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> 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 proli

> 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?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago

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?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago