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A comment on Whither Philosophy?. Parent comment

Re:Whither Philosophy? by dventimi on Friday November 10, 2023 @10:46AM (#38220291)
Name one branch of physics that can't do without philosophy, in the following sense: at a typical American university with a graduate physics program that prepares its doctoral students for a successful professional career in that branch of physics, philosophy classes are a required part of the graduate curriculum.
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Re:Whither Philosophy? by GoblinSlayer on Friday November 10, 2023 @03:58PM (#38224436)
That's survivor's bias. You can be ignorant about anything until it becomes a problem. Insurance against it IRL is polymorphism: some people won't be ignorant, but you suggest uniform ignorance.
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Re:Whither Philosophy? by dventimi on Friday November 10, 2023 @05:55PM (#38225668)
> That's survivor's bias. You can be ignorant about anything until it becomes a problem.

I choose to believe that if you could name a branch of physics that can't be done without philosophy, you would have named it. Therefore, I take your comment to mean that you can't name a branch of physics that can't be done without philosophy. That's consistent with the possibility that no such branch exists. Put another way, philosophy is utterly useless for physics, which is something I wrote elsewhere in this thread

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Re:Whither Philosophy? by dventimi on Friday November 10, 2023 @04:25PM (#38224755)
Answering here because there's a thread depth limit:

> That's survivor's bias. You can be ignorant about anything until it becomes a problem.

I choose to believe that if you could name a branch of physics that can't be done without philosophy, you would have named it. Therefore, I take your comment to mean that you can't name a branch of physics that can't be done without philosophy. That's consistent with the possibility that no such branch exists. Put another way, philosophy is utterly useless for physics, which is something I wrote elsewhere in this thread.

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