism, I didn't say that skepticism was a new idea, I said that the idea that science can replace philosophy is a new idea. The kind of skepticism you're talking about is actually incompatible with modern science, so it can hardly be taken as an example of a scientific world view. After all, one pretty clear example of recent progress in philosophy is the demonstration that scientific theories are not reducible to statements about actual and hypothetical experiences or "appearences" (i.e., the failure of logical positivism).

Re: Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

#83

Post by Retric » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 1:06 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #82

Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredible assertion. And yet you can't site a single example of progress. Thanks for telling me what skepticism is. no I showed an example of "modern" skepticism that is over 2,000 years old. Think about this ~2,300 years ago people were having the same basic argument as we are having today I can think of no other field which has stagnated to that degree.

Regarding skepticism, I didn't say that skepticism was a new idea, I said that the idea that science can replace philosophy is a new idea. The kind of skepticism you're talking about is actually incompatible with modern science, so it can hardly be taken as an example of a scientific world view. After all, one pretty clear example of recent progress in philosophy is the demonstration that scientific theories are not…

"By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind."

It's the "confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear" where the break from philosophy occurs. From the scientific standpoint you ignore the concept of life after death and other "perplexities of life" because it's not knowable. A true scientist builds models on what phenomena he sees and lays no clams one what he can't. Now you might question how that works with a paleontologist, but confining oneself to phenomena means a he thinks it's reasonable to look for patterns based on what your eyes tell you because they are not deceiving you even if they are not a window to deep truth. A paleontologist does not argue with the fact god could have created the world ten seconds ago, rather he argues "excluding unknowable things" this is the patterns I see. But, a philosopher sees no lines of inquiry outside of his purview and still attacks the unknowable questions such as life after death or the invisible god who does nothing.

PS: A better example from that time would be how a water clock behaves after you leave the room, if it displayed the correct time when you get back may have gotten up and danced about the room before you got back and hidden that from you but if that's the case it's an unknowable truth best ignored for visible phenomena.