[ben_w]

I can definitely sympathise with that. This whole forum — well, the whole internet, but also this forum — must be an Eternal September* for you.

Given the differences between US and UK education, my A-level in philosophy (and not even a very good grade) would be equivalent to fresher, not even sophomore, though looking up the word (we don't use it conventionally in the UK) I imagine you meant it in the other, worse, sense?

Hmm. While you're here, a question: As a software developer, when using LLMs I've observed that they're better than many humans (all students and most recent graduates) but still not good. How would you rate them for philosophy? Are they simultaneously quite mediocre and also miles above conversations like this?

* On the off-chance this is new to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

[scoofy]

It’s definitely not an eternal September situation. It’s just hard problems, unsolvable really, that people have tidy solutions for, rather than dealing with the fact that they are very hard, and we probably aren’t going to know.

LLM’s at philosophy? I’ve never thought about it. I have to assume they’re terrible, but who knows. From an analytic perspective, it would have cognition backwards. Language is just pointing at things so the algos wouldn’t really have access to reality.