Sorry, you’ll have to excuse a bit of my ignorance here.
Classical philosophers like Hume came up with some great ideas, too, especially considering that they had no access to modern scientific knowledge. But you don’t have to spend thousands of hours reading through their bad ideas to find the few good ones, because their best ideas have become modern scientific knowledge.
What are some of Hume’s “bad” ideas? He’s a philosopher I cherish quite a bit. I’d be interested to know what his “bad” ideas are. (Have you read Hume at all? Or anything about Hume?)
You don’t have to read Kant to think abstractly about Time; thinking about “timelines” is practically built into our language nowadays.
I think reading Kant about “Time” (why capital T?) could be a bad idea, since so many ideas about space and time were influenced by modern physics. (For instance, Kant thought that physical space, a priori, was Euclidean—please correct me if I’m misinterpreting Kant here-, which is unfortunate but completely reasonable.)
I think the most exciting idea Kant had was his attempt to establish a “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy—that our perception of the world and minds were somehow limited and subject to constraints like any other object in the world. I will direct all interested parties to this podcast .
you don’t have to spend thousands of hours reading through their bad ideas to find the few good ones,
What are some of Hume’s “bad” ideas?
I also think Hume was pretty amazing, which is why I picked him. Accusing him in particular of “bad” “ideas” is a bit harsh, since my issue is as much with non-ideas as with “bad” ones (so thanks for pointing this out). Let me say this better:
2) Next, start reading, say Part 1 of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (including Pamphilus to Hermippus).
They’re about the same length, but the density of ideas in (2) that are interesting by modern standards is extremely low in comparison to (1). This is, of course, a credit to Hume: he was so right that his writing mostly looks like overly-verbose common sense these days, at least to regular readers of LessWrong.
I think I’ll edit the OP to better reflect my view here. New sentence:
… But you don’t have to spend thousands of hours reading through their flawed or now-uninteresting writings to find their few truly inspiring ideas, because their best ideas have become modern scientific knowledge.
Sorry, you’ll have to excuse a bit of my ignorance here.
What are some of Hume’s “bad” ideas? He’s a philosopher I cherish quite a bit. I’d be interested to know what his “bad” ideas are. (Have you read Hume at all? Or anything about Hume?)
I think reading Kant about “Time” (why capital T?) could be a bad idea, since so many ideas about space and time were influenced by modern physics. (For instance, Kant thought that physical space, a priori, was Euclidean—please correct me if I’m misinterpreting Kant here-, which is unfortunate but completely reasonable.)
I think the most exciting idea Kant had was his attempt to establish a “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy—that our perception of the world and minds were somehow limited and subject to constraints like any other object in the world. I will direct all interested parties to this podcast .
I also think Hume was pretty amazing, which is why I picked him. Accusing him in particular of “bad” “ideas” is a bit harsh, since my issue is as much with non-ideas as with “bad” ones (so thanks for pointing this out). Let me say this better:
1) First, read the Wikipedia article on Hume and his many awesome ideas.
2) Next, start reading, say Part 1 of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (including Pamphilus to Hermippus).
They’re about the same length, but the density of ideas in (2) that are interesting by modern standards is extremely low in comparison to (1). This is, of course, a credit to Hume: he was so right that his writing mostly looks like overly-verbose common sense these days, at least to regular readers of LessWrong.
I think I’ll edit the OP to better reflect my view here. New sentence: