Learning Philosophy (was: Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies)

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That is partially what I’m trying to figure out. I want to be a philosopher but I don’t know where to proceed from there.

I’ve always looked at a lot of stuff and thought about it a good bit and wrote down my thoughts on it. Currently I’m just sharing my thoughts on stuff after consuming it.

In relation to the “Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies” I’d like to share a couple things related to the Fraud section.

When it comes to policing big companies I think another issue is that our whole criminal justice system is run poorly. Not just that its corrupt.

I used to watch a lot of Last Week Tonight. Whenever John Oliver would talk about a lot of issues he’d always talk about how their were already laws on the books to address them. I think thats an important thing to consider. For a lot of bad stuff done by big companies their are already laws on the books to address them roughly. Its just our court system is bad. You can find information about how our court systems alone are overburdened. From Last Week Tonights public defender video, a bit before the two minute mark, public defenders in Fresno county handle 1000 felonies a year when they technically shouldn’t handle more than 150 a year. You can find lots of cases of people taking plea deals because they are more efficient. We’ve normalized trials to be extremely large arduous expenses instead of finding ways to make it more feasible (assuming that trials are even the correct solution).

Tying it back into Fraud: I think a lot of it simply doesn’t get addressed because we don’t have the manpower for it.

The second thing I’d like to share in relation to this is that I don’t think Fraud is considered an important issue to address for a lot of people. I remember commenting on an above reply about how redditors on r/antiwork weren’t talking about fraud.

The point being that what you care about matters. By this I mean that our criminal justice system does accomplish stuff (albeit poorly) when it cares about it. This is especially true in relation to drugs. Our whole justice system makes it a large priority when it comes to drug distribution and use.

Now this is where I’ll share something more anecdotal. I’ve heard of stories where people have gotten stolen from and the police show indifference. Ludwig, a twitch streamer, got his car stolen a year back and while the policy did eventually help I wonder if they would have helped him sooner and more efficiently if it was a drug related crime. What we care about matters. Though, should it?

The final thing I wanted to share here which is in alignment with the essay is that currently we have a lot of laws, a lot of bad laws. From Harvey Silverglate (an attorney), “But groups within civil society, not waiting for the federal bench, have launched an avowedly nonpartisan effort to rein in this species of prosecutorial abuse. In May 2010 an “odd couple” alliance of the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) published “Without Intent,” a coauthored report detailing a major shortcoming of Congress’s drafting of criminal laws.34 The report found that of the 446 nonviolent, nondrug-related criminal laws presented in the 109th Congress, more than half lacked a requirement that a defendant act with criminal intent. Whether by design or by mere consequence, Congress has been making it easier for average citizens who did not intend to break the law to be convicted in federal criminal courts.” - Silverglate, Harvey A. ; Silverglate, Harvey. Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent . Encounter Books. Kindle Edition. That’s just a small sliver of how many laws we have on the books for things I don’t think that matter that much. That’s another problem.

Our courts are overburdened, have bad priorities, and even if they didn’t have bad priorities they have so many laws on the books (most of which shouldn’t be laws) that they have to give importance to that they can’t reasonably be expected to focus on actual things that harm people.

*Sorry if its a bit messy and not well backed up. I’m just trying to share more and these are thoughts I’ve had for a while. I’ll probably make a post at some point with some better structuring.

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Why?

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I think its important and I enjoy it. I’ve read most of Ayn Rands non-fiction including a lot of the articles she wrote. I’ve also read most of her fiction save for We The Living. I’ve listened to a lot of her fiction multiple times through audiobooks. I agree with her that philosophy is important and a lot of bad things in the world are due to bad philosophy. I want to improve my life and I think philosophy is important to that.

Also since childhood I’ve always had a habit of thinking about lots of stuff and connecting ideas from class. I’m fairly good at tying in ideas to reality. I think that may have come out of necessity because my parents had me in scenarios where I would just be forced to think and be alone. For a good period in my childhood I’d be alone at my parents job with nothing to do for hours (they didn’t want to leave me home alone). From ~10th grade, I forgot where I got the idea from, I started noting down a lot of stuff I was thinking and reading about. When I started reading Rand I would start and stop a lot thinking about a lot of the stuff she wrote in Atlas Shrugged and note down any connections I made with reality. Such as noting how similar my friends at the time and teachers were to some Atlas Shrugged characters.

At some point I found curi and over a long period of time came to like a lot of the stuff written. It was because of the stuff written there that I finally decided to actually discuss especially cause I have a bad habit of starting to talk about philosophy and stuff with people who clearly didn’t have interest in what I was trying to talk about.

Overall I like and enjoy philosophy and I also like a broad swath of things. Philosophy covers everything and seemed to fit in my enjoyment in a broad amount of topics.

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Did you brainstorm a list of ways of proceeding?

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I did a while back because I saw a curi post about brainstorming. I’m going to try and look for it. I’ll also go ahead and do another one and share it within the next few days.

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I did this on and off for about an hour. Didn’t find my old one. Just copy and pasted it exactly from my notes app.
What are some ways I can proceed in becoming a philosopher?

  • Read philosophy
  • Write about philosophy
  • Explain philosophy
  • Connect philosophy topics to real world situations
  • Read philosophy and post about it on CF
  • Debate
  • Create short explainer vids on certain topics. Trying to more so teach stuff as so I can check if I really know it.
  • Read about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics and read/study fields that you can see the philosophical impact on. Similar to how quantum theory is kind of bad (forgot how) or reading certain novels such as Anna Karenina
  • Some more concrete ideas
    • Work on something off of curi’s philosophy outline such as general education stuff in economics for a few hours of week.
      • I remember Reisman having some sort of course to follow his book?
      • So I would work on that textbook scheduled off for sometime in the week.
      • Share any understandings I have in order to see if I understand it. Share any misunderstandings I have in order to understand stuff better.
    • Read philosophical material from CF, Ayn Rand, Karl Popper and share any understandings and misunderstandings here.
  • I just realized, what exactly is a philosopher?
    • A philosopher is someone who studies and applies philosophy as their primary. Everyone needs philosophy. A philosopher just makes it their primary concern. So being a philosopher I would study topics related to philosophy such as metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. I would write about these topics, their relation to each other, new ideas in each topic, and application of these topics to the reality.
  • Read/watch some history of philosophy related materials and make sure I understand them.
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So is your problem solved or are you unsatisfied with all of those?

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I’m satisfied with those. When it comes to wanting to do philosophy and what not my issue is more related to general life management skills and less to do with proceeding. I did the brainstorming then to share, but now that I think about I’ve done similar activities in the past with results i’ve been satisfied with. I’m just really bad at managing my life currently that I end up failing to actually do the stuff.

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Did you brainstorm some ways to work on managing your life better?

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Kind of?

My main concern right now is finding stuff I want to do. I’m very in need of set routines for me to manage my life better. The time periods in my life where I’ve actually done an ok job at getting stuff done and having things go well were times where I enjoyed getting up. As long as I get up out of bed when I’m supposed to and follow my standard morning routine my days go pretty well. Its making sure that I do that which is what I’ve been working on. I read the article you wrote on To-Do lists and coercion and I think I would coerce myself to do stuff I didn’t want to. Leading me to try and just sleep in bed and just go to work. Its part of the reason I started to try posting here more. I’m enjoying it. I also started studying Japanese again and thats been a huge help for me to get out of bed. Today I was able to get out of bed to do stuff I wanted. The only issue that comes with stuff like this is I end up doing other things that will mess me up. Like having a really good day and then proceeding to end it by reading a book series I enjoy. I end up binging it, missing a reasonable time to sleep, which then leads to getting up very tired (which I can’t really do much when I’m tired) or leads to me sleeping in (which also messes with me mentally) and messes up my schedule. Outside of just trying to being more disciplined when things are going ok in my life I can’t think of much else when it comes to stuff like that.

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Have you tried self-help books?

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I have in the past around high school and I think they were helpful for a while then I’d mess everything up. I think nowadays I could probably use them more effectively. So thanks for the reminder of them. Any in particular you would recommend? Otherwise I’ll probably go read the ones I liked one more time.