"The problem is that companies don't exist in a vacuum, and soon as one adopts these marketing techniques, everybody has to adopt to "stay competitive", even though they end up wasting money and bullshitting the customer. It's a prisoner's dilemma." I like this way of putting it. It really is a classic prisoner's dilemma. That doesn't help anyone to make money without wasteful and irrational practices but at least it explains exactly what is going on. It's not a new issue, unfortunately. Plato wrote about it [0]. [0] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html (or at Project Gutenberg:…
Ironic, given that it's one of the oldest philosophical positions. E.g. Socrates in Plato's Gorgias: "We must either refute this argument and show that it’s not the possession of justice and self-control that makes happy people happy and the possession of badness that makes miserable people miserable, or else, if this is true, we must consider what the consequences are. These consequences are all those previous things, Callicles, the ones about which you asked me whether I was speaking in earnest when I said that a man should be his own accuser, or his son’s or his friend’s, if he’s done…
I procrastinated my core courses and took Philosophy my last semester of uni at 22. I'm so glad I took it that late. It was easily one of the best courses I ever took, of course with the professors to thank for that. What did I get out of it? It got me thinking about all sorts of concepts, especially concepts I never would've thought about on my own. How do you quantify that? Who knows? I still think about Callicles from the Gorgias and how he'd observe some modern social phenomena and such. But I think your posts are the sort of overfixation on "getting anything out if it" that the OP is…
Finished reading. The text is cut short on this page, but even after reading what is there, I am left amazed. A few points (mind you, I haven't read anything from the classic besides what they managed to force me to ingest in school, which as you can imagine is not much): - Though I found the discussion overtly long (yay my non-existent attention span), it's surprisingly easy to read; I expected ancient Greek texts to be much more difficult in terms of language and style. - All the whining I see and do about manipulators, liars, salesmen and contemporary advertising industry, Plato has…
Exactly, Philosophy does stand at the root. I often wonder why some—perhaps all too many—scientists (especially physicists) dismiss Philosophy as being irrelevant and pooh-pooh its ideas. For me, Philosophy and Science are and have always been complementary, after all Science was once called Natural Philosophy. I say that as someone whose main profession is electronics (it pays the bills). Re Gödel: I'd like to have been in the same room as Russell and Whitehead when they were reading Gödel's Incompleteness papers of 1930/'31 for the first time. In the light of Principia Mathematica one…
"Philosophy is words by old people in control, Science is the reality of things." Why do you say 'old people'? I don't see that as being prerequisite, nor from history is there indication that philosophers have been in control. Science is the study of reality but why should that conflict with philosophical ideas? Perhaps you should read my reply to mykowebhn. Perhaps Gorgias is a bad example, perhaps Plato was making a point about rhetoric and problems with sophistry generally. In my opinion a much better example of the philosophical tradition is Book One of Republic, here Plato sets out a…
Interesting idea! Anyone who likes the idea of a great books program should check out St. John's College in Annapolis MD and their curriculum: Suggested book curriculum by year: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo... All in one PDF: https://www.sjc.edu/application/files/4115/4810/0934/St_John... There's also the old Britannica Great books printed book set. You can just look at their book list and get them one by one when you're ready: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor... Also, almost all of these books are old enough that their…
>However arguing that he was traumatized from seeing Socrates’ trial is basically just making stuff up. Traumatized is the wrong adjective to describe Plato's reaction (though probably an apt description of Popper's characterization) but Plato was shaped by the trial in respect to his view of the relationship of the philosopher and the (democratic) city. This is depicted not just in the apology but also for example in the Gorgias where Socrates' death is foreshadowed: >For as it is, if somebody should seize hold of you or anyone else at all of your sort [philosophers], and drag you off to…
While this is an influence, it shouldn't be too overstated. Some of these sentiments and doctrines are very close to ideas seen in earlier Socratic philosophers, people who wrote and operated before Alexander's expedition (A rough timeline is that Alexander studied under Aristotle, who was Plato's pupil, who was Socrates pupil). Socrates' entire method is one of systematic doubt, the only thing he is not certain of is that he does not know. This is how Plato portrays him as approaching everything. He asks question after question, and almost never gives answers or offers a clear position. A…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgias_(dialogue) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric_(Aristotle) None of this is new. At all. The echo chamber is just louder now. Plato and Aristotle were obsessed with this shit, and they are the two most widely-read voices from antiquity. This is literally the value of a "liberal arts education" (small l liberal unrelated to the right / left spectrum). Philosophers have been writing about this stuff in similar terms since writing was invented, and probably talking about it before that. More modern philosophers have written more approachable versions,…