Sometimes I like to pretend I’m six months shy of having a bachelor’s in philosophy, and when I read Slashdot posters grappling with enormously complex ethical issues, it’s generally one of those times. Not that I’m somehow more qualified than most Slashdot posters to grapple with enormously complex ethical issues - quite the contrary, I’d bet - but I’m probably more qualified to get pissed off while watching from the sidelines.

I mentioned that Slashdot thread not because I want to lay out the One True Way with regard to rules for teenage internet access. Rather, it’s indicative of one of the biggest noticeable side effects of a four-year philosophy education: I get pissed off a lot. It drives me absolutely batty when other people casually commit themselves to half a dozen ontological positions as if they were necessary truths, or when they smugly beg the question and expect a pat on the head, or when they confuse metaphysical issues with epistemological ones and don’t understand the patiently-explained distinction. In other words, when anyone says almost anything at all. Of course normal people don’t think about this stuff - if they did, we would all have been eaten by tigers long before Kant came along.

So when you think about it, getting a degree in philosophy is actually counter-evolutionary: I have become dramatically less fit for survival as a human than I was when I entered as a freshman, and I only went slightly into debt to do so. Three cheers for higher education!