[ColinWright]

Rather than writing snarky criticisms, it would be of value if you could write something constructive. It sounds like you disagree, and possibly have an alternate point of view. Perhaps you could write a well-structured, well-argued, coherent piece, and then post it here so we can learn from it.

Brendan Behan once said "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."

Perhaps you could be less of a critic, and contribute more.

FWIW, I didn't downvote you, so I'm not the only one who feels your "contribution" is not particularly helpful.

[brvs]

Did you read what I'm criticizing? You mustn't have if you're saying I'm "unable to do it myself". How is this quote any more coherent or well-structured or less snarky than my comment was?

"Books on philosophy per se are either highly technical stuff that doesn't matter much, or vague concatenations of abstractions their own authors didn't fully understand (e.g. Hegel).

It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but more as a kind of accident report than to teach you anything useful."

Did you mean to post your comment in response to Paul Graham instead?

[ColinWright]

Yes, I read what you are being snarky about. It seems to me that what you have done is said "What a load of crap" without actually adding any value. What you haven't done is provide a clear, well-thought out contrary point of view.

I would be interested in reading an incisive, constructive reply, but if all you're going to do is criticize without being informative or constructive, then I guess you really are somewhat like a eunuch in a harem.

So here, PG wrote this (and you quoted it):

    "Books on philosophy per se are either highly technical
    stuff that doesn't matter much, or vague concatenations
    of abstractions their own authors didn't fully understand
    (e.g. Hegel).

    It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but
    more as a kind of accident report than to teach you
    anything useful."

So he's saying that the study of philosophy doesn't really teach you anything useful, and he says broadly why. You seem to take exception to this, but you don't say why. You don't say what it is that developers, or others, can gain from studying philosophy. You don't provide a counter-argument, or any kind of alternative viewpoint. You simply declare him to be pompous.

That seems unconstructive to me.

So returning to your comment:

    Did you read what I'm criticizing?

Yes, I did.

    You mustn't have if you're saying I'm
    "unable to do it myself".

That's an odd deduction, and I don't see how you came to the conclusion. You have provided zero evidence of anything except the fact of your disagreement. I would like to see a well-constructed counter-argument.

    How is this quote any more coherent or
    well-structured or less snarky than my
    comment was?

Perhaps it isn't, but it was in the context of the preceeding paragraph which asked for a more complete reply, rather than a snarky dismissal.

Will you offer one? I am genuinely interested to see the alternate point of view explained clearly and well.

[_delirium]

It seems to me that what you have done is said "What a load of crap" without actually adding any value. What you haven't done is provide a clear, well-thought out contrary point of view.

Isn't that pretty close to what Graham wrote? He essentially said "ugh, philosophy, what a load of crap" without providing much in the way of specifics, except a vague mention that he doesn't like Hegel (who he may or may not have read, and is hardly a great place to start in any case). What he hasn't done is provide a clear, well-thought out contrary point of view, just an off-hand criticism.

In general, I don't find sweeping "ugh, this is crap" pronouncements without detail or analysis to be too useful, especially at the level of granularity of people dismissing entire other fields of study which are not their own. As you yourself argue in this thread, mere criticism isn't particularly constructive.

Curiously, he does cite a philosopher in his list of books you should read (Kuhn). It's one of Kuhn's more historically oriented books, but still leans towards philosophy of science. If you like that one, you might also like some of Kuhn's more philosophically oriented books, like Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

[brvs]

Sorry, never mind, he's perfectly right. Philosophy has been a waste of time since Socrates and it's provided nothing of value that you can't learn from functional programming and/or starting a business in Silicon valley. Let me sincerely apologize for wasting your time.

edit: I'll begin breaking the bad news to my nearest college's philosophy department ASAP.

[ColinWright]

Hmm - I think my sarcasm detector just triggered.

I did a year of philosophy in my undergraduate degree. It wasn't much, and it was intriguing in places, but I did end up wondering what value it could possibly be. I completed my degree in Pure Mathematics, and I've ended up in industry as a programmer, manager, and systems analyst. And I'm not in a "startup," nor in the USA.

I've found a use for almost everything I ever studied, including English, geography, history, and languages. Not once have I, personally, found any value in the philosophy I did.

So I am genuinely interested in hearing what I've missed out on. What is it that I "don't get" that would make the subject useful. Note, I don't mean "make me money." I mean "help me think better about things."

I'm sure there are people out there who get engaged with philosophy and pursue it for its own sake. If that's all there is to it then I'm fine with that, just don't then pretend that it's useful. Getting people engaged and intrigued in an intellectual pursuit perhaps is its own reward. Is that all philosophy is?

Write something. Help us understand, especially given that PG took a degree in philosophy and art, and he wrote what he did.

[brvs]

- The study of ethics is inherently valuable. Regardless of what other studies tell us about "what to do" or "how to do it", we must assign some value or priority to our actions. You could try to use the findings of any other fields of study to guide your decisions. With psychology for example, we can study what makes people happy, and base our priorities on that. But ultimately you've just made an ethical decision to act on utilitarianism. It's inescapable that we make some ethical decisions, so it is worthwhile to study which ones are "best".

- Philosophy does not exist in a vacuum. In the same way that a work of art can lift someone's emotions, teaching and studying philosophy has real-world consequences. Had Hegel's works never been published, the world may have never seen Marxism, as one very big example! It's worthwhile to study philosophical theories within their own language and internal logic to understand the impact that they have on people. E.g. it is helpful to study Ayn Rand's thought itself, and not just the way it affects people's psychology, or the effects of its political applications. For example if it can be disproven by it's own internal logic, that has implications on its applications - we don't need to apply it to any political calculus to determine "P is not P" is false.

Sorry if my explanations aren't that great. I personally don't study philosophy, and can't offer much more from the top of my head, but I believe my apology of it so far is sufficient to at least say it isn't useless!

[PavlovsCat]

> "Not once have I, personally, found any value in the philosophy I did."

Wikipedia defines it thusly:

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.

Maybe that course you took wasn't so good, but generally, I think there is no day in which we don't engage in philosophy in some way or other. When a kid asks why don't politicians duke it out amongst each other, instead of sending the youth to war for them, that's philosophy, to me. Maybe my bar is too low.

But still, what isn't (related to or based on) "love of wisdom"? Everybody either has or lacks that, and just because it can be studied formally until one either doesn't see the woods for all the trees or gets bored, doesn't mean it has to be. It doesn't have to be studied at all, "doing philosophy" like "doing math" is a weird concept to me; just read philosophers, or even better, daydream. The first time I read Marcus Aurelius, time slowed down for me, maybe I even had goosebumps, I was so utterly fascinated by that little book. All technical documents in the world combined don't even come close to being a shadow of that.

So to me, saying philoshopy is useless based on bad philosophy, or bad treatment of it, is like me saying programming is mostly useless because QBasic sucks.

Especially since everybody is different, what meant the world for me might leave you cold, and vice versa. I can't explain love to you by showing you the people I love, I can't explain it at all -- and while "you'll know it when it happens to you, and maybe it never will", seems condescending, it's what I honestly believe.

Last, but not least: Don't ask what philosophy can do for you, ask what you can do for philosophy :P

[PavlovsCat]

Oh, and: even "usefulness" strikes me as a philosophical concept. At least unless you qualify it, like "shovels are useful for digging" is not philosophy. But "useful", or "purpose", just as words by themselves? You're already off the deep end without knowing it!

Show me someone who says they have no philosophy, and I will show you someone who doesn't know it, like a fish doesn't know water because it only ever swims in the one kind.

[Robin_Message]

Don't just throw your toys out of the pram, argue†! Colin is a valued member of the community and asking a reasonable question.

Let me restate it: Paul says (at least) three things:

1. don't bother with philosophy books;

2. philosophy isn't useful and it's better to come at it from a different angle; and

3. Hegel is useless.

Four questions:

Which of these isn't true (or is it something else that isn't true)?

If 1 isn't true, which philosophy books should one read?

If 2 isn't true, what is useful about modern philosophy, or how should it be approached?

If 3 isn't true, what useful things did Hegel write?

† Sorry, this is a bit snarky, but I'd say what you've written so far is (according to http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html) level 3 (disagreement) and what we need to be convinced (and what we genuinely want to hear) is actual level 4 and above counter-argument.

[TeMPOraL]

> Philosophy has been a waste of time since Socrates and it's provided nothing of value that you can't learn from functional programming

As far as I can tell it's mostly true, at least if you substitute "functional programming" for "theory of computation, probability theory and neuroscience". It's no failure of people back then that they didn't have the abstractions we have now. But we shouldn't also pretend they really understood something better without the mental and formal frameworks we have today.

Today we're turning philosophical problems into engineering ones. That's why we can finally get results (and that's why STEMs sound smug). Oh, and nowdays we can scan some answers to philosophical questions right out of the human brain, so there's that.

[mattmanser]

It's worth reading pg's reasons for saying this here:

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

Without that you're not going to understand why he wrote that paragraph and you'll also hopefully see that he's got meat behind his reasoning and that this is an offhand comment referring back to that essay.

As someone who also studied philosophy and now can look back, I think he got it right.

It also makes this entire thread moot.