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Comment by neuroticnews25 | Hacker News Reader

When I was young, I used to think that humanists are just unproductive people wasting time on unfalsifiable bullshit. I still think that.

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You needed the philosophy of science to give you that term "unfalsifiable".

Good point, I clearly haven't thought this one through.

It fits in a paragraph, and we all read it. The rest of it is bullshit.

Let me introduce you to medical ethics... Unlike in engineering, ethics is a mandatory subject for medical students. And while there's a long-winded explanation for why it is that way, the short and an immediate explanation is that if you don't understand ethics, you, and the hospital that employed you, and the insurance company that pays for you will be sued out of profession. Because people's health and ultimately lives are at stake, and people become very touchy when someone dies or loses a limb unnecessarily.

I don't know what the situation is with other (mechanical, electrical etc.) engineering students, but I'm very much certain that the legal fiction that software comes with no warranty whatsoever is going to expire. Perhaps sometime soon. And then users of the said software will be allowed to sue, and, what do you know, ethics will suddenly be factored into CS curriculum ;)

I've been arguing for strict liability for defects in closed source since forever. I really hope you're right.

My reading of the situation is that the legislation was lacking in the programming department because of both the desire to make faster advances in the field (where regulations would potentially impede those) and not having enough expertise to come up with sensible regulations as well as regulating bodies.

I see the breaking point in the programmers supply catching up and outgrowing the demand. I predict that this will cause a chain reaction that will lead to establishing regulatory bodies, industry-wide accreditation, liability for failing to implement industry-sanctioned recommendations. It's hard to tell how long before we get to this point: other fields, especially the well-established ones took centuries to get there. On the other hand, it could be a matter of years, if we decide to copy from others rather than try to repeat their experience.

What CS curriculum? Why would people still be writing code in the future?

Code is a formal language that allows one to disambiguate their intentions (when compared to natural language). Some code is executable by computers, but in the future, it might not be the primary use (who knows?)

In either case, formal symbolic systems are useful. For humans. If there will be humans, they will want to have them. Maybe the emphasis will shift from writing to reading (+editing), similar to how we use photography: the acquisition process is, by and large, automatic, but the follow-up editing isn't. In either way, the ability to understand someone clearly is going to be valuable, and it will encourage the study of formal symbolic systems, that includes programming.

I think my current view is something like: Humanities are real and interesting, but much academic "humanities" work is highfalutin BS. People feel tech has a problem, and there's an excess of people with humanities credentials who want to feel valued. That doesn't mean people with humanities credentials are the solution to tech's problem. Those grads might be able to lecture you about how everything is terrifically problematic, but they won't necessarily be able to offer significant insight beyond that.

There probably is a lot of room for genuinely valuable tech-adjacent humanities work -- something like the Community Notes algorithm on X could be a good example. But I have little faith in humanities grads to do it, in part because they don't understand tech at a systems level and don't want to learn.

These are just my vague impressions -- take with a grain of salt.

> tech-adjacent humanities work

The thing is, these people always privilege the classics over more recent works that are just as philosophical. I for one probably learned more philosophy reading a pile of Neal Stephenson novels at age 16-18 than I did in college. Heck, my History and Philosophy of Science civilization sequence had a whole quarter on the Scientific Revolution, but after reading the Baroque Cycle it was mostly old hat. :P

Then you're still young.

See for example 'philosophers' of consciousness who can't do thermodynamics, turing computability and information theory. One would expect these three fields are the basic and inexhaustive baseline requirements to put any theory on consciousness.

Name names?

Søren Kierkegaard predates the things you're mentioned, while neither (say) David Chalmers nor Michael Polanyi would have any trouble with them.

I won't blame Kieerkegaard for using the only knowledge available to him at that time. Let us take David Chalmers as an example. His degree is not in Physics or Computer Science and a quick google doesn't show me if he has any capability in thermodynamics. He could still have learned the subject and be capable of solving thermodynamics problems and placing thermodynamic arguments. If you are familiar with Chalmers, can you confirm or deny that?

Michael Polanyi seems a bonafide physicist, I'd be fine with his works on consciousness.

David Chalmers is Australian university educated, like myself, Dominic Hyde (metaphysics), Jerome Gauntlett (quantum field theory), and others all of the same generation - we all had the same undergraduate exposure to physics, pure applied mathematics, and can handle thermodynamics, information theory, Turing computability, and related undergraduate topics.

Chalmers specialised in pure mathematics, was broad enough to get a Rhodes Scholarship and jumped ship for being a global leader(?)(according to some) in philosophy of the mind.

Perhaps you're thinking of Dennett who was more of a biology nerd, although I see no reason to think he is incapable of grasping thermodynamics, information theory, and Turing computability given his broad autodidact tendencies.

Biology nerd works too, broadly any natural sciences will do as a baseline to start with. All of these backgrounds sound excellent, yes.

It might be an issue with how you think of Philosophers then, you've just essentially given a seal of approval to Dennett and Chalmers who are regarded by some as the leading names in philosophy of the mind.

( Also, say, Stan Dahaene, David Rosenthal, Jesse Prinz, Guilio Tononi, and others also I guess )

Stuff like information theory and computability are part and parcel of educating about thinking, math, and physics for late 20th century universities.

Yes then thank god. Without thermodynamics/information theory/computability its easy to fall into nonsense. What I have read of Chalmers and Dennett I haven't found much issue with (Chalmers is a bit subtler but at least he doesn't seem to have any issue believing an ai could be conscious). I have planned to read more of their work.

Then he should be fine whether one agrees or disagrees with his arguments as long as he grounds them in physical science.

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