• Allonzee@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 minutes ago

    We literally spend most of our lives fighting over fancy pieces of paper we’re deluded into valuing more than one another, talk about a waste of time.

    The unexamined life is not worth living. In the US at least, we are discouraged from asking the questions that can provide us some semblance of meaning based on what we actually value during our brief existence, because considering the big questions about the nature of being distract us from collecting more fancy pieces of paper for the master’s next penis shaped space rocket.

    IMHO, the ability to ask and really feel the importance of why is precisely what makes our existence more meaningful than an ant’s. Rejecting philosophical inquiry and living a life of mindless acquisition and gluttony makes one about as sapient as said ant. You’re just following someone else’s script, and that someone usually has an agenda of maximizing your productivity and consumption with that script, so your life is more their life to spend than yours to experience at that point.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
      20·
      20 hours ago

      I once knocked over a whole jar of dried herbs in the kitchen, now that was a waste of thyme.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 day ago

    Eh, I dunno, I think philosophy can be pretty cool.

    • Logic and epistemology give us the tools to create proofs and algorithms, and it’s basically the foundation of modern mathematics.
    • Having the tools to communicate and understand concepts in ethics makes society more secular (because ethics aren’t just handed down from on high) and hopefully more humane.
    • Metaphysics I feel again moves us more toward secularism because it gives us ways to reason about the universe other than just “some big powerful boi did it (and he conveniently thinks you should give me money)”.
    • affiliate@lemmy.world
      8·
      23 hours ago

      the math/philosophy overlap in set theory/logic makes me uneasy. the closer you get to it, the more the idea that “math is objective” starts to fade away. also pretty surreal to be learning philosophy/taking things as given in a math class. especially because you spend a lot of time proving that certain things are true, but you don’t ever say what it means for something to be true.

      • kaffiene@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        25 minutes ago

        Math and science all have a philosophical core, it’s just that most of the time you don’t need to question it, so it’s easy to forget about it. Which is fine

      • SkyeStarfall
        1·
        7 hours ago

        We already know that math isn’t objective due to Godel’s incompleteness theorem

          • SkyeStarfall
            1·
            2 hours ago

            Godel’s second theory of incompleteness states that a formal system cannot prove its own consistency

            I think that’s as close as you can get to “math is not objective”

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 day ago

      Philosophy at it’s core can be cool, informative, and even critical.

      Most philosophy is fancy bullshit.

      Just like anything else creative with a low barrier to entry, 90% is crap. The rest may be corn

    • yesman@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 day ago

      Logic and epistemology give us the tools to create proofs and algorithms, and it’s basically the foundation of modern mathematics.

      Not that I disagree, but logic and mathematics have a rocky relationship. We thought we could marry them forever with set theory, but when they asked if anyone objected, Bertrand Russel stood up.