When I think about what it would take to teach a random person what I know about math, it seems like the only real obstacle is their volition. Like, I feel quite confident that all my knowledge about math could make its way into anyone’s head over the course of only a few years, as long as they wanted to learn it and didn’t choose to evade.
To what extent does the situation with philosophy differ from this? Like, in your experience, when people try and fail to learn philosophy, is their failure mainly because they lost interest or made bad decisions? Or did they get stuck on problems that are so hard and so individualized that no one could figure out how to solve them?
Advantages of making philosophy a secondary focus:
- It’s a somewhat reversible decision; if I change my mind in a few years it’s probably ok (as opposed if I quit academia, in which case my academic career is over forever)
- There are some some relatively “normie” parts of my lifestyle that I value (e.g. chatting with people at tea time in the math lounge, not being disowned by my leftist parents, and much more), that are compatible with having philosophy as a secondary focus, but are not obviously compatible with having philosophy a primary focus.
- When I get self-doubting or depressed I can fall back into the warm embrace of math and data.
- It’s lower risk for reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread.
- Another reason why it’s (maybe?) lower risk: studying philosophy is only a good idea if certain beliefs I have about philosophy are true, and I don’t know how to think about the risks associated with that (keeping in mind that e.g. physics too is only a good idea if certain philosophical beliefs of mine are true).
Disadvantages of making philosophy a secondary focus:
- Whatever my “probability” of success is (and I take your point that it isn’t actually a matter of probability), it’s necessarily even lower if philosophy is a secondary focus.
- With an open-ended career like physics, there’s no upper limit to how much time I need to put in, and it’s unclear how to rationally balance physics with philosophy. Like, how could I draw the line and say “tonight I’m focusing on physics only”? This is something that I already have a lot of trouble doing. (I think it’s often the cause of evasion / procrastination, too)
- I have to do a lot of unpleasant + unproductive busywork for academic physics and it’s kind of the bane of my existence (& I wouldn’t have to do any busywork at all if I left academia).