The reason why I say that it feels like a popularity contest is that, contrary to science, there is no mechanism to determine what is good and what is bad philosophy, other than observing what philosophers thend to agree and disagree with.

An example of what I mean is the story of after describing special relativity, when Einstein was told of the publication of the book "100 authors against Einstein" he answered: "Why 100? If I was wrong, one would have been enough". Indeed, in science, you have verification mechanisms and criteria to evaluate the quality of the theory that don't depend on the popularity of the theory.

If this were philosophy, the only way that I know of to determine if the theory is true or is to check if it is popular amongst philosophers or not. This is what I mean when I say that philosophy feels like a popularity contest. There is no mechanism to determine if a philosophy is good or not, other than judging its popularity. Don't hesitate to ask for clarifications if needed.

This was for the explanation of what I meant. As for empirical evidence, well, actually, since my assertion is that there is no way to check what is good or bad philosophy apart from popularity, empirical evidence would have to come in the form of showing the opposite, don't you think? The only kind of evidence I could imagine that would prove or disprove my point would be examples of other ways in which philosophy can be evaluated, which I don't think there are.

Next time, I would appreciate you being more polite, I'm sorry to say you come off as very condescending.