Philosophy

 Like most thinking people I have an interest in philosophy, but a nagging doubt that it is all the emperor's new clothes. However, philosophers are clearly very intelligent and usually well meaning, so it seems wrong to condemn them without reading their books. Knowing this, they make their books as long as possible. So I was very pleased to discover this site: Squashed Philosophers

Squashed Philosophers takes the classics of philosophy and shortens them, thus doing the world an incalculable favour. Of course, I still cannot dismiss philosophy completely, as it is possible that the real truths can only be appreciated after reading everything, which is impossible in practice. Which just goes to show how clever the philosophers are.

For the record, I do not agree with all those people who say the universe is impossibly complicated. I base this conclusion on the definition of impossibly complicated, but that is another topic. My own site is full of errors, but I don't think the errors are insurmountable and I think I will have them solved when I next revise the site in a couple of years.

I should also say that there is ONE philosopher I admire: Pythagoras. It tickles me that he saw the ultimate answer right at the beginning (that the universe is made of maths). It left all other philosophers with nothing to do except try to make their profession sound more complicated than it is. They do this either by hiring professional wrestlers to intimidate people (e.g. Plato, famously named after his mountainous shoulders), or by being as ambiguous as possible (e.g. Wittgenstein).

I will close with what I consider the greatest ever treatise on the subject of philosophy, from HHGG: the philosophers discuss the creation of the computer Deep Thought:

"Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"