Philosophy is often defended as a practical tool; thinking deeply helps one to map the world, to act on it more efficiently, right?
Wrong.
There is a reason technologists should think more about philosophy than "technology," but few understand it.
As Heidegger explains in An Introduction to Metaphysics, we study philosophy not because it provides "a useful chart by which we may find our way amid the various possible things..." In fact, philosophy makes life harder! It increases problems, risks, and difficulties rather than reducing them.
But by adding challenge, philosophy is a necessary stepping stone to greatness:
"What philosophy essentially can and must be is this: a thinking that breaks the paths and opens the perspectives of the knowledge that sets the norms and hierarchies, of the knowledge in which and by which a people fulfills itself historically and culturally, the knowledge that kindles and necessitates all inquiries and thereby threatens all values...
It is in the very nature of philosophy never to make things easier but only more difficult. And this not merely because its language strikes the everyday understanding as strange if not insane. Rather, it is the authentic function of philosophy to challenge historical being-there... It restores to things... their weight (being). How so? Because the challenge is one of the essential prerequisites for the birth of all greatness, and in speaking of greatness we are referring primarily to the works and destinies of nations. We can speak of historical destiny only where an authentic knowledge of things dominates man's being-there. And it is philosophy that opens up the paths and perspectives of such knowledge..."
Philosophy does not cause greatness; it's not a sufficient condition for greatness, though it is a necessary condition.
Greatness requires an authentic reckoning with the weight of things. This reckoning is not expedient or practical; it is confusing and time-consuming.
However, by traversing the challenge, one gains access to possibilities that remain invisible to those who do not traverse the challenge. When a group of people traverse this challenge together, they become capable of achieving things no other group can even imagine. That includes you, dear reader.
As with almost anything worthwhile unto itself, philosophy is a proof-of-work that machines new values into existence.
We write more about philosophy than "technology" because building transformational technology is about destiny——not practicality.
