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You realize that there are colleges offering degrees in philosophy, right? And they don't even give you a refund when you find out the 4 years of education was

You realize that there are colleges offering degrees in philosophy, right? And they don't even give you a refund when you find out the 4 years of education was useless.

bawolff 7y ago
This is rather obnoxious. First off, philosophy is an interesting subject in its own right. You're probably not going to get a good job in it. However nobody goes into philosphy thinking they're going to become a millionaire. The issue in this thread is that lambda school isn't as described. Tricking people is very different than teaching people some esoteric stuff they know upfront is kind of useless pragmatically
heymijo 7y ago
Hi Sam, HN asks that as discussions intensify, we get more thoughtful and substantive. I'll do my best to follow that norm as well as to converse with you, with Paul Graham's "How to Disagree" in mind [0]. I'm not quite sure how your response fits into Paul's disagreement hierarchy with my original post in mind, but it doesn't seem to get at the meat of what I said. I do realize universities offer philosophy degrees. They certainly aren't STEM degrees that have set career paths outside of academia, however I would say that "useless" is too strong a descriptor. For one, I bet we could both look and find a number of successful people in the startup world that HN encompasses who have philosophy degrees and are doing interesting things within companies (eg they have successful financial careers). Second, there could be a solid argument that philosophy teaches a useful way of thinking. Third, if we want to move the goal posts of this discussion to universities, I could go on for quite awhile about ineffective practices and ways they set students up to fail as well. My main concern is the students. Seeing students at any level from early childhood to university and beyond taken advantage/set up to fail/screwed over/bamboozled gets me fired up. BTW, I checked out your webpage and enjoy the Spartan nature of it. The "end of page" is a nice touch I haven't seen before. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  I hate to break it to you heymijo, but I am more of an expert on disagreeing than Paul Graham is.

You realize that there are colleges offering degrees in philosophy, right? And they don't even give you a refund when you find out the 4 years of education was useless.

bawolff 7y ago

This is rather obnoxious. First off, philosophy is an interesting subject in its own right. You're probably not going to get a good job in it. However nobody goes into philosphy thinking they're going to become a millionaire. The issue in this thread is that lambda school isn't as described. Tricking people is very different than teaching people some esoteric stuff they know upfront is kind of useless pragmatically

heymijo 7y ago

Hi Sam, HN asks that as discussions intensify, we get more thoughtful and substantive. I'll do my best to follow that norm as well as to converse with you, with Paul Graham's "How to Disagree" in mind [0]. I'm not quite sure how your response fits into Paul's disagreement hierarchy with my original post in mind, but it doesn't seem to get at the meat of what I said. I do realize universities offer philosophy degrees. They certainly aren't STEM degrees that have set career paths outside of academia, however I would say that "useless" is too strong a descriptor. For one, I bet we could both look and find a number of successful people in the startup world that HN encompasses who have philosophy degrees and are doing interesting things within companies (eg they have successful financial careers). Second, there could be a solid argument that philosophy teaches a useful way of thinking. Third, if we want to move the goal posts of this discussion to universities, I could go on for quite awhile about ineffective practices and ways they set students up to fail as well. My main concern is the students. Seeing students at any level from early childhood to university and beyond taken advantage/set up to fail/screwed over/bamboozled gets me fired up. BTW, I checked out your webpage and enjoy the Spartan nature of it. The "end of page" is a nice touch I haven't seen before. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

SamReidHughes 7y ago
I hate to break it to you heymijo, but I am more of an expert on disagreeing than Paul Graham is.