Philosophy (as I see it) is about asking big questions before science has a good answer. It's not about tackling questions as much as it is about posing questions and testing possible answers with logic before experiments or empirical evidence are available. Saying it has something to do with language parsing really sounds like a misguided generalization from some discussions.

For an example nearer to a hacker's heart, take the "brain-in-a-vat" concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

While science can't simulate this (well) for someone we can ask quite yet, I believe there's value in thinking about the implications of a fully simulated reality. This discussion was more or less started in the 1600's before we had any sort of technology that could remotely get us near to this. We still can't explore it yet, but it's a valid question and it's an important discussion on subjective reality.

I think it's very healthy and productive for people to ask and explore deeper questions about reality. To pretend that you can't study things without experiments is taking the scientific method. True, experimental evidence is required (in my mind and for most educated folks in our era) to confirm or disprove even the most well-founded theories. Still, there is a very abundant space of theories that are nearly impossible to prove. I feel there's value in discussing them, building conceptual models, and reasoning about them before science is ready.

The Brain in a vat question assumes there is a difference between a simulated tree and a "real" tree. It's a classic case for what I was talking about because "real" assumes a non simulated world it then suggests there is a conflict about applying that word to a simulated tree. However a brain that grew up in a box means a simulated tree when he says the word "tree". So IMO the conflict is in the question/English and not in reality.

PS: Think about how people talk about the landscape in a video game.

Stuff like "brain in a vat" is exactly why I dismiss most philosophy. Where is the reference to that possibility in the lecture that was posted here? If we (or one of us) is just a brain in a vat, surely it would have a lot of implications for the value of life?

I think "brain in a vat" only makes a stronger case for mathematics. After all, in the end what else but information and it's transformation matters? Everything else can be stripped away. And stuck with pure information, I think we are talking maths.

Amusing that you dismiss philosophy in the first paragraph and then go right ahead and engage in it in the second.

Yes, as probably becomes evident from my other posts, I am just disappointed by the shallowness of most philosophy out there. In the sense that I consider mathematics to be philosophy, of course I accept it. I just don't like that almost all non-mathematical philosophy texts I have encountered start from invalid assumptions.

Lots of objection to philosophy in general seem to be of the form:

Philosophy is bunk/useless/mumbojumbo because its obvious that <insert some random philosophical position>.