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Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists

Thanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.

yesenadam 4y ago
> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years Hmm, I don't recall ever coming across a philosopher professing to be a scientist. > Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Not bad—I and others do it all the time, when you want more people to see the existing comments and to comment more. Often the worst articles provoke the most interesting conversations.
memling 4y ago
> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.
- btilly 4y ago
  Why does it bother you? As Richard Feynman said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Sure, lots of what scientists do, including Feynman, involve an implied philosophy. It is easy to read https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm or https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm and extract a lot of important philosophical ideas from them. But I have yet to see any self-proclaimed philosopher successfully do so without totally losing the key points. There was a time when I thought that philosophy must have something important to it, and philosophers must have something useful to say. So I wound up reading works by various philosophers that were recommended to me. Some works, like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were invaluable. Most weren't. The ones that were invaluable to me inevitably were written by people whose primary profession was NOT philosopher. For example Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. After a time I learned that if an important philosophical point happens to be made by a philosopher, I'd prefer to hear it filtered through the brain of a non-philosopher. Every time I try setting this rule aside, I am reminded of why I adopted it in the first place. And so, even if I'm reading about something which is apparently philosophical, I skip past the philosophers. Paul Graham offers an explanation of why this might be in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. I don't completely agree. But I also don't have a better explanation to offer. And I'll happily laugh at anyone who tells me that I should think of myself as a philosopher because I happen to be interested in a bunch of philosophical-sounding subjects like "philosophy of math", "epistemology" and so on.
  - tim333 4y ago
    Feynman was actually quite sophisticated philosophically eg. “The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.” I think when there is a purpose to philosophy eg. understanding science, it works better. When there isn't really philosophers tend to in many cases just discuss what other philosophers have said about each other which tends to get a bit circular and pointless.
    - pksebben 4y ago
      I think perhaps there's a subtlety in that quote - "philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds". Maybe part of the meaning, is that I'm the course of doing what scientists do, philosophy doesn't move their particular ball forward in the way they want so they can and sometimes do ignore it. Not necessarily that they should. This guy helped create nuclear weapons, and then quoted the bagvad ghita and had a long time to think about it. I can't imagine it didn't occur to him.
      - archgoon 4y ago
        > and then quoted the bagvad ghita and had a long time to think about it. That was Oppenheimer, not Feynman.
        pksebben 4y ago
        D'oh. You're totally right; I was having a different conversation apparently.
      - btilly 4y ago
        Feynman attempted to make his speech simple, clear, and precise. It is almost certainly a mistake to read subtlety into his language. Besides, he expressed his negative opinions on philosophy and philosophers in many ways, on many occasions. He very clearly was on the side of those saying that philosophers SHOULD be ignored by anyone who wished to learn science.
    - 4y ago
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 "There's nothing more annoying than people believing the same thing you do for dumb reasons", ouch ...
- stametseater 4y ago
  The only thing more annoying than that is when you pick a fight with them about their reasons and they insist on believing that you must disagree with their conclusions.

yesenadam 4y ago

> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years Hmm, I don't recall ever coming across a philosopher professing to be a scientist. > Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Not bad—I and others do it all the time, when you want more people to see the existing comments and to comment more. Often the worst articles provoke the most interesting conversations.

memling 4y ago

> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.

btilly 4y ago
Why does it bother you? As Richard Feynman said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Sure, lots of what scientists do, including Feynman, involve an implied philosophy. It is easy to read https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm or https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm and extract a lot of important philosophical ideas from them. But I have yet to see any self-proclaimed philosopher successfully do so without totally losing the key points. There was a time when I thought that philosophy must have something important to it, and philosophers must have something useful to say. So I wound up reading works by various philosophers that were recommended to me. Some works, like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were invaluable. Most weren't. The ones that were invaluable to me inevitably were written by people whose primary profession was NOT philosopher. For example Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. After a time I learned that if an important philosophical point happens to be made by a philosopher, I'd prefer to hear it filtered through the brain of a non-philosopher. Every time I try setting this rule aside, I am reminded of why I adopted it in the first place. And so, even if I'm reading about something which is apparently philosophical, I skip past the philosophers. Paul Graham offers an explanation of why this might be in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. I don't completely agree. But I also don't have a better explanation to offer. And I'll happily laugh at anyone who tells me that I should think of myself as a philosopher because I happen to be interested in a bunch of philosophical-sounding subjects like "philosophy of math", "epistemology" and so on.
- tim333 4y ago
  Feynman was actually quite sophisticated philosophically eg. “The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.” I think when there is a purpose to philosophy eg. understanding science, it works better. When there isn't really philosophers tend to in many cases just discuss what other philosophers have said about each other which tends to get a bit circular and pointless.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    I think perhaps there's a subtlety in that quote - "philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds". Maybe part of the meaning, is that I'm the course of doing what scientists do, philosophy doesn't move their particular ball forward in the way they want so they can and sometimes do ignore it. Not necessarily that they should. This guy helped create nuclear weapons, and then quoted the bagvad ghita and had a long time to think about it. I can't imagine it didn't occur to him.
    - archgoon 4y ago
      > and then quoted the bagvad ghita and had a long time to think about it. That was Oppenheimer, not Feynman.
      - pksebben 4y ago
        D'oh. You're totally right; I was having a different conversation apparently.
    - btilly 4y ago
      Feynman attempted to make his speech simple, clear, and precise. It is almost certainly a mistake to read subtlety into his language. Besides, he expressed his negative opinions on philosophy and philosophers in many ways, on many occasions. He very clearly was on the side of those saying that philosophers SHOULD be ignored by anyone who wished to learn science.
  - 4y ago

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/447 "There's nothing more annoying than people believing the same thing you do for dumb reasons", ouch ...

stametseater 4y ago
The only thing more annoying than that is when you pick a fight with them about their reasons and they insist on believing that you must disagree with their conclusions.