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Much of philosophy throughout history seems to operate this way. I think philosophy is a noble pursuit, but it's worth noting how often people drew very broad

Much of philosophy throughout history seems to operate this way. I think philosophy is a noble pursuit, but it's worth noting how often people drew very broad conclusions, and then acted on them, from not very much data. Consider the dozens of theories of the constitution of the world from the time of the Greek thinkers (even the atomic theory doesn't look very much at all like atoms as we now understand them), or the myriad examples of political philosophies that ran up against people simply not acting the way the philosophy needed them to act to cohere. The investigation of possibility is laudable, but a healthy and regular dose of evidence is important.

suddenlybananas 2y ago
The idea that you need evidence to justify your beliefs is a philosophical position.
- Seattle3503 2y ago
  It's a pretty good one.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Anything about the self bumps into an immediate problem here. For instance I cannot prove to you that I'm conscious and not simply an automaton who's not actually thinking. My evidence for such is strictly personal - I can personally testify to my own experience of consciousness, but you have no reason to believe me since that's not evidence. And in fact even for myself - perception is not necessarily valid evidence since perception can be distorted. If I am in a compelling VR game I might be more than willing to swear to the fact that I'm flying (if I wasn't otherwise aware of the situation) - while you simply look at me acting a fool standing still while vigorously flapping my arms.
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      ... so at some point, one realizes one has pondered one's way into untestables and goes back to living. Or doesn't, I guess, and then gets kept up at night anxious about the notion that in some as-yet-unrealized future, an AI is forever torturing an identical copy of oneself that one cannot possibly ever meet. The programming analogy to this kind of philosophy is writing design docs (or building a class hierarchy of abstracts) without ever writing implementation. Lots of work, but why should anyone outside the room care?
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        It contradicts the ideals of an evidence based system of values. Most of what we believe we believe because we think it is right, and there's always , more or less, viable arguments for most of any remotely reasonable view. And this applies to all people. For instance it was none other than Max Planck that observed, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." I also think this is for the best. If one looks at the evidence of the skies it's indisputable that humanity lies at the center of the cosmos, with everything revolving around us - which, in turn, naturally leads into religious narratives around Earth. It's only thanks to these weirdos that adopted quite absurd sounding (for the time) systems of views and values, completely without meaningful evidence at first, that we were able to gradually expand, and correct, our understanding of the universe. And this doesn't just apply to the ancient past. Einstein's observation that the speed of light stays fixed while the rate of passage of time itself is variable, to enable the former, sounds so utterly and absolutely absurd. In many ways the real challenge in breaking through to relativity wasn't the math or anything like that (which, in fact, Einstein himself lacked when first developing the concept) but accepting that a concept that sounds so wrong might actually be right.
        shadowgovt 2y ago
        At the same time, however, Einstein's theory was confirmed by direct observation of the gravitational lensing of starlight past our sun during an eclipse. The difference, to my mind, between science and philosophy is that the philosophy of relativity can exist independent of such confirming evidence. But the scientific theory cannot. It's always important, when dabbling in philosophy, to keep track of when one has wandered so far out on the branch of reason that one is no longer supported by the trunk of evidence.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Excellent point. And it shines a light directly on what I'm saying. There's a great line from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: """"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”""" ... and, of course, the philosopher can argue that we are all of us tumbling through a Pachinko-machine of parallel universes, and it is only our constrained perception that suggests Man is dead; in a parallel universe, Man is just fine and living their days in the grey universe that we, through some as-yet-unphilosophized-but-don't-worry-we're-thinking-hard-about-it process, cannot exist in. ... but does that matter over-much if the observable is that ignoring zebra crossings gets you crossed out of this universe?
implements 2y ago
> Much of philosophy throughout history seems to operate this way. “Philosophy is poor at revealing truths but excellent at revealing falsehoods (or at least unsupported arguments)” was the main lesson I took from informally studying it.
yawboakye 2y ago
very few philosophers dared to live by their theories. the famous failures of aristotle (in the case of alexander) and plato in syracuse (where he saw firsthand that the philosopher-king is at best a book character) are good examples. seneca didn’t live stoically: he was avaricious and didn’t bother to incite civil war over unpaid debt, if ancient sources are to be believed. he failed horribly with nero, who later instructed him to commit suicide for treasonous crimes. again, if ancient sources are to be believed, he fumbled his suicide out of raw fear. the cynics, though, made a good life but that’s not because they had a better philosophy. it’s because cynicism is base/primitive logic available to the brute as well as the civilized man.
- lukan 2y ago
  And then there is Rousseau, who wrote books about raising children. But raising his own was too much.
  - yawboakye 2y ago
    rousseau is a fraud of the first order.
    - lukan 2y ago
      Enlightened fraud
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    I actually have on my desk, right now, Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." To summarize one of her points from memory, she basically lays into Rousseau about having a lot of opinions on domestic life for someone who clearly doesn't even know how to set foot in a kitchen.

suddenlybananas 2y ago

The idea that you need evidence to justify your beliefs is a philosophical position.

Seattle3503 2y ago
It's a pretty good one.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Anything about the self bumps into an immediate problem here. For instance I cannot prove to you that I'm conscious and not simply an automaton who's not actually thinking. My evidence for such is strictly personal - I can personally testify to my own experience of consciousness, but you have no reason to believe me since that's not evidence. And in fact even for myself - perception is not necessarily valid evidence since perception can be distorted. If I am in a compelling VR game I might be more than willing to swear to the fact that I'm flying (if I wasn't otherwise aware of the situation) - while you simply look at me acting a fool standing still while vigorously flapping my arms.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    ... so at some point, one realizes one has pondered one's way into untestables and goes back to living. Or doesn't, I guess, and then gets kept up at night anxious about the notion that in some as-yet-unrealized future, an AI is forever torturing an identical copy of oneself that one cannot possibly ever meet. The programming analogy to this kind of philosophy is writing design docs (or building a class hierarchy of abstracts) without ever writing implementation. Lots of work, but why should anyone outside the room care?
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      It contradicts the ideals of an evidence based system of values. Most of what we believe we believe because we think it is right, and there's always , more or less, viable arguments for most of any remotely reasonable view. And this applies to all people. For instance it was none other than Max Planck that observed, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." I also think this is for the best. If one looks at the evidence of the skies it's indisputable that humanity lies at the center of the cosmos, with everything revolving around us - which, in turn, naturally leads into religious narratives around Earth. It's only thanks to these weirdos that adopted quite absurd sounding (for the time) systems of views and values, completely without meaningful evidence at first, that we were able to gradually expand, and correct, our understanding of the universe. And this doesn't just apply to the ancient past. Einstein's observation that the speed of light stays fixed while the rate of passage of time itself is variable, to enable the former, sounds so utterly and absolutely absurd. In many ways the real challenge in breaking through to relativity wasn't the math or anything like that (which, in fact, Einstein himself lacked when first developing the concept) but accepting that a concept that sounds so wrong might actually be right.
      - shadowgovt 2y ago
        At the same time, however, Einstein's theory was confirmed by direct observation of the gravitational lensing of starlight past our sun during an eclipse. The difference, to my mind, between science and philosophy is that the philosophy of relativity can exist independent of such confirming evidence. But the scientific theory cannot. It's always important, when dabbling in philosophy, to keep track of when one has wandered so far out on the branch of reason that one is no longer supported by the trunk of evidence.
shadowgovt 2y ago
Excellent point. And it shines a light directly on what I'm saying. There's a great line from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: """"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”""" ... and, of course, the philosopher can argue that we are all of us tumbling through a Pachinko-machine of parallel universes, and it is only our constrained perception that suggests Man is dead; in a parallel universe, Man is just fine and living their days in the grey universe that we, through some as-yet-unphilosophized-but-don't-worry-we're-thinking-hard-about-it process, cannot exist in. ... but does that matter over-much if the observable is that ignoring zebra crossings gets you crossed out of this universe?

implements 2y ago

> Much of philosophy throughout history seems to operate this way. “Philosophy is poor at revealing truths but excellent at revealing falsehoods (or at least unsupported arguments)” was the main lesson I took from informally studying it.

yawboakye 2y ago

very few philosophers dared to live by their theories. the famous failures of aristotle (in the case of alexander) and plato in syracuse (where he saw firsthand that the philosopher-king is at best a book character) are good examples. seneca didn’t live stoically: he was avaricious and didn’t bother to incite civil war over unpaid debt, if ancient sources are to be believed. he failed horribly with nero, who later instructed him to commit suicide for treasonous crimes. again, if ancient sources are to be believed, he fumbled his suicide out of raw fear. the cynics, though, made a good life but that’s not because they had a better philosophy. it’s because cynicism is base/primitive logic available to the brute as well as the civilized man.

lukan 2y ago
And then there is Rousseau, who wrote books about raising children. But raising his own was too much.
- yawboakye 2y ago
  rousseau is a fraud of the first order.
  - lukan 2y ago
    Enlightened fraud
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  I actually have on my desk, right now, Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." To summarize one of her points from memory, she basically lays into Rousseau about having a lot of opinions on domestic life for someone who clearly doesn't even know how to set foot in a kitchen.