How will learning about philosophy impact real-life?

Answer 1

The foremost benefit to studying philosophy--particularly epistemology, which is the study of knowledge--is that you will be universally less mistaken in your beliefs, because you will learn how to strictly apply formal logic, which is codified, qualitative, critical thinking, whose quantitative counterpart is mathematics. Mastering epistemology will maximize your standards of evidence, make your arguments irrefutable, and prevent smooth talkers from convincing you of whatever may sound appealing due to your own psychological weakness or personal bias.

The second benefit is becoming a more effective communicator, because by dissecting other people's arguments, you become more skilled in understanding how different people express different views, and because you will practice expressing your own. During this process you will naturally learn about linguistics and psychology, as well as the fundamental principles of computer programming, which is why computer science majors are sometimes required or strongly encouraged to take a course in logic, which is instructed by a philosophy professor for philosophy credits.  

Thirdly, you will become more creative, because the pursuit of truth tends to ask more questions than it answers, and demands increasingly sophisticated means of analysis and experimentation. Thereby you will be motivated to invent new ways of testing the value of ideas and suppositions. The epistemological theory of rationalism holds that real knowledge is a priori, meaning that you are born with it and can access it by thinking logically, whereas empiricism holds that knowledge is ascertained by observation. Philosophers combined these competing theories to invent the discipline of science, which both observes phenomena empirically and infers the patterns which underlie those phenomena rationally, so as to link disparate observations together and reliably predict future behavior.

Additionally, you will become more diplomatic as you explore philosophies of politics; more cultured as you explore philosophies of religion; and more considerate of differing value judgements while evaluating theories of ethics, all of which have fatal flaws. Identifying those flaws can assist you in avoiding the dangers of self-righteousness while being more accepting--or at least tolerant--of your opponents. Philosophy is not so much an end in itself as it is a means of analysing and evaluating everything else.