Retitled: Modern philosophers are full of it!

[KrazyHorse]

It's just about as fascinating.

[Asher]

Philosophy students = pretentious tw*ts - FACT

Proof:

[Seeker]

far far FAR too well kept to be a Phil major.

Pipes are cool. He should be smoking a Meerschaum.

[KrazyHorse]

Philosopher (n): one who is too stupid to be a theoretical physicist, too careless to be a mathematician and too lazy to be an experimental physicist. Also see: anachronism

[Flip McWho]

It's not, though, it heavily biases "public" fields such as politics (which heavily relates to philosophy).

Few people can name the inventor of the microchip or the integrated circuit or the digital computation machine or the internet, but they are innovations that have revolutionized the world.

Granted. But revolutionary also are many of the ideas of that the philosophers come up with.

You seem to think that the revolutionary ideas have all come and gone. The end of history as Fukuyama put it (or something like that). Which is simply not the case, but only the future can prove that.

[Agathon]

Some of you really have no idea about what I do.... or what contemporary minded philosophers do.

I study Plato, because people are still interested in him after 2500 years, he's effectively the founder of the Western Academic tradition and one of the three or four most important founders of Western Civilization. While we have a general idea of what he thought, there is still a great deal of work to be done in explaining some of his more difficult ideas.

I study the Presocratic philosophers because they effectively invented the scientific world view, and Aristotle because he pretty much conceptualized all the major sciences, and was probably the most intelligent person who ever put pen to papyrus (or paper for that matter).

Having to ask why people should study Plato at a university betrays a profound ignorance of what universities are for. It's possibly the stupidest question someone could ask outside of "What does this do" while fingering the trigger of a gun held to one's head.

They aren't technical schools. Stop trying to turn them into one.

[KrazyHorse]

Hey aggie:

do you know Ryan Beaton?

[KrazyHorse]

Somebody quote that because I'm pretty sure I've hurt his feelings enough that he's ignoring me.

[KrazyHorse]

He's about 6-6'1, very short blonde/brown hair (last time I saw him 3 years ago), skinny. Good runner. Decent physicist. Waste of talent.

[Flip McWho]

From KrazyHorse:

Hey aggie:

do you know Ryan Beaton?

As requested.

They aren't technical schools. Stop trying to turn them into one.

Never a truer word spoken. I think thats where half the problem lies. Technical people are too technical, they think everything is that way too.

[KrazyHorse]

Asher is neither a technician, nor an engineer. Though his field of computer science is much more of an applied field than mathematics or theoretical physics it is not mere technical details, and studies some fairly deep questions.

So I'm wondering who these so-called "technical" people are.

Unless you merely mean quantitative?

[chequita guevara]

If pay is the measure of importantance, then strippers are more important than police and firefighters and nurses and teachers and auto manufacturerers, etc.

[Last Conformist]

There is fame and fame. Ms Spears is no doubt better known today than is Hawking, but I'm willing to bet he's the one people will remember in a hundred years.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

When did I bring up pay?

GePap said how well you are known in the long term is more important than pay scales outs of college and you said "No its not".

Which means that you think payscales out of college is greater than how well you are known, unless you misinterpreted GePap's statements.

Ann Coulter is better known than most engineers...

And the fair comparison is all engineers versus all philosophers

Not when you are comparing pay scales out of college to how well you are known in the long run.

Nor when you can't even grasp the debate, it seems. We're comparing the value to society. Those are metrics for it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker



And the fair comparison is all engineers versus all philosophers - or else I'll pose to you, who was more valuable, Nelson Mandela or the three scientists who invented the transistor?

To whom- black South Africans denied the vote or citizenship ?

Mandela, every time.