I'm sorry you're suffering and I hope you don't commit suicide. You are not a peasant. Peasants don't have $2m at any point. Maintaining a middle-class lifestyle today, which is an opportunity still available to you, makes you one of the richest people to have ever lived, in terms of both material and opportunity. It sounds like you've hinged all your happiness and self-worth on professional and economic success, which is a losing strategy. Becoming as rich as the people you've worked for is a bad goal. You can learn to live more frugally, move to a cheaper area, work a job that's easy and boring but sustaining, declare bankruptcy if necessary, try to find communities of people you like, etc. You have options. If you've never lived in a rural area you should try it.
"a cardiac surgeon can still know far more about your heart than you do"
You're conflating the knowledge surgeons have with the subjective experience of a pounding heart. Surgeons study the heart qua plumbing, not as object of awareness related to primal feelings. Noting that physical changes in the brain cause changes in consciousness does not explain subjective experience.
He seems to have caught the issue dead on, since you seem to be arguing you know more about pumping blood than the surgeons based on a feeling - exactly what the people arguing consciousness can't arise from biology are doing. They feel consciousness is some big important thing that can't be produced conventionally and then resort to the equivalent of religions to explain it - feelings arrived at with no scientific method that don't really hold any weight.
"you seem to be arguing you know more about pumping blood than the surgeons based on a feeling"
No, I did not argue that at all. I said that there are multiple types of knowledge regarding hearts. Surgeons know one type in depth. The subjective experience of a racing heart is different from physical knowledge about how the heart pumps, and even if you know in depth the chemical/physical reactions that lead to and accompany a pounding heart, you do not thereby know that subjective experience.
By your definition the subjective experience says nothing about how a heart actually works.
Except that not quite true, the subjective experience tells you there are pulses which increase in frequency under stress etc. It’s just the surgeon understands what that means where subjective experience is less useful. Further, the subjective experience fails to separate the causes of a fast heart rate with the response of a fast heart rate.
This should suggest that the experience of consciousness is of minimal value when trying to understand it.
"By your definition the subjective experience says nothing about how a heart actually works."
No, that's a reductionist assumption. When I say "subjective experience" I am explicitly not indicating its quantifiable aspects. I am indicating what Nagel talks about in "What It Is Like to Be a Bat," the what-it-is-likeness, the phenomenological aspect. Not the increased pulse, not the hormones being released, not the neurons firing in the brain that correspond to a feeling of anger--the anger itself. An idealized observer enumerating all of anger's physical correlates does not give that observer the experience of that anger as it is felt by the person experiencing it. There is a difference between understanding something and living something.
I sometimes want to leave the industry because I can't seem to find a job dealing with interesting problems. I enjoy Rust and C, working with OS and machine details, but there don't seem to be any such jobs that pay as well as busting out features for a SAAS web app in a dynamic language. And it consistently blows my mind how everyone else seems to be so enthralled with "providing a positive customer experience," i.e. making as much profit as possible with whatever product necessary. I've felt like the only cynic at my last several companies, and feel guilty for not being able to give more of a shit.
Yeah, the author conflates power with ambition which is easy to do while in a peaceful, prosperous society where making just enough to live on doesn't necessarily come with serious downsides. It would be better titled "Ambition is Overrated". I think he's right that ambition is for the most part born from a desire for others' approval/admiration and fear of death. And that attitude/realization can be had in most any circumstance.
Regarding the kitchen comments, are those measures very positive and not to be impeached, or are they not that impactful? Or what do you mean by saying both? Also, your first line should read "and its sentiment".
"Regarding the kitchen comments, are those measures very positive and not to be impeached"
I don't want people to read this and think I am somehow against reducing waste or being overly critical of people striving to do so.
Reducing a single plastic bag or saving .01 kw/hours of electricity are, as I say, very positive and not to be impeached. I am not critisizing reducing waste - I am critisizing a failure to notice that the category of waste that one is reducing is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total that one is responsible for.
Right. markdown was obviously not saying "children ought to be spanked because it's traditional and currently common," but rather, "you should not be 'amazed' that people feel that way because it is common."
There are two claims here that should be considered separately.
1. Hackers are reluctant to acknowledge that their work has political ramifications. I believe this is true, and a problem.
2. Politics should be discussed more on HN. This is what most in the comments are disagreeing with, and I think with good reason. I like that HN avoids politics for the most part, but I'm also very glad to see someone point out that too many intelligent and technologically-inclined people insulate themselves from taking questions of values seriously.
The topics of impact of tech on society, and of ethics in technology, are something that I too would like to see discussed more. Separated from politics as much as possible, per your point 2.
The author seems to take the goal of studying philosophy to be knowledge/technique collection, for an eventual goal of some type of measurable output. In other words, she expects philosophy to have something in common with the study of physics that it just doesn't have. One reads Plato (for example), not to collect facts about the world, but because Plato's Socrates still represents one of the most noteworthy and admirable ways of being towards the world. You read Plato to learn how to comport yourself better towards death, injustice, and most of all, your own ignorance.
The bias I'm trying to get at is shown here:
> And if philosophy is about having certain experiences, like poetry, but then it would seem to be a kind of entertainment rather than a project to gain knowledge, which is at least not what most philosophers would tell you.
Dividing experience into "knowledge" and "entertainment" belies an ignorance of much of the subject matter Plato treats. Many works of ancient philosophy are still some of the most worthwhile texts to read because they are education in how to live. They represent some of the most admirable and imitable responses to the puzzle/experience of being a fragile creature who knows that it will die but doesn't know why it's here nor quite how to find out. Scientific inquiry can treat "why" questions when we understand "why" to mean "by what means?" but not when we understand "why" to mean "for the sake of what?" Many today would contend that "why" questions in the latter sense are not meaningful nor admit of answers, and you can't present empirical data in rebuttal, nor do much else besides try to inspire a sense of skepticism about their broadest assumptions, habits, etc. And encourage them to read Plato.
As others have observed, many of Aristotle's scientific claims have been falsified, and personally I didn't get much out of reading his Physics. But the Nic. Ethics made a permanent change in the way I think and feel, in part because it revealed to me how incomplete and shallow my justifications about ethics had been my whole life, and that a coherent way of thinking about ethics was possible.
Also, studying the history of philosophy and philosophy of science are the best ways to become aware of the (often questionable) philosophical assumptions that underlie the contemporary scientistic attitude towards knowledge.
> Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? Especially since Newton had more to show for his thoughts than an account of what his thoughts were like. I suspect the difference is that because physicists invent explicit machinery that can be easily taught, when you learn physics you spend your time mastering these tools. And perhaps in the process, you come to think in a way that fits well with these tools. Whereas in philosophy there is much less in the way of explicit methods to learn, so the most natural thing to learn is how to do whatever mental processes produce good philosophy.
The notion of having "more to show" is beside the point. The goal of philosophy can not be described as "producing good philosophy." The goal, at least for many of the ancients both in and outside Greece, is coming to know the truth, possessing wisdom, but not in the sense of holding in mind a set of facts about the world. It is a goal of reconciling oneself to the world, reaching the best understanding of how to live and think properly that is available to human beings.
