smaccoun

Those "endless" arguments you speak of are actually something I consider to be one of the strengths of philosophy! In engaging in philosophy, you don't stop at the assumptions, you questions the axioms themselves. What is the context that produced the certainty of the axioms? Do they hold from all perspectives.

Although there is always a sense of potential circuitousness to philosophical discussion, and a sense that there IS IN FACT NO FINAL(/CORRECT) ANSWER, this can in fact be what's considered the strength of philosophy - that it shows how infinitely mysterious life is! I consider this to be the fun that is philosophy, but of course it's not everyone's cup of tea

Beyond the technology that often emerges from scientific endeavors, science alone is a beautiful discipline that engages man in the world from the "objective" perspective. However science has, and always will, sit under the umbrella of philosophy. Science stops at a basic set of assumptions which - although valuable in a limited sense - must keep the curious mind wanting more. More importantly though, science often leaves out those questions that are most important to us - those questions that concern the relation of mySELF, that most mysterious thing, with the rest of the world. Perhaps the best person to elucidate this fact is Erwin Schrodinger, who's books My View of the World, Nature and the Greeks, and What is Life are absolute must reads:

"I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously."

Very refreshing to see this on HN. Often I feel bewildered and sometimes even somewhat infuriated when I read about people demanding a new work week of X days/hours. For me, as long as I'm programming - which is almost all the time at my job - it never feels like I'm working. I often have to set timers to cap myself for working on a programming problem for too long, else I'll never go to the bathroom! So work is something I love to do and a huge part of my life that I often don't want to cut out.

Further, working with others who are passionate about what they do produces one of the most wonderful pleasures in life, as it blends deep community/social bonds while plugging into life!

Got a link for that? Several publications have been making the news lately showing antidepressants are really no better than placebo in general

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antidepressants-do...