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The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrase

The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a great lecturer—a very impressive mind and a nice guy. Not a scientist though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Price https://prce.hu/w/ https://prce.hu/w/

jakzurr 4y ago
Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.
- yesenadam 4y ago
  > Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years Hmm, I don't recall ever coming across a philosopher professing to be a scientist. > Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Not bad—I and others do it all the time, when you want more people to see the existing comments and to comment more. Often the worst articles provoke the most interesting conversations.
- memling 4y ago
  > Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Why does it bother you? As Richard Feynman said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Sure, lots of what scientists do, including Feynman, involve an implied philosophy. It is easy to read https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm or https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm and extract a lot of important philosophical ideas from them. But I have yet to see any self-proclaimed philosopher successfully do so without totally losing the key points. There was a time when I thought that philosophy must have something important to it, and philosophers must have something useful to say. So I wound up reading works by various philosophers that were recommended to me. Some works, like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were invaluable. Most weren't. The ones that were invaluable to me inevitably were written by people whose primary profession was NOT philosopher. For example Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. After a time I learned that if an important philosophical point happens to be made by a philosopher, I'd prefer to hear it filtered through the brain of a non-philosopher. Every time I try setting this rule aside, I am reminded of why I adopted it in the first place. And so, even if I'm reading about something which is apparently philosophical, I skip past the philosophers. Paul Graham offers an explanation of why this might be in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. I don't completely agree. But I also don't have a better explanation to offer. And I'll happily laugh at anyone who tells me that I should think of myself as a philosopher because I happen to be interested in a bunch of philosophical-sounding subjects like "philosophy of math", "epistemology" and so on.
    - tim333 4y ago
      Feynman was actually quite sophisticated philosophically eg. “The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.” I think when there is a purpose to philosophy eg. understanding science, it works better. When there isn't really philosophers tend to in many cases just discuss what other philosophers have said about each other which tends to get a bit circular and pointless.
      - pksebben 4y ago
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 "There's nothing more annoying than people believing the same thing you do for dumb reasons", ouch ...
  - stametseater 4y ago
    The only thing more annoying than that is when you pick a fight with them about their reasons and they insist on believing that you must disagree with their conclusions.
flippinburgers 4y ago
I would imagine that the vast majority of people working at a place like vice don't understand the distinction between soft and hard sciences, don't care about the distinction, or are bitter about the distinction.
- yesenadam 4y ago
  Philosophy isn't anywhere on the Mohs scale of sciences—it's not a science at all. Each philosopher has their own idea about what philosophy is, but I'm not aware of any who think it's a science. That's one way to tell the difference—a philosopher asking "what is philosophy?" is doing philosophy. A physicist asking "what is physics?" is doing philosophy, philosophy of science. Actually it's mostly philosophers who ask that. Science was originally[0] a part of philosophy—natural philosophy—but that's a different story. Part of Socrates' originality was that every previous philosopher concerned themselves with physics and other physical sciences, but he was just concerned with the human world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale [0] And until quite recently! The word scientist was only coined in 1834. And "The predominant modern use [of the term "science"], "natural and physical science," generally restricted to study of the phenomena of the material universe and its laws, is by mid-19c." https://www.etymonline.com/word/scientist https://www.etymonline.com/word/scientist
  - random314 4y ago
    Not entirely true https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/
    - yesenadam 4y ago
      > Not entirely true If you want to communicate anything by that, please explain what you're referring to. I'm not going to read that entire page trying to guess. I can't at first glance see anyone asking "what is physics?", if that's what you meant.
      - 4y ago
modzu 4y ago
Time in physics is operationally defined as "what a clock reads". Nascent sciences start in philosophy.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  "Time is defined such that motion is simple" is a bit of physics-genius from MTW
brigandish 4y ago
It’s common amongst journalists, certainly of late.
parton 4y ago
This is not entirely correct. I can't say on this "retrocausality" stuff in particular, but more generally in quantum foundations, there are a lot of philosophers with a very solid physics/math background who have a better understanding of quantum than most physicists. I find quantum foundations to be not very interesting personally, and I doubt it will have much relevance 20 years in the future, but some philosophers working in it are definitely worth taking seriously.
- yesenadam 4y ago
  > This is not entirely correct. Which part? I didn't say or mean to imply philosophers are not worth taking seriously—if that's what you meant—just that philosophers are not scientists, and in particular, Huw Price is not a scientist. Uncontroversial, I would've thought. An article titled "A growing number of scientists.." that then misrepresents Price as being a scientist, is the thing that's wrong, seems to me. Maybe it did that because "A growing number of philosophers.." wouldn't have anything like the same click-appeal.
  - parton 4y ago
    Scientist isn't a job title or a qualification, it's a word for someone doing science. Some philosophers working in quantum foundations deserve to be called scientists, as much as any theorist from the physics department in the field. Price may not be in this category, you certainly would know better.

jakzurr 4y ago

Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.

yesenadam 4y ago
> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years Hmm, I don't recall ever coming across a philosopher professing to be a scientist. > Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Not bad—I and others do it all the time, when you want more people to see the existing comments and to comment more. Often the worst articles provoke the most interesting conversations.
memling 4y ago
> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.
- btilly 4y ago
  Why does it bother you? As Richard Feynman said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Sure, lots of what scientists do, including Feynman, involve an implied philosophy. It is easy to read https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm or https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm and extract a lot of important philosophical ideas from them. But I have yet to see any self-proclaimed philosopher successfully do so without totally losing the key points. There was a time when I thought that philosophy must have something important to it, and philosophers must have something useful to say. So I wound up reading works by various philosophers that were recommended to me. Some works, like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were invaluable. Most weren't. The ones that were invaluable to me inevitably were written by people whose primary profession was NOT philosopher. For example Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. After a time I learned that if an important philosophical point happens to be made by a philosopher, I'd prefer to hear it filtered through the brain of a non-philosopher. Every time I try setting this rule aside, I am reminded of why I adopted it in the first place. And so, even if I'm reading about something which is apparently philosophical, I skip past the philosophers. Paul Graham offers an explanation of why this might be in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. I don't completely agree. But I also don't have a better explanation to offer. And I'll happily laugh at anyone who tells me that I should think of myself as a philosopher because I happen to be interested in a bunch of philosophical-sounding subjects like "philosophy of math", "epistemology" and so on.
  - tim333 4y ago
    Feynman was actually quite sophisticated philosophically eg. “The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.” I think when there is a purpose to philosophy eg. understanding science, it works better. When there isn't really philosophers tend to in many cases just discuss what other philosophers have said about each other which tends to get a bit circular and pointless.
    - pksebben 4y ago
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 "There's nothing more annoying than people believing the same thing you do for dumb reasons", ouch ...
- stametseater 4y ago
  The only thing more annoying than that is when you pick a fight with them about their reasons and they insist on believing that you must disagree with their conclusions.

flippinburgers 4y ago

I would imagine that the vast majority of people working at a place like vice don't understand the distinction between soft and hard sciences, don't care about the distinction, or are bitter about the distinction.

yesenadam 4y ago
Philosophy isn't anywhere on the Mohs scale of sciences—it's not a science at all. Each philosopher has their own idea about what philosophy is, but I'm not aware of any who think it's a science. That's one way to tell the difference—a philosopher asking "what is philosophy?" is doing philosophy. A physicist asking "what is physics?" is doing philosophy, philosophy of science. Actually it's mostly philosophers who ask that. Science was originally[0] a part of philosophy—natural philosophy—but that's a different story. Part of Socrates' originality was that every previous philosopher concerned themselves with physics and other physical sciences, but he was just concerned with the human world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale [0] And until quite recently! The word scientist was only coined in 1834. And "The predominant modern use [of the term "science"], "natural and physical science," generally restricted to study of the phenomena of the material universe and its laws, is by mid-19c." https://www.etymonline.com/word/scientist https://www.etymonline.com/word/scientist
- random314 4y ago
  Not entirely true https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-action-distance/
  - yesenadam 4y ago
    > Not entirely true If you want to communicate anything by that, please explain what you're referring to. I'm not going to read that entire page trying to guess. I can't at first glance see anyone asking "what is physics?", if that's what you meant.
    - 4y ago

modzu 4y ago

Time in physics is operationally defined as "what a clock reads". Nascent sciences start in philosophy.

mhh__ 4y ago
"Time is defined such that motion is simple" is a bit of physics-genius from MTW

brigandish 4y ago

It’s common amongst journalists, certainly of late.

parton 4y ago

This is not entirely correct. I can't say on this "retrocausality" stuff in particular, but more generally in quantum foundations, there are a lot of philosophers with a very solid physics/math background who have a better understanding of quantum than most physicists. I find quantum foundations to be not very interesting personally, and I doubt it will have much relevance 20 years in the future, but some philosophers working in it are definitely worth taking seriously.

yesenadam 4y ago
> This is not entirely correct. Which part? I didn't say or mean to imply philosophers are not worth taking seriously—if that's what you meant—just that philosophers are not scientists, and in particular, Huw Price is not a scientist. Uncontroversial, I would've thought. An article titled "A growing number of scientists.." that then misrepresents Price as being a scientist, is the thing that's wrong, seems to me. Maybe it did that because "A growing number of philosophers.." wouldn't have anything like the same click-appeal.
- parton 4y ago
  Scientist isn't a job title or a qualification, it's a word for someone doing science. Some philosophers working in quantum foundations deserve to be called scientists, as much as any theorist from the physics department in the field. Price may not be in this category, you certainly would know better.