Quit Your Technology Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities

As a student of philosophy, and as someone who has chosen to dedicate his life to the pursuit and sharing of wisdom, you might call me biased, but I really believe that the world would be a better place (intellectually, morally, politically, culturally, scientifically, aesthetically, etc.) if we had more philosophy in our lives.

And I'm not alone in this position. If you remember Damon Horowitz (from one of the best TEDTalks of all time), he's the philosopher-in-residence at Google, doing some groundbreaking work with them in a way that most technologists wouldn't be able to. And he manages to do this, he claims, because the humanities have taught him profound valuable lessons about cognition, language, humanity, meaning, and all the aspects relevant to the human condition that go far beyond what mainstream courses in computer programming and artificial intelligence could ever possibly imagine.

So, in the following presentation delivered at Stanford University, Horowitz makes a very compelling case for the importance of pursuing a higher level of education in the humanities

And if you're a little more practically-minded, there's still every reason to pursue a higher education degree in philosophy, even if you end up doing something else. Philosophy will give you the kind of training that will make you stand out from the crowd and create something great and valuable.