I'm normally the sort to find things like philosophy useless, but I think philosophy might be an exception to my general trend. I think that if philosophy educ

I'm normally the sort to find things like philosophy useless, but I think philosophy might be an exception to my general trend. I think that if philosophy education works (a big if), then it will be very valuable in that it teaches people to recognize legitimate questions and encouraging them to think rationally about them. Very often on HN, a story will drive a lot of comments pushing a moral point. But the supposedly moral point is usually just a popularity contest and posturing - "I hate the person doing this SOO MUCH!!!" or "I'm so empathetic for supporting this position". And any attempt to get past that to actual moral philosophy nearly always results in nothing more than ad-hominems being thrown and completely emotional (and inconsistent) arguments being made. Other issues which often have a fundamentally philosophical element that are relevant here include many issues of measurement (e.g., job interviews and hiring).