Spent almost all my free time since 2012 on mindless internet browsing

>spent almost all my free time since 2012 on mindless internet browsing
>read many books but still feel like a mindless consumerwhore
>every hobby or enjoyment activity turns in to its own type of work ("I read 2 books a week!", "I run this many miles a day!", "I understood more of that film's references!"
>have easily realised that philisophy consists of pretentiously flailing about within the unfalsifiable, yet everyone else is too stupid to see that and thinks it can give insight - I can't tell whether people are stupid or pretentious

welcome to the abyss

the philosophy that people start with (socrates, descartes, hume) is really unrewarding and can feel quite stupid and pointless, and is more of a necessary historical backdrop or motivation for the good stuff.

Be honest what have you actually read?

Mindless internet browsing is beneficial in that you learn a lot about people online.

fuck you for subordinating philosophy to science, as though the two are not distinct and very different fields/disciplines
if you're so stupid that your judgement of philosophy is that philosophy is stupid (qua judgement is reflective of the subject qua kant), why don't you read a fucking science magazine or something you fucking puny vermin

I felt a similar way at one point, OP.

For example, I was convinced that in order to write anything myself I would have to digest the entirety of the English canon before I even thought about putting pen to paper. It became more about having a mental checklist of what I had and hadn't read than any genuine interest. I had a similar thing with film where I would stay up late at night drinking coffee, watching classics as if I were studying them. I still haven't seen Citizen Kane because I was convinced that I simply wasn't "ready".

You need to put that aside and devote time to what you want to learn, rather than having some kind of imperative that you need to read. For example I'm becoming interested more in conservative and religious thought after realising that I've rarely been exposed to it. That's now pretty much he guiding principle of what I choose to read.

Philosophy is (or should be) about telling us how to live. Try to remember that when you choose your next book.

>Philosophy is (or should be) about telling us how to live.
Stop telling me how to live.

You see, ideology wall is struck immediately afterwards. Then again, I disagree with your statement. I think that philosophy should teach us how the world is and how we are. At least first.

>unfalsifiable

Go back to poppercuck

>have easily realised that philisophy consists of pretentiously flailing about within the unfalsifiable, yet everyone else is too stupid to see that and thinks it can give insight - I can't tell whether people are stupid or pretentious

it seems like you're making an assumption that in order for something to be insightful, you must be able to trace its objectivity through material evidence

I don't think you've thought this through, user

>Philosophy is (or should be) about telling us how to live.

What? The only part of philosophy that explicitely concerns itself with how people should live is normative ethics. All the interesting stuff has jack shit to do with how people should live.

To OP, your problem is that you are treating philosophy as if the answers were the goal. "Flailing about with the unfalsifiable" is the whole fuckin point. Imagine a really beautifully done mathematical proof of something like 2+2=4, the point isn't the result, it's the thought process, the system of thought behind it.

have you actually arrived to the point where you don't find anything interesting anymore? I feel like that with films and literature but since I never really read as much philosophy as I ought to I'm still discovering things that keep me interested in that section.
But otherwise it's pretty dire.

At what point will I get to the "good stuff" - the stuff actually relevant in today's world given our current knowledge? What authors?

Doing only things that you are "interested in" seems dangerous to me. I'm pretty "interested in" playing video games, but I know there are more fulfilling things I could be doing.

Not to mention that what I'm interested in one day seems boring the next. I end up learning a bunch of shit superficially. That doesn't seem like a good way to go about things.

Well I guess if you have little to no self-restraint then it could be a problem. I usually find my interests pretty linear. I set myself a specific reading list and then it just naturally branches off to related areas. I guess you just need to apply a balance between following what interests you and having enough restraint to structure it.

>have easily realised that philisophy consists of pretentiously flailing about within the unfalsifiable, yet everyone else is too stupid to see that and thinks it can give insight - I can't tell whether people are stupid or pretentious
Oh so it's this thread again, you're just better at hiding it.

>socrates is really unrewarding
kys youself

Nope. Mild depression, just like everyone else. Nice blog post though, weakling.

How many times do I have to say this

Being unfalsifiable is only a fault if you are attempting to use the unfalsifiable to predict falsifiable consequences (e.g. thinking prayer will have real world affects or thinking that keeping crystals in your pocket will align your energies). Conversely, using falsifiable methods on unfalsifiable concepts is also a fault (e.g. "I can't see god so I know for a fact he doesn't exist"). As long as the two are kept separate, both are equal and important.

OP here. And how many times do I have to say this: I am not shitting on unfalsifiable masturbatory flailing. But when you have ten trillion pseudo intellectuals telling me that Hegel predicted that dog taking a shit, or that Aristotle predicted Quantum Mechanics, or that you need to worship Plato or else you're dumb, then I will definitely ask: "Out of the infinitely many unfalsifiable systems, why should I care about yours?" And i get abuse.

I am not attacking. I am defending. But even pointing out unfalsifiability threatens the hegemony of the pseudo intellectuals so it's no surprise people accuse me of being a logical positivist.

>have easily realised that philisophy consists of pretentiously flailing about within the unfalsifiable, yet everyone else is too stupid to see that and thinks it can give insight

Do not even fucking try to tell me you meant this in a positive light. Stand behind what you said and either defend it or say that you were wrong. We know what you meant, so have some respect and be honest in your discussions.

I stand by everything. You're imagining I'm saying things.

HAHAHAHA

Forget everything I said, I couldn't be happier that you're distancing yourself from philosophy. People like you just taint the water supply.

>read many books but still feel like a mindless consumerwhore

How do you avoid this?

I recently started working a lot...so I have all this money saved up and now I just think of all these things I want to buy. Not necessarily stupid shit, but books I couldn't find at a used book store even though I have a bunch of unread books on my shelf.

>mindless
It's ironic because the mind is what's causing this behaviour. At least you are aware of it. Instead of asking how to avoid it, ask why you gave these thoughts in the first place. Introspekt, dawg.

*Have these thoughts

read ug, basterd!

> Instead of asking how to avoid it, ask why you gave these thoughts in the first place

Well it mostly boils down to a sense of need or desire. I want to read these books. Does it need to be any deeper than that?

>pretentiously flailing about within the unfalsifiable
Lets take an example, the question "what is justice?" Do you really think that this is an unimportant question? Can you design an experiment to prove what justice is? If neither of these are the case, you are completely incapable of addressing vast areas of the human experience using your present methodology. You seem like the sort of person who read about the Sokal Affair, muttered "haha btfo" and then proceeded never to question any aspect of their life or the world as a whole ever again.

>there are people on Veeky Forums who don't recognize this copypasta
I am disappoint

Read my later posts ITT. Justice is simply an arbitrarily defined concept. Yeah, maybe I'll hear some interesting viewpoints on various topics. But it is always arbitrarily defined. I've posted the below before.

I'll make up a concept right now called concept-1. Imagine I asked you what concept-1's true meaning was. Imagine I asked you what concept-1 said I should do when herding goats in Rwanda and I have a cold. And similarly for a hundred other situations. Imagine I claimed that the investigation to find the true definition of concept-1 would require many more years. You'd think I was stupid. Maybe you'd point out that I just invented the term, so I should just define concept-1. You'd say that the "solutions" to the scenarios would have to be arbitrarily defined.

Now imagine the same thing but instead of concept-1 we look at "morality". Why is the investigation taken any more seriously?

Because we need to run a society somehow and not having any concepts like this at all means that nothing can be considered better than anything else. If you catch a murderer, do you kill him or not? Are you even capable of making this decision?

The statement, "propositions can be assigned meaning if and only if they can be proven by means of experience" cannot be proven by experience, but requires a developed epistemology. Positivism is like the operator of a wrecking ball turning it on his own machine.

Let's not conflate two concepts. There is justice and there is what the law happens to be.

I'm not saying that people should stop doing anything relating to fuzzy concepts. I am humbly begging the pseud masses to stop shoving their shit in my face. Say what you want about Justice. Just stop telling me that 80 pages of Plato trying to figure out whether names are labels or reflect the true nature of things is an incredible work of genius.

Did you know a (small) majority of professional philosophers believe in the existence of a mind-independent morality (aka objective morality)? So it's not some open-and-shut case of "it's all arbitrary/subjective, man!" that layman posters on Veeky Forums would have you believe.

See my earlier post. I'm not positivist or logical positivist. I just point out that the space for unfalsifiable ideas is infinitely large and isn't limited to whatever academia or the pseuds happen to be talking about, so why should people care about what they say. This enrages the pseuds and they call me a positivist.

I've posted the below before. Answer this: Is there an objective set of rules for hide and seek?

Why do people pretend that "objective" morality exists? Why isn't it acknowledged that in a non-universally Christian society without a widespread belief in a god who is external to the universe, the idea of "objectivity" collapses in to a trivial "whatever I define it to be" (a human definition").

Replace "morality" and "objective" with "quiggle" and "bibble" respectively, two terms with arbitrary definitions. Does bibble quiggle exist? This shows how absurd people are in thinking that philosophers can have anything to say. I just provided two arbitrarily defined words that we can argue about for the next 2000 years? So why do philosophers not talk about bibble quiggle or "Does an objective list of rules for Football exist?"? That's easy to answer. (NOTE: THE ANSWER RELATES TO "PRACTICE OF PHILOSPHY", NOT "PHILOSOPHY" I'm not shitting on reasoning itself). The answer is that philosophers are instantly drawn to the important sounding questions in order to gain attention and funding. They flee any field that has been colonised with scientists who use maths at a greater than high school level, even though they truthfully tell us that the scientific method is merely one out of infinitely many methods.

Note: AT ROOT, I simply point out the trivial conclusion that an unfalsifiable system is infinitely large. So I don't even shit on philosophers or the pseudo intellectual hangers on. THEY shit on everyone else because other people didn't bother learning their ONE particular self referential system out of the INFINITE possible number. Don't ask me why I shit on unfalsifiability. I don't. Ask why Philosophers, as Philosophy is currently practised, shit on everything other than themselves.

Try reading Epictetus or Emerson if you find some of the classical material to be pointless.

What's your argument showing morality exists in the same way the rules for hide-and-seek do? Why don't they exist in the same way mathematical truths do, or epistemic truths? Now, if you're a subjectivist about those things as well then I can get behind that consistency.

If the question being addressed interests you, pay attention to it, the same as with any other academic field. Why people separated by time and distance find certain questions worth investigating is a whole matter unto itself.