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I went to University in Australia initially planning to study Biology. I took an introductory Philosophy course and I was hooked. I ended up completing my Bac

by tomlock 11y ago

I went to University in Australia initially planning to study Biology. I took an introductory Philosophy course and I was hooked. I ended up completing my Bachelors and doing some postgrad work. I committed all the way - I had no other major or minor. In my experience, that introductory course was key in convincing me to follow that path. Now I work in IT ;)

rjbwork 11y ago
bool question = toBe || !toBe;
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
n0us 11y ago
I took a similar route though I majored in Government as well. I knew from day 1 of PHIL 1010 that I was going to major in it. I often felt that it was the most "math-like" of all of the pure humanities in that you are frequently dealing with reason, proofs, and theories with a high attention to detail. Now I'm doing programming. Metaphysics as a thought process apparently transfers well into writing code. Go figure.
- tomlock 11y ago
  Unfortunately I'm a filthy continental philosopher :D Cheers! Loved classical logic though.
noobermin 11y ago
I've heard this story more than once, but I'm curious is this is really all that common. You obviously break the "humanities=future burger-flipper" stereotype.
- wfo 11y ago
  It's very common. 99% of tech jobs aren't that hard, much easier than understanding philosophy. Anyone who can do philosophy can do it very well given some training/experience.
- tomlock 11y ago
  I had a think about the people from Philosophy I kept track of and I can honestly say they are now predominantly upper-middle, unless they stuck to academia, which about 30% or so did, and obviously, are poor (as far as I know), and somewhere on the road to a PhD. There's a schism in philosophy between analytic - the more "logical" side, with rigorous proofs and arguments - and continental - the more "what is art/ethics/love" side. I was firmly interested in the continental side. Of those that left philosophy, I found that continental people would often end up in some kind of community-oriented area, like education or sociology or social work or the like, whereas on the analytic side, people tended to end up doing physics/maths/comp sci type stuff. Obviously that's not a rule. When I left university, I worked in an industrial site, and a magazine, and at a Salesforce implementation company, and then at the industrial site again, teaching myself more and more programming at each. I got promoted to the IT department of the industrial site, and continued to learn, and then got a job doing ETL/Database/Automation stuff at a big telecom in the marketing department. I've been lucky, and I've known the right people, but I honestly would still be happy if I was working at that industrial site. There was a Theology graduate who also worked there, driving a forklift. If people ask me, do I recommend getting a philosophy degree, I say I don't. That's like asking if I'd recommend that people get a tattoo. I'm very happy with mine, but its a decision that needs to be made by an individual. Like a tattoo, it reduces your job prospects, and there are no take-backsies. Now comes my smug paragraph. Everyone in philosophy, and who even starts philosophy, hears the same jokes. Pretty much nobody is saying its a good idea to do a philosophy degree. To do philosophy, people have to overcome the societal expectation that they will die in a ditch, poor and unable to do anything "useful". To do philosophy, you really need to love that shit. I've honestly never heard someone speak with regret about completing a philosophy degree, whereas of the biologists, engineers and economists I know, some wish they'd done something different. If you read philosophy, and you love it, do what you love. Don't do something just because you think it'll make your life safer. I'd rather live a happy "burger flipper" than discover I don't love what I do in 20 years.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >There's a schism in philosophy between analytic - the more "logical" side, with rigorous proofs and arguments - and continental - the more "what is art/ethics/love" side. I was firmly interested in the continental side. Of those that left philosophy, I found that continental people would often end up in some kind of community-oriented area, like education or sociology or social work or the like, whereas on the analytic side, people tended to end up doing physics/maths/comp sci type stuff. Ironically, I'm a comp-sci/math type person, and I regard continental philosophy a bunch better than analytic. Continental philosophy usually considers matters inside their social and historical context, so at least sometimes, when they can be bothered to refer to the real world, they're referring to it with a solid context. Whereas analytic philosophy often seems to me to suffer from math-envy, and to formalize too early and too often. The result is that analytic philosophers spend a lot of time debating over what they think are rigorous, scientifically-grounded concepts when in fact our best science says that things just don't work that way or the theories aren't "done cooking". (I'm thinking of a Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia page someone directed me to last night on "reductionism", which was given three definitions, none of which matched what a working scientist would usually call reductionism. Or of the very concept of supervenience, which needs less metaphysics and more information theory. Or of the perennial debates over the "Hard Problem" of consciousness.)

by tomlock 11y ago

rjbwork 11y ago

bool question = toBe || !toBe;

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

n0us 11y ago

I took a similar route though I majored in Government as well. I knew from day 1 of PHIL 1010 that I was going to major in it. I often felt that it was the most "math-like" of all of the pure humanities in that you are frequently dealing with reason, proofs, and theories with a high attention to detail. Now I'm doing programming. Metaphysics as a thought process apparently transfers well into writing code. Go figure.

tomlock 11y ago
Unfortunately I'm a filthy continental philosopher :D Cheers! Loved classical logic though.

noobermin 11y ago

I've heard this story more than once, but I'm curious is this is really all that common. You obviously break the "humanities=future burger-flipper" stereotype.

wfo 11y ago
It's very common. 99% of tech jobs aren't that hard, much easier than understanding philosophy. Anyone who can do philosophy can do it very well given some training/experience.
tomlock 11y ago
I had a think about the people from Philosophy I kept track of and I can honestly say they are now predominantly upper-middle, unless they stuck to academia, which about 30% or so did, and obviously, are poor (as far as I know), and somewhere on the road to a PhD. There's a schism in philosophy between analytic - the more "logical" side, with rigorous proofs and arguments - and continental - the more "what is art/ethics/love" side. I was firmly interested in the continental side. Of those that left philosophy, I found that continental people would often end up in some kind of community-oriented area, like education or sociology or social work or the like, whereas on the analytic side, people tended to end up doing physics/maths/comp sci type stuff. Obviously that's not a rule. When I left university, I worked in an industrial site, and a magazine, and at a Salesforce implementation company, and then at the industrial site again, teaching myself more and more programming at each. I got promoted to the IT department of the industrial site, and continued to learn, and then got a job doing ETL/Database/Automation stuff at a big telecom in the marketing department. I've been lucky, and I've known the right people, but I honestly would still be happy if I was working at that industrial site. There was a Theology graduate who also worked there, driving a forklift. If people ask me, do I recommend getting a philosophy degree, I say I don't. That's like asking if I'd recommend that people get a tattoo. I'm very happy with mine, but its a decision that needs to be made by an individual. Like a tattoo, it reduces your job prospects, and there are no take-backsies. Now comes my smug paragraph. Everyone in philosophy, and who even starts philosophy, hears the same jokes. Pretty much nobody is saying its a good idea to do a philosophy degree. To do philosophy, people have to overcome the societal expectation that they will die in a ditch, poor and unable to do anything "useful". To do philosophy, you really need to love that shit. I've honestly never heard someone speak with regret about completing a philosophy degree, whereas of the biologists, engineers and economists I know, some wish they'd done something different. If you read philosophy, and you love it, do what you love. Don't do something just because you think it'll make your life safer. I'd rather live a happy "burger flipper" than discover I don't love what I do in 20 years.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >There's a schism in philosophy between analytic - the more "logical" side, with rigorous proofs and arguments - and continental - the more "what is art/ethics/love" side. I was firmly interested in the continental side. Of those that left philosophy, I found that continental people would often end up in some kind of community-oriented area, like education or sociology or social work or the like, whereas on the analytic side, people tended to end up doing physics/maths/comp sci type stuff. Ironically, I'm a comp-sci/math type person, and I regard continental philosophy a bunch better than analytic. Continental philosophy usually considers matters inside their social and historical context, so at least sometimes, when they can be bothered to refer to the real world, they're referring to it with a solid context. Whereas analytic philosophy often seems to me to suffer from math-envy, and to formalize too early and too often. The result is that analytic philosophers spend a lot of time debating over what they think are rigorous, scientifically-grounded concepts when in fact our best science says that things just don't work that way or the theories aren't "done cooking". (I'm thinking of a Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia page someone directed me to last night on "reductionism", which was given three definitions, none of which matched what a working scientist would usually call reductionism. Or of the very concept of supervenience, which needs less metaphysics and more information theory. Or of the perennial debates over the "Hard Problem" of consciousness.)