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Many of those problems are of the "seriously, who cares?" sort! For example: "How many straws can you remove from a bale before it's not longer a bale?", which
by sklivvz1971 10y ago
Many of those problems are of the "seriously, who cares?" sort! For example: "How many straws can you remove from a bale before it's not longer a bale?", which has the answer "Words are not meant to be numerically precise so stop inventing problems"
- zeroer 10y agoExactly. I forgot which exact essay but Paul Graham has a great point about most controversies in philosophy being an argument over imprecise definitions. Exceptionally intelligent, young would-be philosophers see this and thus choose not to study philosophy, leading to the current situation where we have few incisive professional academic philosophers. If it's worth anything, I feel I learned more about how to live a good life from reading Graham's essays than in three semesters of studying academic philosophy in college. Aside: paraphrasing another answer, you can remove all of the straws from a bale, and you're left with a bale of zero straws.
- veli_joza 10y agoI guess 'all the straws' is as many as you can remove. If you removed any more than that, you would have to put some back to return to bale of zero straws.
- sklivvz1971 10y agoWait, but what is a straw: How many atoms are necessary for a straw to be a straw? It's turtles all the way down!
- ahelwer 10y agoThis is the new anti-intellectualism. Highly technical people displaying complete unwillingness to engage with philosophical problems, understand why they are problems, why they are difficult, and how their first-pass solution is massively flawed.
- burke 10y agoI don't disagree with this in general principle, but "how many straws can you remove from a bale" points pretty transparently to the failed mapping between our black-and-white language and the shades-of-grey world. It's a shallow insight and to refer to it as an "unsolved problem" feels very strange to me. What depth am I missing?
- ikeboy 10y agoDecent discussion and links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686000
- Numberwang 10y agoWhat's really anti-intellectual is pretending something is profound when it is not. Ideas need to deliver, just as problem solving does.
- DanBC 10y agoPhilosophy does deliver. It's important in, for example, medical ethics. That has a profound effect on your life.
- ramblerman 10y ago> This is the new anti-intellectualism When the go to response claims persecution vs actually responding to the matter at hand you don't really win me over. I have to a agree with OP that questions of this nature have a high degree of 'intellectual masturbation' to them, and usually have answers that are unfalsifiable.
- rimantas 10y agoNo, that's just the very bad problem. Normaly we'd use several different words to describe various amount of hay. This is problem is on par with "have you already stopped to beat your wife?" Pseudo-intelectualism is just another form of anti-intelectualism.
- sklivvz1971 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]