Wonderful posts has almost as many topics as philosphy.

snowbull

Nice job, us.

Anonus

I was about to raise this concern.

Also I probably hold the dubious honor of most threads in there.

Saigyouji

Is that any stranger than us having as many threads complaining about IJBM as ones about media?

[Deleted User]

Go us! So fucking go us!

Ponicalica

Philosophy is overrated.

[Deleted User]

If you mean the philosophy major type, agreed. But I think we are supposed to use our philosophy section for a wider variety of things, some of them more interesting.

snowbull

Glad to see that we aren't going to let the philosophy section get any sort of ground between it and wonderful posts.

Khwarizmi

Philosophy is underrated, as with most disciplines that aren't expressed primarily in the form of equations.

Longfellow

Such as shitposting!

Khwarizmi

Shitposting is a fine art.

[Deleted User]

"Philosophy is underrated, as with most disciplines that aren't expressed primarily in the form of equations."

On the contrary, disciplines that are expressed primarily in terms of equations are underrated. Some people still think that disciplines whose main approach is writing really long papers full of words are actually as difficult and important as the math heavy disciplines. Hell, look at universities; it takes the same number of years to get an engineering degree as it takes to get a philosophy degree or a history degree. I mean, WTF man?

Khwarizmi

The difficulty of the subjects probably depends in part what your brain is geared towards, and the importance is entirely subjective.

(I didn't just post an angry picture or a rant!  I'm getting better about this!)

[Deleted User]

Their importance is entirely subjective? Right, because the humanities have contributed as much to our meteoric rise in standard of living as science and technology have.

(That's... usually a problem with you? Funny, I don't seem to remember you doing angry rants often.)

snowbull

I doubt we'd have things like democracy or human rights or modern governments without the humanities.

[Deleted User]

And I doubt things like democracy are the biggest contributors to the quality of life we enjoy today. Even people in Nazi Germany had it made compared to medieval peasants. Don't get me wrong, democracy and human rights help, but I think it is obvious where the lion's share of improvements come from.

Gelzo

Different disciplines feed off each other. We can't develop solid technology in a wildly unstable government, and we can't exchange ideas and information as efficiently without advanced technology.

SongOfSalt

Sory but it seems kind of petty to try to measure achivements.

Khwarizmi

>(That's... usually a problem with you? Funny, I don't seem to remember you doing angry rants often.)

Actually, no, I've done that a lot less lately, but I'd ordinarily have responded with at the very least an aggressive or sarcastic comment.  Mainly because I tend to read statements arguing that science and technology are more valid than humanities as a severe personal insult and an attack on my value as a human being, though I realise that this is an irrational response.  I simply find both science and technology, while very interesting, considerably less so than the sum of art, history and philosophy, and much harder to understand; when people talk of the latter category as being inferior, I hear "Get back in a warehouse job and quit wasting everybody's time with your bullshit non-fields".

But yes, I do think that the value of all of these fields is subjective.  Science and technology are more valid if that's what you value, but I for one would be happier in a low-tech capitalist democracy than a scientifically advanced feudal society, for instance.

I've noticed a certain personality type which disparages the liberal arts as easy, and then, confronted with some non-science/technology-related concept which they don't understand, dismisses it as frivolous or inane, like the people who attack postmodernism for encouraging the idea of intelligent design when the two are unrelated, or the people who dismiss "death of the author" as a form of Fan Dumb.

None of this is to dismiss the importance of science or technology, but the idea that they are objectively superior makes me want to break and/or hurt things.

Myrmidon

"Their importance is entirely subjective? Right, because the humanities have contributed as much to our meteoric rise in standard of living as science and technology have."

Oh fuck you.

You probably don't even know what reality is.

Anonus

"the idea that they are objectively superior makes me want to break and/or hurt things."

Well, without the break/hurt things.

[Deleted User]

"You probably don't even know what reality is."

It's that thingy that determines whether my predictions are correct or false, isn't it? Like, if I predict in advance that an object dropped is going to hit the ground in 5 seconds, it will either be true or false, and the thing that determines it is reality. That's good enough for me, at least for the time being. And as my predictions get more and more accurate, I know I am getting a better and better picture of reality - a map of reality, if you will, with reality being like the territory the map tries to depict.

Anyways, guys, I hope you don't get the wrong idea. I do think the arts and humanities are important parts of our lives; it would be pretty shitty to live without novels or without knowing our history, and even useless things like philosophical discussions and literary analysis can be fun intellectual exercises. But just because they are important doesn't mean they are equally as important or equally as difficult as quantitative fields; I think electricians are an important part of our society, too, but there are no 4 year majors in university to become one, let alone graduate degrees.

Khwarizmi

I hope I have gotten the wrong idea, since that post appears to confirm my worst suspicions.

The mindset that regards philosophy and literary analysis as useless is precisely the one which I find objectionable.