To be fair there's a ton of hand-waviness on HN about the hot new web framework MongoDB xyz thing. It's not that different, IMHO : ).
> PG studied philosophy, often talking about it in a very positive light, so the claim that he doesn't see value in humanities is -- apologies -- bogus.
True but with the Analytic / Continental divide in philosophy you still get a lot of folks on the Analytic side of things who think that anything not quantifiable in the way that they are used to is bunk.
Also I'll just throw out, in terms of impact, Baudrillard's work kinda hits the nail on the head when it comes to the internet. You can't quantify the impact of literature or more qualitative philosophy as easily, and, one can only know as time goes on.
I'm not the first to say this, obviously. Baudrillard's quote seems scary-accurate of today:
“Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory.”
> True but with the Analytic / Continental divide in philosophy you still get a lot of folks on the Analytic side of things who think that anything not quantifiable in the way that they are used to is bunk.
I am glad you pointed that out. Anecdotally, I have found that "philosophy" to many in the tech industry when used perjoratively means Continental vs Analytic philosophy. Plus, even with analytic philosophy, when people recognize it as the sort of thing that Russell and his lineage worked on, they don't really get what these philosophers "cared about" - that it mattered to them if mathematical symbolism expressed truths about the Universe in a metaphysical sense. They weren't just manipulating symbols to prove consistency etc.
To me, Wittgenstein's concerns portray the bridge between the two major schools (well, naturally, he was a European who chose to go study under Russell, the Englishman) very well. He cared about the formalism, but he also cared that it made sense in terms of finding meaning in the world.
Somehow, it's the latter struggle that seems to pass by unnoticed when "techie people" (to generalize) think of the work of philosophers.
Baudrillard was definitely onto something with his analysis of the Gulf War. For Americans it was advertised as a war, but it wasn't much more than a one-sided slaughter.
> PG studied philosophy, often talking about it in a very positive light, so the claim that he doesn't see value in humanities is -- apologies -- bogus.
True but with the Analytic / Continental divide in philosophy you still get a lot of folks on the Analytic side of things who think that anything not quantifiable in the way that they are used to is bunk.
Also I'll just throw out, in terms of impact, Baudrillard's work kinda hits the nail on the head when it comes to the internet. You can't quantify the impact of literature or more qualitative philosophy as easily, and, one can only know as time goes on.
I'm not the first to say this, obviously. Baudrillard's quote seems scary-accurate of today:
“Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory.”