[EoinB]

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 thinking that it would be easy. Philosophy is in no sense of the word "easy" and not something you can "bluff your way through". In fact, it is more difficult than mathematics and more difficult and arduous than computer science.

I also teach at a university level and would advise young people reading this to pursue, these days, a philosophy education (or a mathematics education) over a software engineering/computer science education.

[calf]

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 problematic. As someone with philosophical tendencies this is incredibly obvious to me but and I must suggest that those who keep endorsing philosophy as a professional discipline for "success reasons" are putting forth a deeply prejudiced argument due to certain blinders.

For example as soon as you claimed "philosophy is harder than math", then I cannot take this line of argument seriously. The entire statement is a bad and unphilosophical statement. Anyone with an intuition for good philosophy, who is well read and has the wisdom of life experience, who is scientifically literate, should have known that before saying it. It actually offends me. It is intellectually insulting.

[zrobotics]

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?

[calf]

1. I never claimed philosophy was easier. The previous commenter blankly claimed the opposite on the basis that they are a teacher. I am making a simple meta-observation that if they get to do that, then I get to claim I was literally born with philosophical tendencies in that such an ad hominem is entirely transparent except to the teacher. This argument itself is an example of rigorous, critical argumentation. If they get to use an ad hominem, then they break the rules of good faith argumentation, hence the whole illustrative point about people having philosophical personality traits.

2. The fact that you completely failed to read this exchange context carefully, such casual prejudice toward the argument from authority ("I am a teacher, take it from me, philosophy > math blah blah blah"), also raises doubt in the quality of actually existing philosophy education. It is a lot more like court philosopher behavior than any regard for close reading and actual research-level rigor.

3a. There's an objective, rational argument as to why philosophy is "hard" (emphasis on the quotes). A lot of it has to do with the fact that it is about speculatively complex questions. See for example Noam Chomsky's elaboration on this, he generally philosophy as a field as having deflationary characteristic in relation to scientific progress.

3b. What this also means is that "hardness" is not a good measure at all of a human discipline being actually a good discipline--astrology can also be very "hard", so can Derrida, etc. Simply writing a good piece of fiction is also cognitively hard. But where is this nuance, I ask you, in the OP comments? I do not see it. Where is the impact of philosophy, then?

All of these ought to part and parcel of students who actually learned philosophy well. The fact that multiple top comments do not evince this level of learning, at least on a tech social media forum, says a lot and it should trouble you.

(Having written all this, I think there is a further elaboration on 3a that makes the question/issue much more interesting, but it does not excuse the attitude of philosophy-chauvinism which is well known as thing in academia, analogous to how math/physics has their share of hardness chauvinists over other disciplines, ad infinitum.)

[bdhe]

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.

[calf]

Why is refusal to carefully and patiently explain the wrongness of prestige theater, "physics envy"-type conversations an example of not being well-versed in philosophy?

[bdhe]

Because it simply isn't. Philosophy isn't about wordy refusals (ironically the same complaint you try to levy) but about reasoning, knowledge, and abstract ideas. None of which come through in your comment, nor can come through refusing to engage in communication.

[calf]

Then that is a category error because you are assuming people on HN need to act like philosophers 24/7.

[birdcar]

Wow dude, you seem like a tool.

[jibal]

If you actually studied philosophy you would realize that your comment is riddled with fallacies.

[calf]

I'm not going to waste my brain cells trying to prove a negative that my comment doesn't have fallacies, but I will say that I meant every word of what I wrote while on my phone commenting casually in an online forum, not for a research paper and perhaps what is more likely is that you don't realize that commonsense context and/or have not fathomed / fill-in-the-blanks as to actual valid reasons as to why I said those things that to you seem to be fallacies.

For example if you knew about STEM-elitism, it is not many mental steps to "philosophy-elitism" of the sort of sentiment "Philosophy >_hard Math". Why exactly does omitting this explication make my opinion a fallacy? It doesn't. It's an online forum with people handwaving their opinions, just as the people above me were already doing.

[Hugsbox]

Man I love this brand of unintentional comedy

[calf]

Your comment is clever but plainly unkind. If you truly care about philosophy you would say something more constructive. It is in no comparison to my explicit criticisms, whatever you may disagree with about them.

My general opinion is the same: saying "philosophy > math", and variations thereof, is generally an uneducated, absurd, stupid, unwise comment. I won't mince words with that. Nor am I being paid to write a proper article as to why such a view is deeply misled. It's an online forum.

[butlike]

The whole thing's absurd. Wigawallooo