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Exactly. I forgot which exact essay but Paul Graham has a great point about most controversies in philosophy being an argument over imprecise definitions. Exceptionally intelligent, young would-be philosophers see this and thus choose not to study philosophy, leading to the current situation where we have few incisive professional academic philosophers. If it's worth anything, I feel I learned more about how to live a good life from reading Graham's essays than in three semesters of studying academic philosophy in college.

Aside: paraphrasing another answer, you can remove all of the straws from a bale, and you're left with a bale of zero straws.



I guess 'all the straws' is as many as you can remove. If you removed any more than that, you would have to put some back to return to bale of zero straws.


Wait, but what is a straw: How many atoms are necessary for a straw to be a straw?

It's turtles all the way down!




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