No, your philosophy degree is still worthless

September 7, 2024 3:13 AM

Maybe you've heard of the game where you start on a random Wikipedia article and then follow the first link repeatedly. It almost always ends at the 'Philosophy' page. But why? What does it say about the structure of the site? Can we visualize it somehow? What about second or third or fifth links? Does graph theory provide any tools to help? Oh look a ~20 min Youtube video by 'Not David' that addresses all of these questions.
posted by Rhomboid (9 comments total)

side note: the video has a meta aspect to it in that the author had to deal with wikipedia being edited while he was making it, which paints another layer of interest, at least to me. The concept of "messy human knowledge" is fascinating, as touched on in several ways, such as needing ways to filter out the links to pronunciation stuff, and the notion of later article links being more specific and early links being more general. Anyway, the idea that one of the author's patrons (maybe?) trolled them a little bit by editing the order of links on a crucial page was a fun twist in the whole thing, I thought.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:13 AM on September 7

Setting aside the number of desperately adrift people in the world and how vulnerable that makes them, I’ve lived long enough to see major projects live and die by whether or not people understand what words mean and where the locus of significance of those words resides. Your philosophy degree is definitely not worthless.
posted by mhoye at 6:10 AM on September 7 [7 favorites]

This video is really interesting, and I enjoy his analysis. Thank you for sharing it.

The title of this post is upsetting to me, as someone with a very valuable philosophy degree, and who hates seeing people sneer at philosophy due to the misconception that it's useless.
posted by meese at 7:44 AM on September 7 [8 favorites]

things that aren't philosophy have value only insofar as they help support doing philosophy.

okay, that's not true. the more accurate statement is roughly "things that aren't research or teaching only have value insofar as they help support doing research and teaching." it's just that philosophy is a necessary condition for carrying out both research and teaching, even if the research/teaching is being done in fields that don't appear to directly touch upon philosophy.

everything that's neither research nor teaching nor a support for research or teaching is fat that can be cut; it is entirely without value.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:17 AM on September 7 [2 favorites]

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; those who know history are doomed to watch others repeat it.

Philosophy (and epistemology) work similarly. It's not useless at all, it's in fact quite valuable. In every way imaginable except for convincing capitalists to pay you.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:18 AM on September 7 [5 favorites]

Even in crass monetary terms, philosophy degrees are actually pretty valuable. Additional commentary from Big Think.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:29 AM on September 7 [4 favorites]

I started out on the Main_Page, clicked on Wolverton Viaduct and thought oh no, these aren't any where near Philosophy topics, and then the first link was Greek and I knew it was a matter of time.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:41 AM on September 7 [4 favorites]

No kidding, if I had my time again, Philosophy would probably be my first choice.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 3:43 PM on September 7 [2 favorites]

Interestingly, he said one of the major pathways to "philosophy" runs through "analytic philosophy." At the moment (14 September 2024), maybe in reaction to his video, "analytic philosophy" does not lead you to "philosophy" and instead puts you in a loop that leads back to "analytic philosophy." Note: what I wrote is true if you ignore the links in "not to be confused with" and "disambiguation" headings, which he indicates (without actually saying) are ignored in his approach -- see 2:31, where he talks about the Japanese language link on "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and ignores the link in the disambiguation header above it.
posted by bluffy at 11:46 AM on September 14