From that article:

>Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley. I have a nice edition of his collected works. Will I ever read it? Seems unlikely.

This is like buying a book about React, putting it on your shelf, not reading it, and then complaining that React is too difficult.

In my opinion, the lack of equations makes philosophy harder, because it's easier to delude yourself. You can read a chapter, parse all the individual words, completely miss the point, and say to yourself, "I read it, it was pointless".

The only productive way to approach philosophy is as a paper-writer. Don't just glaze your eyes over Berkeley, rather, read Berkeley with the determination to go and write an original research paper in response. Now, that paper might very well have a title like "Berkeley's Blunders", but you have to be able to articulate it.

Paul Graham's blog is still full of pearls, thanks a lot for sharing. One thing that I think is missing in his essay is the fact that Wittgenstein in the end also realized that philosophy is incredibly effective as meditation, I still find that thinking about things is relaxing and cathartic.

He seems to have kept writing philosophy, his essays are in line with his proposal for philosophy :

> The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward.