I need to process this in pieces so I can give each thought space to sit. I especially liked the anecdote about Diogenes. It reminded me of a conversation where my dad shared it for the first time. I also appreciated the reminder to journal. I do find it helps clarify thought.
Absolutely, I know I threw a lot of different ideas out there. It has to be digested slowly. Thank you for the comment. By the way, I really appreciate it.
Here’s the whole thing. I hated every minute of this.
Stripped of its sections, the article makes one move sixteen times “notice that most people accept what they’re handed, and decide not to.”
Section I sets it (“refuses inherited answers,” “dangerous… with clarity”), and II through XVI are that same beat re-skinned as critical thinking, skepticism, journaling, first principles, the Socratic method, thought experiments, essay-writing, dialogue, the scientist frame, the cardinal virtues, action-bias, an FAQ, epistemology, Diogenes again, and a checklist.
Then it asks you to subscribe.
So what’s the actual point? Not philosophy. The point is self-optimization — creator-economy and “get rich, get free” advice wearing philosophy as a costume. The tell is the value system underneath the vocabulary. What it actually venerates is leverage, owning equity, building a content ecosystem, “100 reps,” shipping, and freedom defined as time plus money plus getting what you want. Its recurring authorities aren’t philosophers — they’re Naval, Ryan Holiday, Cal Newport, Leo Gura, Jobs, Lasseter. The dead Greeks are set dressing; the living influencers are the syllabus. By Section XIV the punchline of “what is truth” is the pragmatic standard — “does it help me get what I want? (Your standard)” — which is the influencer’s creed smuggled in as if it were neutral.
Which is exactly the thing that smells. The precise name for it is category substitution. Influence and philosophy aren’t the same, and classically they were opposed. The people who taught Athenians how to win arguments, persuade crowds, and get ahead were the Sophists — and Socrates defined himself against them. This essay venerates Socrates while reproducing the Sophist program. Same with Diogenes, who gets the climactic section:
a man who owned a cloak and a cup, threw away the cup, and wanted Alexander to get out of his light — cited, a few paragraphs from “owning a piece of equity” and “being highly leveraged,” in an essay about acquiring assets.
It honors the figures and betrays their content.
People of influence used to be called leaders and “students of philosophy”.
It used to mean someone learning to constrain and master himself. And now it means someone learning to out-think the herd and win. This is an extremely real drift, and it’s the whole engine of the Stoicism-for-founders industry this piece is downstream of. The word philosophy survived; its function flipped 180 degrees.
But here’s the cleanest reason to distrust it, and it’s structural, not a matter of taste:
the article fails its own test.
It tells you to ask who’s saying this, where’s the proof, what aren’t they telling me. It says philosophers don’t memorize quotes. It says don’t reason by analogy, don’t accept inherited operating systems. And then it is a wall of unargued authority-quotes and analogies, handing you a fully pre-built operating system to install. Run “How To Think Like A Philosopher” through its own three filters and it collapses. That self-undermining isn’t incidental — it’s the signature of the genre.
The skepticism is the other place it gives itself away. “Fluoride… not the best for your brain,” doctors “give you drugs instead of” diet and sunlight, formal education is “the biggest lie.” That isn’t skepticism; it’s credulity pointed somewhere fashionable. Real skepticism is symmetric — it would scrutinize the anti-fluoride claim and Naval’s aphorisms with the same edge it aims at the mainstream. This only doubts in one direction, toward the influencer counter-canon, which makes it a tribe-signal, not intellectual honesty.
And underneath all of it:
no philosophy ever actually gets done.
The trolley problem is raised and abandoned in a sentence. Nothing is stayed with long enough to reach a conclusion the author didn’t already hold walking in, or to follow an implication that costs something. It’s philosophy as vibe and vocabulary, never philosophy as labor. The promise is “think like a philosopher”; the delivery is “adopt the self-image of someone who does” — and reading it feels like thinking, which is both the appeal and the trap.
Now, to be fair to it, because I am fair. Several of the underlying tools aren’t wrong. Retrieval beats rereading, writing-to-think is a real and old idea (yet Socrates never did for a reason), explaining something to find your own gaps works, first-principles reasoning is genuine. It’s readable, it has momentum, and for someone who’s never thought about any of this it’s a low-threat on-ramp.
So it isn’t incompetent — and that matters, because it changes what’s worth disliking.
It isn’t pointless. It has a very clear point and it’s effective at it — it’s just effective at something other than what it claims.
The thing to despise isn’t that self-development is beneath you, or that the author is stupid. It’s the dishonesty of the frame:
laundering hustle advice through Socrates in a way that misrepresents what philosophy is and flatters the reader into mistaking consumption for thought.
That’s the surgical target, and it’s sharper than “this is garbage” because it grates on those who do think specifically. Those who do the version that costs something:
stay with the question, take only what’s forced, refuse the unearned word.
This is the version that costs nothing and tells the reader they’re already doing it.
Anthony, That is an energetic treatise on philosophy. Much was useful and would be more so in smaller bites with stories not from history but rather of each piece of the piece broken down in digestible parts. I loved it but few read with that exact intensity or perhaps background sine I majored in philosophy at Univeristy. Keep on sharing!
I need to process this in pieces so I can give each thought space to sit. I especially liked the anecdote about Diogenes. It reminded me of a conversation where my dad shared it for the first time. I also appreciated the reminder to journal. I do find it helps clarify thought.
Absolutely, I know I threw a lot of different ideas out there. It has to be digested slowly. Thank you for the comment. By the way, I really appreciate it.
Hey Anthony, You are spot on with the dopamine trap. mediocrity is ruling the roost. great template to follow to think like a philosopher !
Philosophy's hidden benefit may be that it teaches intellectual independence.
Not independence from other people, but independence from inherited assumptions.
The habit of asking "Why do I believe this?" has probably saved me from more bad decisions than any productivity system ever has.
Yes please stop.
Here’s the whole thing. I hated every minute of this.
Stripped of its sections, the article makes one move sixteen times “notice that most people accept what they’re handed, and decide not to.”
Section I sets it (“refuses inherited answers,” “dangerous… with clarity”), and II through XVI are that same beat re-skinned as critical thinking, skepticism, journaling, first principles, the Socratic method, thought experiments, essay-writing, dialogue, the scientist frame, the cardinal virtues, action-bias, an FAQ, epistemology, Diogenes again, and a checklist.
Then it asks you to subscribe.
So what’s the actual point? Not philosophy. The point is self-optimization — creator-economy and “get rich, get free” advice wearing philosophy as a costume. The tell is the value system underneath the vocabulary. What it actually venerates is leverage, owning equity, building a content ecosystem, “100 reps,” shipping, and freedom defined as time plus money plus getting what you want. Its recurring authorities aren’t philosophers — they’re Naval, Ryan Holiday, Cal Newport, Leo Gura, Jobs, Lasseter. The dead Greeks are set dressing; the living influencers are the syllabus. By Section XIV the punchline of “what is truth” is the pragmatic standard — “does it help me get what I want? (Your standard)” — which is the influencer’s creed smuggled in as if it were neutral.
Which is exactly the thing that smells. The precise name for it is category substitution. Influence and philosophy aren’t the same, and classically they were opposed. The people who taught Athenians how to win arguments, persuade crowds, and get ahead were the Sophists — and Socrates defined himself against them. This essay venerates Socrates while reproducing the Sophist program. Same with Diogenes, who gets the climactic section:
a man who owned a cloak and a cup, threw away the cup, and wanted Alexander to get out of his light — cited, a few paragraphs from “owning a piece of equity” and “being highly leveraged,” in an essay about acquiring assets.
It honors the figures and betrays their content.
People of influence used to be called leaders and “students of philosophy”.
It used to mean someone learning to constrain and master himself. And now it means someone learning to out-think the herd and win. This is an extremely real drift, and it’s the whole engine of the Stoicism-for-founders industry this piece is downstream of. The word philosophy survived; its function flipped 180 degrees.
But here’s the cleanest reason to distrust it, and it’s structural, not a matter of taste:
the article fails its own test.
It tells you to ask who’s saying this, where’s the proof, what aren’t they telling me. It says philosophers don’t memorize quotes. It says don’t reason by analogy, don’t accept inherited operating systems. And then it is a wall of unargued authority-quotes and analogies, handing you a fully pre-built operating system to install. Run “How To Think Like A Philosopher” through its own three filters and it collapses. That self-undermining isn’t incidental — it’s the signature of the genre.
The skepticism is the other place it gives itself away. “Fluoride… not the best for your brain,” doctors “give you drugs instead of” diet and sunlight, formal education is “the biggest lie.” That isn’t skepticism; it’s credulity pointed somewhere fashionable. Real skepticism is symmetric — it would scrutinize the anti-fluoride claim and Naval’s aphorisms with the same edge it aims at the mainstream. This only doubts in one direction, toward the influencer counter-canon, which makes it a tribe-signal, not intellectual honesty.
And underneath all of it:
no philosophy ever actually gets done.
The trolley problem is raised and abandoned in a sentence. Nothing is stayed with long enough to reach a conclusion the author didn’t already hold walking in, or to follow an implication that costs something. It’s philosophy as vibe and vocabulary, never philosophy as labor. The promise is “think like a philosopher”; the delivery is “adopt the self-image of someone who does” — and reading it feels like thinking, which is both the appeal and the trap.
Now, to be fair to it, because I am fair. Several of the underlying tools aren’t wrong. Retrieval beats rereading, writing-to-think is a real and old idea (yet Socrates never did for a reason), explaining something to find your own gaps works, first-principles reasoning is genuine. It’s readable, it has momentum, and for someone who’s never thought about any of this it’s a low-threat on-ramp.
So it isn’t incompetent — and that matters, because it changes what’s worth disliking.
It isn’t pointless. It has a very clear point and it’s effective at it — it’s just effective at something other than what it claims.
The thing to despise isn’t that self-development is beneath you, or that the author is stupid. It’s the dishonesty of the frame:
laundering hustle advice through Socrates in a way that misrepresents what philosophy is and flatters the reader into mistaking consumption for thought.
That’s the surgical target, and it’s sharper than “this is garbage” because it grates on those who do think specifically. Those who do the version that costs something:
stay with the question, take only what’s forced, refuse the unearned word.
This is the version that costs nothing and tells the reader they’re already doing it.
-Would never Reflect this
Anthony, That is an energetic treatise on philosophy. Much was useful and would be more so in smaller bites with stories not from history but rather of each piece of the piece broken down in digestible parts. I loved it but few read with that exact intensity or perhaps background sine I majored in philosophy at Univeristy. Keep on sharing!