[Serious] Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?

[emjay]

I just couldn't process it all, couldn't find any reliable way to learn it all, nor any easy way to reduce what they were saying to simple arguments... well, in all cases, some philosophers were easier to parse than others but generally, it was just hard to find a consistent/reliable way to parse them all. So yeah, utmost respect for you guys who can seem to soak all this stuff up like a sponge, extracting the arguments in an instant, regardless of source.

Philosophy is fantastically difficult. Anybody who claims he soaks it up like a sponge is lying -- probably to himself.
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Nah, I've never seen anyone actually claim that, I just mean it seems apparent to me that some people are like that. GN for instance, to me, seems to have an almost superhuman ability to reduce any argument to its logical/?syllogistic form, quickly and effortlessly, whereas for me, depending on the author/writing style, that is easier or harder... with some philosophers naturally writing more in that kind of style, or similar structured styles, in the first place, vs more say verbose or poetic language etc. Like roughly speaking the difference between looking at Aristotle and Plato; Aristotle seems very structured in his writing style, clearly defining his terms etc, so that makes it easier to parse for me, whereas something like Plato, being more abstract/metaphorical/nuanced etc is harder to parse from that perspective.

Then there's also the issue, I don't know whether this is valid or not, that it seems philosophers aren't necessarily always even making an argument, that could be reduced to such a logical form, more just making observations and asking questions, which may eventually feed into an argument, but don't necessarily do so in their own right, thus making it even harder to discern what is relevant when trying to reduce a large body of text to a simple logical argument.

You're another example of someone I'd say has an incredible knowledge of philosophy. It just seems apparent from how you write, in the way that you seemingly effortlessly refer to other relevant ideas and philosophers, that you are highly immersed in the subject as a whole... or at least within the particular branches of it that interest you. And it's that immersion, as a lifelong task/lifestyle, even if only to get conversant in one area, like you say, that I think leads to that spongelike quality, but then again that's true of any subject; the more immersed you are, the more you become an expert and/or a connoisseur able to discern the most nuanced details, as well as actually quickly extract those details... like a sponge.