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Can you expand on how you found philosophy practical?

by letsgo39 4y ago

isthisthingon99 4y ago
Teaches you to think in ways that other courses won't.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  Upper level proof based math courses are much better in my experience (speaking as someone with a BA in philosophy who has been taking math courses part time for the past few years)
  - isthisthingon99 4y ago
    Not mutually exclusive. I took comp sci and philosophy so yeah I would agree.
inphovore 4y ago
I find philosophy is the sauce that goes well on everything. Sure, you can live on the bland essentials, and you cannot live on toppings alone, yet who doesn’t like a little… sauce with that?
daviddever23box 4y ago
The ability to conceptualize and abstract a problem into its component parts is a key skill that will never underserve you.
killjoywashere 4y ago
My daughter is a philosophy major while most of my family has been STEM for generations (father's an engineer, mother taught college math, grandfather was an engineer). I'm reassured by the requirements for formal logic, and the obvious applications in law, but also at the intersection of law, ethics, and many of the ML systems that I foresee coming online. She actually brought up this Harvard philosophy professor who had a story about keeping track of parantheses. I took advantage of the opportunity to show her the connections to Curry and from there to Lisp and the Little Schemer. She got it. She can reason, formally. That's important.
- lampshades 4y ago
  In my experience, philosophers make great software engineers. I’ve worked with a few and always been happy to work with them.
AussieWog93 4y ago
Just to offer a counter-point to the others here, I've personally noticed that quite a few people who study philosophy (either formally or via self-study) tend to become "disembodied". Formal reason becomes king, even when informal methods are more appropriate for solving the task at hand, and the intangible becomes irrelevant, even when it matters deeply. Perhaps things would be different for someone in their 40s, who has a wealth of real world experience to draw on, philosophy would be valuable. But for the average 18 year old kid, studying it seems to create a set of terrible habits that take years to undo before the student can become a properly integrated adult.
- writeinpencil 4y ago
  I started as a philosophy major and switched to history and economics for this exact reason. My philosophy classes became incredibly disconnected from reality and ended up being endless arguments about frameworks and formalisms, but without the rigor of mathematics outside of formal logic. I still loved my philosophy classes, but I'd recommend anyone studying it as their first undergraduate degree pair it with something more concrete.
- gergov 4y ago
  I guess philosophy education tends to vary from region to region, but "young people into phil" tend to be insufferable in one way or another, while older people with an understanding of philosophy (...and a great many real world problems) tend to be pretty okay people. But that seems to be a broader issue with specialization anyway. Focus on one lane for too long and your brain starts to disfunction in odd ways.
- melvinmelih 4y ago
  > Perhaps things would be different for someone in their 40s, who has a wealth of real world experience to draw on, philosophy would be valuable. But for the average 18 year old kid, studying it seems to create a set of terrible habits that take years to undo before the student can become a properly integrated adult. In the time of Plato and Aristotle it was frowned upon to teach philosophy to students below the age of 35 because they wouldn't know what to do with that knowledge.

Can you expand on how you found philosophy practical?

isthisthingon99 4y ago

Teaches you to think in ways that other courses won't.

capitalsigma 4y ago
Upper level proof based math courses are much better in my experience (speaking as someone with a BA in philosophy who has been taking math courses part time for the past few years)
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  Not mutually exclusive. I took comp sci and philosophy so yeah I would agree.

inphovore 4y ago

I find philosophy is the sauce that goes well on everything. Sure, you can live on the bland essentials, and you cannot live on toppings alone, yet who doesn’t like a little… sauce with that?

daviddever23box 4y ago

The ability to conceptualize and abstract a problem into its component parts is a key skill that will never underserve you.

killjoywashere 4y ago

My daughter is a philosophy major while most of my family has been STEM for generations (father's an engineer, mother taught college math, grandfather was an engineer). I'm reassured by the requirements for formal logic, and the obvious applications in law, but also at the intersection of law, ethics, and many of the ML systems that I foresee coming online. She actually brought up this Harvard philosophy professor who had a story about keeping track of parantheses. I took advantage of the opportunity to show her the connections to Curry and from there to Lisp and the Little Schemer. She got it. She can reason, formally. That's important.

lampshades 4y ago
In my experience, philosophers make great software engineers. I’ve worked with a few and always been happy to work with them.

AussieWog93 4y ago

Just to offer a counter-point to the others here, I've personally noticed that quite a few people who study philosophy (either formally or via self-study) tend to become "disembodied". Formal reason becomes king, even when informal methods are more appropriate for solving the task at hand, and the intangible becomes irrelevant, even when it matters deeply. Perhaps things would be different for someone in their 40s, who has a wealth of real world experience to draw on, philosophy would be valuable. But for the average 18 year old kid, studying it seems to create a set of terrible habits that take years to undo before the student can become a properly integrated adult.

writeinpencil 4y ago
I started as a philosophy major and switched to history and economics for this exact reason. My philosophy classes became incredibly disconnected from reality and ended up being endless arguments about frameworks and formalisms, but without the rigor of mathematics outside of formal logic. I still loved my philosophy classes, but I'd recommend anyone studying it as their first undergraduate degree pair it with something more concrete.
gergov 4y ago
I guess philosophy education tends to vary from region to region, but "young people into phil" tend to be insufferable in one way or another, while older people with an understanding of philosophy (...and a great many real world problems) tend to be pretty okay people. But that seems to be a broader issue with specialization anyway. Focus on one lane for too long and your brain starts to disfunction in odd ways.
melvinmelih 4y ago
> Perhaps things would be different for someone in their 40s, who has a wealth of real world experience to draw on, philosophy would be valuable. But for the average 18 year old kid, studying it seems to create a set of terrible habits that take years to undo before the student can become a properly integrated adult. In the time of Plato and Aristotle it was frowned upon to teach philosophy to students below the age of 35 because they wouldn't know what to do with that knowledge.