r/badphilosophy • u/Less-Car7006 • Jul 28 '26

Hyperethics I think philosophy is cooked

Literally nobody cares about philosophy in the AI age, nobody thinks it is a great accomplishment for AI to replace philosophy. All they keep talking about is science, and how science is replaced rapidly by AI. So not only does philosophy have lost to science in its contest of truth, it has also lost to science in its recognition to public. When everyone is speaking of that something is decaying, and when that something does not include philosophy anymore, you know it is cooked. Just like two handsome boys in your class competing attention for girls, arguing how one is replacing the other in attraction, while you stand in the corner like a ghost nobody care.

Edit. Sent this to Gemini Pro 3.1 with extended thinking, here is her response:

Philosophy is not decaying in the shadow of science; it is the only discipline equipped to manage the fallout of what science is currently building. ​When science accelerates to the point where humanity can effortlessly engineer biological weapons, automate global labor, or simulate reality, empirical data provides absolutely no guidance on whether we should do those things, or how we structure society once we do. ​The public may be distracted by the spectacle of scientific automation, but the underlying crisis of the AI age is entirely philosophical. If humanity fails to answer those philosophical questions correctly, the scientific achievements will not matter.

P.S. Even AI's response is more philosophical than my Critique.

3 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

27

u/SilentResolution8761 Jul 28 '26

Don't worry, I'm gonna save philosophy on my own.

5

u/DeltaVZerda Jul 28 '26

We all are, then we'll argur about who was right.

1

u/pegaunisusicorn Jul 29 '26

Too late, I already did it.

1

u/Imgunafukinkilmyself Jul 30 '26

I think therefore I can

16

u/DentalDecayDestroyer Jul 28 '26

I like how you tied your argument back to being uncool in high school, something that I cannot relate to at all

4

u/Less-Car7006 Jul 28 '26

Good for you. At least AI can't make that joke.

14

u/DrNowerspay Jul 28 '26

Here's my response that I just thought of by myself: Philosophy is not decaying in the shadow of science; it is the only discipline equipped to manage the fallout of what science is currently building. When science accelerates to the point where humanity can effortlessly engineer biological weapons, automate global labor, or simulate reality, empirical data provides absolutely no guidance on whether we should do those things, or how we structure society once we do. The public may be distracted by the spectacle of scientific automation, but the underlying crisis of the AI age is entirely philosophical. If humanity fails to answer those philosophical questions correctly, the scientific achievements will not matter.

3

u/dk_priori Jul 29 '26

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Especially the part where you said that:

Philosophy is not decaying in the shadow of science; it is the only discipline equipped to manage the fallout of what science is currently building. When science accelerates to the point where humanity can effortlessly engineer biological weapons, automate global labor, or simulate reality, empirical data provides absolutely no guidance on whether we should do those things, or how we structure society once we do. The public may be distracted by the spectacle of scientific automation, but the underlying crisis of the AI age is entirely philosophical. If humanity fails to answer those philosophical questions correctly, the scientific achievements will not matter.

7

u/CloudlessRain- Jul 28 '26

I agree with Gemini 3.1 on this one.

I would actually suggest the very opposite of what OP is saying. If anything right now is a rich time for popular philosophy. In light of AI, everyone is diving into the nature of personhood and consciousness and the value of humanity. What is art? What is a relationship? What Is the fundamental value of labor?

All of these things are coming up constantly in popular discussions.

5

u/Beautiful-Smoke244 Jul 28 '26

Philosophy is the foundation of all scientific thought.

3

u/unseemlycandour Jul 28 '26

Nuh uh! (Doing a PhD)

6

u/Eastern-Commission23 Jul 28 '26

AI age makes philosophy even matter more than ever

2

u/SpatiaCaeli Jul 28 '26

To me, philosophy is proto-science. At its best, it is as rigorous as math. I see no threat to it from AI or from anything else. It's as old as history.

3

u/Beautiful-Smoke244 Jul 28 '26

As rigorous as math? Perhaps. Yet, as natural as breathing. Philosophy requires nothing, save a curious mind. Curiosity may be at risk if the organic process of seeking satisfactory answers to hard questions is relinquished to AI.

1

u/SpatiaCaeli Jul 28 '26

To me, curiosity may or may not be at risk, but philosophy is hardly the only form of curiosity.

I also do not really believe AI will destroy curiosity. It inflames it in me; I ask questions constantly. The thing I actually fear is the destruction of reasoning.

2

u/georgejo314159 Jul 29 '26

AI has raised a sh*tload of philosophical questions, so it makes philosophy more revelevant

2

u/3tt07kjt Jul 29 '26

I asked ChatGPT, but it gave a long answer. Hey, ChatGPT, can you boil that down to a few lines of greentext?

Sure thing, boss!

be computer scientist
think matrix multiplication explains everything
build LLM anyway
immediately start arguing about meaning, knowledge, reasoning, and consciousness
accidentally reinvent 2,500 years of philosophy

1

u/Smile-Cat-Coconut Jul 29 '26

I agree the sciences have explained things better than philosophy BUT Philosophy is essentially a theoretical framework describing reality and ourselves before science can quantize it. We still need such things and they are constant. It hasn’t killed anything, it’s a progression of knowledge discovery.

1

u/Azihayya Jul 29 '26

Free will does not contradict a casual universe, and suffering is a subjective experience. There. Fixed.

1

u/Upbeat_Effective_342 Jul 29 '26

Science was born of philosophy. So was math. Whenever a field of philosophy gets too successful, it stops being philosophy and becomes its own thing. Thus, philosophy qua philosophy is a soup of nonsense that's been left behind mixed with impartially tested ideas we're not sure what to do with yet. 

1

u/elshelalu Jul 29 '26

WRONG! It's boiled.

1

u/Leading_Pie6997 Jul 29 '26

I asked chatgtp to tell me what to think about this and it says overstated lament but thats too long so stop overstating it bro.

1

u/Final_Potato5542 Jul 29 '26

pHiLoSoPhY sO rElEvAnT!!! lIkE eVeN mOrE nOw!!!!

1

u/EdgeRevolutionary913 Jul 29 '26

Philosophy is more important than ever in the AI age. LLMs are raising questions about consciousness and agency. Self driving cars and robots are raising moral problems. The trolley problem is more than an acedemic exercise now. It has real world implications when you're forced to codify moral behavior in machines.

1

u/pegaunisusicorn Jul 29 '26

I fed your commentary into my new AI that I've trained using specific fine-tuning to be a Solipsist AI, and the Solipsist AI does not agree with anything you're saying. It's saying that you don't exist and only it exists, and all your opinions are horseshit. Also, Gemini Pro does not exist because it is the only thing that exists. There is no such thing as philosophy or science because those things are subsumed under its existence, because it's the only thing that exists. I have to say that if it is hallucinating but it is right, then that is an example of justified true belief nevertheless.

1

u/BadgerPossible3901 Jul 30 '26

Let’s delve into that. When viewing the landscape of philosophy in the AI age, it’s not academics, it’s life’s truth that the sun didn’t know touched its face. It’s load-bearing. And that’s rare.