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>Sure, but critique is the easy part of anything (including philosophy). You do need to understand how a nuclear bomb works in order to eg design an effective m

>Sure, but critique is the easy part of anything (including philosophy). You do need to understand how a nuclear bomb works in order to eg design an effective monitoring program. And not just how it works, but how it is built. That's just logistics - it comes after your philosophical understanding of the item. We don't have to monitor things that aren't bad. We monitor nuclear proliferation because we've already made a philosophical judgement on it. It came first. > But we haven't!!! The United States is an open market system. What drives most innovation is the free market, not the government. The government is almost always reactionary by nature. Software engineers have free choice to work on what they please. They choose to work for big money on insidious technology and they know it. You can't just blame someone else. > So, no, technologists have not been at the healm of the United States. On the contrary, non-technical people -- lawyers and business people, mostly -- have been managing a highly technical world for decades. That's why we had no economic policy to manage the impact of automation in the 1990s. It's why we still have no climate policy. And it's why we had a complete dearth of privacy regulation in the early 2000s. This logic is circular. We live in a highly technological world that can only be created by scientists/engineers, but they have no power. So how did we get to this highly technological world if they had no influence or power? Clearly they had power and clout - to suggest otherwise is just, well, wrong. No one is holding a gun to any software engineer's head in the US. None of them have to work on adtech. But they do, to make money, more than most people need. So spare me that we need more of these types of "philosophers". We don't have climate policy because people stand to lose money, just like we have software engineers that refuse to take pay cuts to work on actual helpful technology instead of adtech.

throwawaygh 6y ago
> That's just logistics - it comes after your philosophical understanding of the item. We don't have to monitor things that aren't bad. We monitor nuclear proliferation because we've already made a philosophical judgement on it. It came first. But professional philosophers do not all agree on the morality of developing nuclear weapons, nor do those who do agree have particularly convincing answers about how to actually denuclearize. So I'm not exactly sure how professional philosophy is supposed to solve this problem -- they don't agree, and even those that do offer no particularly useful solutions. "Software Needs Philosophers" is NOT the same as "software engineers should abide by a strict code of ethics that aligns with my personal ethics". The latter is simply equivalent to the observation that "the world would be better if only I had perfect fiat". Sans such fiat, you need politics. And, again, philosophers do philosophy. Not politics. Regarding the rest of the post, the USA is run by business people and lawyers. To look at who occupies the major seats of power in government and business but then conclude otherwise requires a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics. Lots of relatively powerless people do things that are crucial to society -- factory workers, migrant farm workers, etc. Do you really think better philosophy would prevent software engineers from working on ethically dubious projects? I seriously doubt it. I also doubt that putting technologists in charge of everyone would result in a wonderful utopia. But don't blame the state of the world on technologists when business people and lawyers are the ones setting the rules and leading the teams that play by those rules. Anyways, this is all quite far afield from the original thesis of my top-level post, which was simply that professional philosophers need STEM professionals in order to do philosophy, perhaps more so than STEM professionals need philosophy to do good engineering/science. Which itself is, admittedly, quite far afield from the original article :)
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > this is all quite far afield from the original thesis of my top-level post, This is accurate. I am not going to refute your points directly, I don't think they're necessarily relevant for the crux of your argument and do a fair bit of obfuscation. In your post it seems more that you are arguing against philosophy - not for "philosophers needing stem professionals." > which was simply that professional philosophers need STEM professionals in order to do philosophy, perhaps more so than STEM professionals need philosophy to do good engineering/science. "good" engineering/science - what is that? Define it. I just don't buy the argument that philosophy needs stem to do its job. Not knowing how every algorithm works doesn't mean you can't discuss its impacts, effects, if it's ethical or not.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > "good" engineering/science - what is that? Define it. You don't need to know the definition of a "good" joint to make a strong table. You just need to know how to make one. > Not knowing how every algorithm works doesn't mean you can't discuss its impacts, effects, if it's ethical or not. Do you work with professional philosophers regularly? I recently had a half-hour conversation with a respected tenured philosopher who had strong opinions about ML but literally did not understand what a computer is. He consistently confused the words "logarithm" and "algorithm". He regularly humanized machines as if they are sentient AIs. This had practical effects; he drew all sorts of wild conclusions about how you might "fix" a "biased AI" that would be impossible to implement. He did not understand what the word "data" means. E.g., we got into a discussion about whether a picture of a human face is "data". And not in some profound way. In the way that made it clear he doesn't understand how modern facial recognition algorithms are built/designed. In a way that was simply not a useful point for conversation. In short, he was doing bad philosophy because he didn't have enough technical background to understand which philosophical questions were amusingly nonsensical and which were actually interesting/difficult. Or even the basic vocabulary to not sound like a fool. We eventually had a good conversation, because he was smart and willing to learn. But without a STEM expert in the loop, his opinions were worse than useless because they implied solutions that any would elicit bemusement from anyone trying to actually implement a better system -- or even anyone trying to decide what is/isn't ethical to build! > In your post it seems more that you are arguing against philosophy - not for "philosophers needing stem professionals. Hm. I stated: "philosophers need scientists/engineers/practitioners more than the other way around. Asking and attempting to answer big questions about the world requires, first, understanding the world. And today, understanding the world requires immense technical expertise" If I were "arguing against philosophy" [1], then why would I invest time in working with philosophers?! Good philosophy is needed now more than ever. What is useless -- and not just useless, but even harmful -- is the sort of terrible philosophy that's often done by people who don't take the time to understand the thing they are opining about. [1] "Arguing against philosophy", I think, is a bit of an oxy moron anyways. Wouldn't any argument against philosophy be a work of philosophy?
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> That's just logistics - it comes after your philosophical understanding of the item. We don't have to monitor things that aren't bad. We monitor nuclear proliferation because we've already made a philosophical judgement on it. It came first. That's true, I suppose, but unskilled laborers routinely achieve the level of philosophical sophistication required to make that judgment. It doesn't help your argument about the primacy of philosophy if it means the kind of "philosophy" achieved by the man in the street. > We don't have climate policy because people stand to lose money, just like we have software engineers that refuse to take pay cuts to work on actual helpful technology instead of adtech. That's true, but we also don't have a society that will pay more for actual helpful technology than it will for adtech. Why blame the software engineers for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the CEOs for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the people for wanting the wrong things?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  I'm not sure what exclusivity has to do with primacy. In any case that is an easy example. But what about the example of the use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima? That is much more debatable and isn't as clear cut - so we need more advanced discussions to make a better decision in that case. > That's true, but we also don't have a society that will pay more for actual helpful technology than it will for adtech. Why blame the software engineers for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the CEOs for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the people for wanting the wrong things? I'm not arguing that software engineers should be martyrs. I'm arguing that software engineers bear culpability as much as anyone else, and to suggest that they are more necessary than philosophy as incorrect. You touch an important problem. We could have a discussion about the ethics - who is responsible, who is not. What do you know - philosophy.

throwawaygh 6y ago

> That's just logistics - it comes after your philosophical understanding of the item. We don't have to monitor things that aren't bad. We monitor nuclear proliferation because we've already made a philosophical judgement on it. It came first. But professional philosophers do not all agree on the morality of developing nuclear weapons, nor do those who do agree have particularly convincing answers about how to actually denuclearize. So I'm not exactly sure how professional philosophy is supposed to solve this problem -- they don't agree, and even those that do offer no particularly useful solutions. "Software Needs Philosophers" is NOT the same as "software engineers should abide by a strict code of ethics that aligns with my personal ethics". The latter is simply equivalent to the observation that "the world would be better if only I had perfect fiat". Sans such fiat, you need politics. And, again, philosophers do philosophy. Not politics. Regarding the rest of the post, the USA is run by business people and lawyers. To look at who occupies the major seats of power in government and business but then conclude otherwise requires a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics. Lots of relatively powerless people do things that are crucial to society -- factory workers, migrant farm workers, etc. Do you really think better philosophy would prevent software engineers from working on ethically dubious projects? I seriously doubt it. I also doubt that putting technologists in charge of everyone would result in a wonderful utopia. But don't blame the state of the world on technologists when business people and lawyers are the ones setting the rules and leading the teams that play by those rules. Anyways, this is all quite far afield from the original thesis of my top-level post, which was simply that professional philosophers need STEM professionals in order to do philosophy, perhaps more so than STEM professionals need philosophy to do good engineering/science. Which itself is, admittedly, quite far afield from the original article :)

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
> this is all quite far afield from the original thesis of my top-level post, This is accurate. I am not going to refute your points directly, I don't think they're necessarily relevant for the crux of your argument and do a fair bit of obfuscation. In your post it seems more that you are arguing against philosophy - not for "philosophers needing stem professionals." > which was simply that professional philosophers need STEM professionals in order to do philosophy, perhaps more so than STEM professionals need philosophy to do good engineering/science. "good" engineering/science - what is that? Define it. I just don't buy the argument that philosophy needs stem to do its job. Not knowing how every algorithm works doesn't mean you can't discuss its impacts, effects, if it's ethical or not.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > "good" engineering/science - what is that? Define it. You don't need to know the definition of a "good" joint to make a strong table. You just need to know how to make one. > Not knowing how every algorithm works doesn't mean you can't discuss its impacts, effects, if it's ethical or not. Do you work with professional philosophers regularly? I recently had a half-hour conversation with a respected tenured philosopher who had strong opinions about ML but literally did not understand what a computer is. He consistently confused the words "logarithm" and "algorithm". He regularly humanized machines as if they are sentient AIs. This had practical effects; he drew all sorts of wild conclusions about how you might "fix" a "biased AI" that would be impossible to implement. He did not understand what the word "data" means. E.g., we got into a discussion about whether a picture of a human face is "data". And not in some profound way. In the way that made it clear he doesn't understand how modern facial recognition algorithms are built/designed. In a way that was simply not a useful point for conversation. In short, he was doing bad philosophy because he didn't have enough technical background to understand which philosophical questions were amusingly nonsensical and which were actually interesting/difficult. Or even the basic vocabulary to not sound like a fool. We eventually had a good conversation, because he was smart and willing to learn. But without a STEM expert in the loop, his opinions were worse than useless because they implied solutions that any would elicit bemusement from anyone trying to actually implement a better system -- or even anyone trying to decide what is/isn't ethical to build! > In your post it seems more that you are arguing against philosophy - not for "philosophers needing stem professionals. Hm. I stated: "philosophers need scientists/engineers/practitioners more than the other way around. Asking and attempting to answer big questions about the world requires, first, understanding the world. And today, understanding the world requires immense technical expertise" If I were "arguing against philosophy" [1], then why would I invest time in working with philosophers?! Good philosophy is needed now more than ever. What is useless -- and not just useless, but even harmful -- is the sort of terrible philosophy that's often done by people who don't take the time to understand the thing they are opining about. [1] "Arguing against philosophy", I think, is a bit of an oxy moron anyways. Wouldn't any argument against philosophy be a work of philosophy?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> That's just logistics - it comes after your philosophical understanding of the item. We don't have to monitor things that aren't bad. We monitor nuclear proliferation because we've already made a philosophical judgement on it. It came first. That's true, I suppose, but unskilled laborers routinely achieve the level of philosophical sophistication required to make that judgment. It doesn't help your argument about the primacy of philosophy if it means the kind of "philosophy" achieved by the man in the street. > We don't have climate policy because people stand to lose money, just like we have software engineers that refuse to take pay cuts to work on actual helpful technology instead of adtech. That's true, but we also don't have a society that will pay more for actual helpful technology than it will for adtech. Why blame the software engineers for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the CEOs for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the people for wanting the wrong things?

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
I'm not sure what exclusivity has to do with primacy. In any case that is an easy example. But what about the example of the use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima? That is much more debatable and isn't as clear cut - so we need more advanced discussions to make a better decision in that case. > That's true, but we also don't have a society that will pay more for actual helpful technology than it will for adtech. Why blame the software engineers for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the CEOs for not making themselves martyrs? Why not blame the people for wanting the wrong things? I'm not arguing that software engineers should be martyrs. I'm arguing that software engineers bear culpability as much as anyone else, and to suggest that they are more necessary than philosophy as incorrect. You touch an important problem. We could have a discussion about the ethics - who is responsible, who is not. What do you know - philosophy.