5 ms·

You can read all the philosophy in the world. It doesn't automatically turn into actionable realities. Also, any philosophy is subjective, you are a human, you

by nafizh 5y ago

You can read all the philosophy in the world. It doesn't automatically turn into actionable realities. Also, any philosophy is subjective, you are a human, you said something, I am a human, I beg to differ and so on and on....

52-6F-62 5y ago
Absolutely you can read it to death and still glean nothing from it. I don't know how many times I've had to reread, and I usually continue to do so. And to that end it takes more than just reading it, but if one wants to ask some profound questions about the world around oneself now that one doesn't have someone breathing down one's neck then one should probably start where others left off. It'll save a little time. The point where you took a wrong turn was assuming that philosophy is all based on hearsay. There's been a lot of effort to ground pretty fundamental ideas to what we understand about reality, to the extent that we understand it. It's worth working to grasp some of that. It helps. If you like quantizations and mathematical/logical formality that exists as well, but mind that you'll probably want to do a lot of comparative reading. To put this in programmer's terms: why would you re-implement libc when you haven't even looked at the existing source code or surrounding arguments? That would look like a fool's errand: not because the effort isn't worthwhile, but because you could save yourself a lot of time and use the lessons of the past to inform your next efforts rather than blindly making all of the same mistakes or rediscovering what was already known (to our best efforts). Worse, you might end up wandering around ranting about how someone should implement a core supportive library for a common systems language without ever looking to find out if there is one in the first place.
- hnfong 5y ago
  The counter argument is that "philosophers" could be dead wrong. Imagine the range of different philosophies that existed in various times and places. Popular interpretations of philosophical texts could be wrong (referring to your suggestion of reading an encyclopedia). You might not even understand the "right" question in the first place. My personal experience is that giving the problem space a bit of thought and coming to preliminary conclusions before comparing with what mainstream thought has to say makes the whole ordeal more fun and possibly lets you learn the finer nuances and different perspectives more. PS: the analogy with libc is quite interesting after thinking about it for a bit actually. If you just want to use a C library, you don't reimplement it. But if you want to learn about C or libc specifically, re-implementing libc from the specs is probably the best way to do it.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    I think I would recommend reading about some of those philosophies you consider "dead wrong" and how they came to be. Once you start to understand how they were formed in the first place, I think you would be less ready to deride them. In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that". But what you'll find is that that one notion you may have figured out on your own is itself a nuance of a larger system of understandings. That you'll find a lot more work has been done than you realized to understand and prove each of those notions to the best of our collective knowledge. Then you'll understand why grabbing a single notion and anchoring to it like the author is doing is so fundamentally flawed that it's not a positive exercise. To use the "rich man's spiritual" reference again: the "rich man" of the poem is basing his salvation on the idea that he has to have enough of whatever new thing he decides is between him and heaven/salvation/happiness before he can ever attain it. The "rich man" put that barrier there, himself. He created the frame for his experience and bound himself to it by creating it in the first place. In the poem, the central character is making the declaration that he needs more to defend his existing material accumulations, so it's not exactly a 1:1. But that kind of self-imposed framework based on nothing grounded can be self-limiting. It can make it hard to understand real fundamentals.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      I totally understand how philosophies, whether wrong or not, came to be: some random person with an interesting idea wrote it down, taught it to others, and others liked it enough to keep sharing it or further adapt/adopt it. Through this process, things that have withstood the test of time are probably worth a look, but then with time comes a loss of context and relevance. I mean, I wasn't even saying most/all/many philosophies are dead wrong. It's all about the signal to noise ratio after you've read more than a couple books. You'd be a fool to blindly believe in the process of how ancient wisdom is passed down mostly by a long standing popularity contest. Worse, even good ideas come with "addons" and extra baggage that needs to be thrown out, because ancient elders knew that common people wouldn't understand the core ideas and thus attached "click baity" stuff to ensure the ideas keep passed down over generations. > In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that". Sure, this happens often. I consider this independent validation of my own ideas. Without this independent "verification" process, you're almost taking what you read on faith. (yes, the explanations or justifications they give are often not the real ones...)
- nafizh 5y ago
  I think we are talking about two different things. If you are talking about logic, formalism and objectively verifiable things, sure, I totally agree with you. But I am talking about principles that should govern life. Unless you pivot to a Higher moral Authority, I am just taking things to their logical end and saying morality is arbitrary and no amount of philosophy will change that.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    We might be. But we also might not be. However we might be getting into dangerously personal territory there since we're approaching remarks on belief systems and people get pretty touchy about that kind of thing. I'm curious how think that taking things to their logical end means morality is arbitrary. My understanding puts everything onto a pretty firm plane that leads me to understand that anything I do to others I'm doing to myself. That's enough to guide my actions accordingly.

by nafizh 5y ago

52-6F-62 5y ago

Absolutely you can read it to death and still glean nothing from it. I don't know how many times I've had to reread, and I usually continue to do so. And to that end it takes more than just reading it, but if one wants to ask some profound questions about the world around oneself now that one doesn't have someone breathing down one's neck then one should probably start where others left off. It'll save a little time. The point where you took a wrong turn was assuming that philosophy is all based on hearsay. There's been a lot of effort to ground pretty fundamental ideas to what we understand about reality, to the extent that we understand it. It's worth working to grasp some of that. It helps. If you like quantizations and mathematical/logical formality that exists as well, but mind that you'll probably want to do a lot of comparative reading. To put this in programmer's terms: why would you re-implement libc when you haven't even looked at the existing source code or surrounding arguments? That would look like a fool's errand: not because the effort isn't worthwhile, but because you could save yourself a lot of time and use the lessons of the past to inform your next efforts rather than blindly making all of the same mistakes or rediscovering what was already known (to our best efforts). Worse, you might end up wandering around ranting about how someone should implement a core supportive library for a common systems language without ever looking to find out if there is one in the first place.

hnfong 5y ago
The counter argument is that "philosophers" could be dead wrong. Imagine the range of different philosophies that existed in various times and places. Popular interpretations of philosophical texts could be wrong (referring to your suggestion of reading an encyclopedia). You might not even understand the "right" question in the first place. My personal experience is that giving the problem space a bit of thought and coming to preliminary conclusions before comparing with what mainstream thought has to say makes the whole ordeal more fun and possibly lets you learn the finer nuances and different perspectives more. PS: the analogy with libc is quite interesting after thinking about it for a bit actually. If you just want to use a C library, you don't reimplement it. But if you want to learn about C or libc specifically, re-implementing libc from the specs is probably the best way to do it.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  I think I would recommend reading about some of those philosophies you consider "dead wrong" and how they came to be. Once you start to understand how they were formed in the first place, I think you would be less ready to deride them. In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that". But what you'll find is that that one notion you may have figured out on your own is itself a nuance of a larger system of understandings. That you'll find a lot more work has been done than you realized to understand and prove each of those notions to the best of our collective knowledge. Then you'll understand why grabbing a single notion and anchoring to it like the author is doing is so fundamentally flawed that it's not a positive exercise. To use the "rich man's spiritual" reference again: the "rich man" of the poem is basing his salvation on the idea that he has to have enough of whatever new thing he decides is between him and heaven/salvation/happiness before he can ever attain it. The "rich man" put that barrier there, himself. He created the frame for his experience and bound himself to it by creating it in the first place. In the poem, the central character is making the declaration that he needs more to defend his existing material accumulations, so it's not exactly a 1:1. But that kind of self-imposed framework based on nothing grounded can be self-limiting. It can make it hard to understand real fundamentals.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    I totally understand how philosophies, whether wrong or not, came to be: some random person with an interesting idea wrote it down, taught it to others, and others liked it enough to keep sharing it or further adapt/adopt it. Through this process, things that have withstood the test of time are probably worth a look, but then with time comes a loss of context and relevance. I mean, I wasn't even saying most/all/many philosophies are dead wrong. It's all about the signal to noise ratio after you've read more than a couple books. You'd be a fool to blindly believe in the process of how ancient wisdom is passed down mostly by a long standing popularity contest. Worse, even good ideas come with "addons" and extra baggage that needs to be thrown out, because ancient elders knew that common people wouldn't understand the core ideas and thus attached "click baity" stuff to ensure the ideas keep passed down over generations. > In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that". Sure, this happens often. I consider this independent validation of my own ideas. Without this independent "verification" process, you're almost taking what you read on faith. (yes, the explanations or justifications they give are often not the real ones...)
nafizh 5y ago
I think we are talking about two different things. If you are talking about logic, formalism and objectively verifiable things, sure, I totally agree with you. But I am talking about principles that should govern life. Unless you pivot to a Higher moral Authority, I am just taking things to their logical end and saying morality is arbitrary and no amount of philosophy will change that.
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  We might be. But we also might not be. However we might be getting into dangerously personal territory there since we're approaching remarks on belief systems and people get pretty touchy about that kind of thing. I'm curious how think that taking things to their logical end means morality is arbitrary. My understanding puts everything onto a pretty firm plane that leads me to understand that anything I do to others I'm doing to myself. That's enough to guide my actions accordingly.