'Why Liberal Arts and the Humanities Are as Important as Engineering' (wadhwa.com) 574
Engineering professor Vivek Wadha writes: A technological shift is in progress that will change the rules of innovation. A broad range of technologies, such as computing, artificial intelligence, digital medicine, robotics and synthetic biology, are advancing exponentially and converging, making amazing things possible. With the convergence of medicine, artificial intelligence and sensors, we can create digital doctors that monitor our health and help us prevent disease; with the advances in genomics and gene editing, we have the ability to create plants that are drought resistant and that feed the planet; with robots powered by artificial intelligence, we can build digital companions for the elderly. Nanomaterial advances are enabling a new generation of solar and storage technologies that will make energy affordable and available to all.
Creating solutions such as these requires a knowledge of fields such as biology, education, health sciences and human behavior. Tackling today's biggest social and technological challenges requires the ability to think critically about their human context, which is something that humanities graduates happen to be best trained to do. An engineering degree is very valuable, but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature and psychology provides a big advantage in design. A history major who has studied the Enlightenment or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire gains an insight into the human elements of technology and the importance of its usability. A psychologist is more likely to know how to motivate people and to understand what users want than is an engineer who has only worked in the technology trenches. A musician or artist is king in a world in which you can 3D-print anything that you can imagine.
Creating solutions such as these requires a knowledge of fields such as biology, education, health sciences and human behavior. Tackling today's biggest social and technological challenges requires the ability to think critically about their human context, which is something that humanities graduates happen to be best trained to do. An engineering degree is very valuable, but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature and psychology provides a big advantage in design. A history major who has studied the Enlightenment or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire gains an insight into the human elements of technology and the importance of its usability. A psychologist is more likely to know how to motivate people and to understand what users want than is an engineer who has only worked in the technology trenches. A musician or artist is king in a world in which you can 3D-print anything that you can imagine.
Critical thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
The article, presumably written by a liberal arts major, extols the importance of "critical thinking", yet is just a string of conjectures based on no evidence, displaying a clear lack of critical thinking.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's not fashionable to RTFA, but to skip the very first word of the summary? That's going for a new low.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Funny)
It's ShanghaiBill's quality critical thinking that gets him through the day.
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Even his history major example, sure, so they can tell us from the enlightenment why usability is good (apparently, I'm curious what the relevance is myself, last I checked they didn't have touch screen tablets, keyboards, console controllers, and mice back then, but let's go with it) but that doesn't change the fact that they're still useless at actually building a good UI, they're just telling us what we already know.
Without getting too tied up on this one example, it is often important for us to look back at why we already know what we know. And often times this common wisdom is wrong without a stronger knowledge of the past.
For instance many people believe technological advances will create as many (if not more) jobs as they will displace, so people will be better off. This comes from an incomplete understanding of the past. It comes from not knowing that massive technological advancements have often displaced large g
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Funny)
The article, presumably written by a liberal arts major
I realize it’s a rather long summary; but the first two words of the lede state quite clearly that the dude is an engineering professor.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
And he's not wrong, though the examples don't really work for me. Why do I think liberal arts are important for CS majors? Because software has to be used by people who don't write software. Musicians need software for creating music. Artists need software for creating art. Writers need software for writing. Programmers who also understand those secondary fields are likely to be better at creating such software than programmers who don't.
And the same is true for other, non-liberal-arts fields; pretty much every science field has some sort of software for collecting data, visualizing data, simulating complex interactions like protein folding, etc. (And arguably, data visualization is an art unto itself, upon which all sciences depend to some degree.)
I think every computer programmer should have at least a minor in a non-tech field, if not a second major, whether in a liberal arts field or a science or something else entirely, if only because of the opportunities for specialization that such outside interests offer. Also, if computers get to the point where software writes itself, at least they'll have something to fall back on. :-D
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Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I'm such an nerd I visited classes from other departments in my free time and also watched lectures online. I happen to know that those from the humanities learn about the scientific method. How to collect data and how important it is to disprove the null hypothesis if you process your statistical data. They learn to be aware of biases that THEY as the observer and processor of the data can bring into it and so forth.
They learn about it, but not enough. Have you seen things that pass for "scientific research" in most social sciences these days?
People who use statistics in social sciences (including those that completely depend on it for their work) tend to learn about statistics and math in a very shallow way. There are exceptions of course, but most of these people were not very good at math in school and/or do not like math very much. So they learn things very superficially, here's a stats software package (e.g. SPSS), we do this test in this situation, that test in that situation, enter your data, click click, what's the p-value? Make a conclusion. A lot of the conclusions are just plain garbage. Reproducibility? Errr, right...
Then there is the completely unrelated issue that a lot of "humanities" today is just plain lightly dressed-up political activism (e.g. gender studies). Then this activism spreads to other fields which should be about objective (as much as possible) study, such as history and classics. That's a whole other topic.
Finally, there is the problem that a lot of liberal arts & humanities have closed onto themselves, and became arcane self-referential disciplines without a real or obvious connection to the outside world. Sure, the same happens in some fields of natural sciences, but people generally have an easier idea of how natural science and engineering affect the "real world". When it comes to post-modern literary criticism - not so much.
The bad wrap the liberal arts & humanities get is mostly the liberal arts' & humanities' fault. It's not they are not relevant, it's that over the past few decades they themselves have made their own fields look less relevant to the rest of society.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
They learn about it, but not enough. Have you seen things that pass for "scientific research" in most social sciences these days?>
Too true. Even when journals in "social disciplines" do publish articles with statistical analysis of their data, they accept levels of significance so low they would be laughed at in any "hard science" publiction. The null hypothesis is far from excluded, and the expectation is that a substantial fraction of the articles are just reporting false positives.
When he says:
he's flat out dead wrong.
One glaring example: Psychologists, with the best of training, are WORSE THAN CHANCE (to a level that even hard scientists would consider significant) at predicting whether a particular person will commit violence. To quote one: "The only proven predictor of future violence is past violence."
(This, of course, throws the whole "psychological testing for gun licensing" push into a cocked hat. If it were done, it would {in addition to exposing medical records and discouraging those in need of treatment from seeking professional help} selectively disarm, and deny civil rights to, more non-violent than violent.)
Another example, from biology/ecology. Studies were made looking for cycles in populations of wild animals of various species. They defined a "peak" as a year where there were more of the critter than in the previous or following year, a "low" when there were less. Then they computed the average length of cycles. They got pretty much the same average across many, diverse, species worldwide. It was quite a curiosity, and for a while was enshrined as a law of ecology.
As far back as the late '60s this was used as a glaring example of misuse of statistics in a first-of-the-sequence undergrad statistics course. It seems that, using that definition, you see the same "period" if you sample a random number sequence. They were measuring noise.
it's just bullshit to suck money, really. (Score:2, Insightful)
that has been on the table for 50 years. FIFTY YEARS yet there has been nothing to actually apply it to.
now what they need is MARKETING ETHICS as that's where it really is needed, the act of selling something thats not as self driving as self driving and so forth - there is actually no need to ponder should it hit a deer or a truck in a case it had to choose.
also marketing ethics about ai. ai just means information technology now. fucking excel sheets are sold as AI. anything making binary choices is being
Re:it's just bullshit to suck money, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethics have been on the table for 50 years, yes. But only because it's been 50 years and we still haven't learned a goddamn thing.
If more of us software engineers had studied some liberal arts or humanities, maybe fewer of us would work for companies that suck up personal information and sell it to the highest bidder. The ability to stop and think about what it is you're actually doing is apparently a rare commodity in the tech business these days.
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(I was wondering how long it would take to be downvoted by someone who works for Big Intrusive Adware.)
Re:Can't leave humanities to the humanities majors (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing alone is the answer. That goes double for technology.
Technology is an enabler, no more and no less. It's up to us to decide how we use it.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
The author is an Engineering professor. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. He has taught at Duke, Stanford and Emory.
See, this is why liberal arts and the humanities are so important. If you'd studied them, you might have thought to check the motherfucking article before spouting off about how this guy is just some liberal arts loser.
I would think that someone who jumped straight to, "he studied macrame" without even glancing at the article might not want to throw any stones about "critical thinking".
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You do realize that where they have taught, what certifications or accreditation they have, or what their ideas are, does not preclude them from saying stupid things.
Of course, just like having 40 years of engineering expertise doesn't preclude someone from inadvertently causing a major disaster.
Nonetheless, expertise counts for something, as a time-saver if nothing else. It's a reliable rule of thumb that it's a better use of your time to listen to someone who has recognised expertise.
I would rather spend my time listening to (and critically evaluating) the opinions of someone with some actual qualifications than an Internet comment section. It doesn't matter if that s
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Funny)
I agree, but this is about humanities, who is really the expert here? I am a human, I am every bit an expert as you or that person holding a degree.
Speaking as a physical object, I'm every bit an expert on physics as someone holding a degree.
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That is not even a remotely reasonable comparison.
Physics is the study of phenomena associated with actual physical interactions and have verifiable facts and information.
Humanity still escapes any significant scientific classification and to this date the actual location, mechanism, or source of "consciousness" is unknown. I have the capacity to think about things that concern my person and other persons.
However, there is a wealth of information that makes it clear that gravity is going to affect me with
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My point is that merely being human does not make you an expert in the study of humanity. That requires critical thinking, which itself doesn't seem to come naturally to people. (And I've lost track of the number of Internet commenters who seem to think that "critical thinking" means "let's play a game of spot the fallacy".)
The problem of the humanities is essentially the law of medium-sized numbers.
We can work out to a high degree of precision what's happening in an atom because we can calculate it, at lea
Re:Critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I can see where you're confused. You don't understand what the study of "Humanities" means. It's not about the study of consciousness or what forms preferences. It is a comprehensive approach to understanding how things work via the study of how people describe their universe and their experience. Philosophy, Linguistics, Languages, History, Archaeology, even many areas of Mathematics, are all part of Humanities programs, along with Literature, Art, Music, the Historical Foundations of Science. Chances are, you learned about the scientific method from a class in the Humanities program. Logic is taught in Humanities.
Can you think of any fields in technology where you might find value in the study of Linguistics? How about Logic?
Note to the younger Slashdotters out there: When someone proudly proclaims their ignorance, believe them. Being proud of not knowing, naming entire fields that have always been part of a classical education as "not worth studying" is the hallmark of someone for whom ignorance is a worthy goal.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you think of any fields in technology where you might find value in the study of Linguistics? How about Logic?
Fun fact: Within my lifetime, Ontology moved from being mostly a humanities field to being mostly an engineering discipline. It was very interesting to watch it happen, as computer science researchers raided 2500 years of philosophy and start to build things out of it.
It gave me a new respect for the humanities, and philosophy in particular. Philosophy is, in a sense, the primordial soup from which new academic disciplines arise. And once they take form, they often jump faculties surprisingly quickly.
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OTOH, almost all Object Oriented and Functional programming get their object semantics from the answers to Russell's Paradox.
They might only be raiding from a 30 year period from 1890 to 1920.
If they were really going that far back, instead of "Traveling Salesman" algorithms it would Traveling Mercenaries and somebody would have solved the actual route that was taken by the Ten Thousand and I'd be able to buy a copy of Anabasis with a map that matched the (probably re-ordered) text.
As it is, good luck even
Re:Critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that's not really pertinent to the discussion, now is it? Shanghai Bill said, "the author's probably some liberal arts major". I presented evidence that the author was in fact, a distinguished faculty member at some of the top engineering schools. That's it. You want to change the topic at hand, you are welcome to do so, but it might be more appropriate to start a new thread. Which is something you would have learned in a freshman composition course in a motherfucking liberal arts program
Absolutely. I invite you to examine the data for yourself. ShanghaiBill's been posting here for a good long time. His comment history is publicly available. I can say with a 98% confidence interval that if ShanghaiBill is known for anything, it's something that caused him to spend 90 days in a country jail somewhere in the Florida panhandle.
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Wadha has a bachelor's in computing and an MBA. If he knows anything about arts or humanities, it's unlikely he learned it in college.
And despite the OP's attribution, he's not an engineering professor either.
Re: Critical thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
Found the liberal arts major!
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The entire problem with liberal arts and the humanities is that they are classes to begin with. You do not need to pay a college tuition to discuss humans and their problems or potential solutions. It only creates a pseudo intellectualism, where a group of people sit around massaging their minds to the point they no longer able to effectively communicate with rest of the humans they think they are helping enlighten.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
However I agree that some of these fields, at least at certain institutions, have devolved into an unpleasant and altogether useless echo chamber. Sociology has to be one of the worst offenders: if teachers and student in an academic faculty are unwilling to discuss certain problems or opinions with you, and instead tell you that you're not allowed to voice or even have those opinions, then you know it's time to get out of there and leave them to their own devices. The only problem is that their world view is leaking into society at large, like some sort of hilarious but toxic religion.
Re: Critical thinking (Score:2)
This donkey is just trying to be popular (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need a music, arts, literature or psychology to have empathy. Further, there really is a war on the middle class jobs - construction workers, plumbers, electricians, etc.. We've basically stereotyped these jobs as the low-class when the majority of people with degrees can't wire in a new light switch or change their car tire.
Re:This donkey is just trying to be popular (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Thank G-d for the fact that a lot of people can't wire in a light switch or change a tire. After all, it keeps the electricians and mechanics employed.
(2) The problem isn't liberal arts, which is the idea that an education should be broad and deep. It's in fact the opposite -- the problem is SPECIALIZATION. People have become too specialized in a modern society.
Re:This donkey is just trying to be popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Specialization is required in today's society because jobs have become so complicated that you cannot do them anymore without specializing heavily. If I get an operation on my knee, I want a surgeon (first specialization from "medical doctor") who specialized in knee operations (as compared to, say, brain surgery, second specialization).
I certainly wouldn't want a shrink to do it. Even though both have that "MD" next to their name.
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Re: This donkey is just trying to be popular (Score:5, Insightful)
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Re: This donkey is just trying to be popular (Score:5, Insightful)
- Voltaire
Besides, Heinlein was nuts because specialisation is what made a civilisation possible in the first place. Any hunter-gatherer society left is a prime example.
Well, actually Heinlein was nuts for all kinds of reasons, like an unhealthy obsession with slide rules, but they are not important right now.
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like an unhealthy obsession with slide rules
An elegant too for a more civilized age. His point remains, though, if you only have one skill, you're a tool and in danger obsoletion.
Because (Score:3, Funny)
Correction (Score:3)
Because if it weren't for liberal arts majors, the STEM people wouldn't be able to go home after work and watch Netflix.
We would be able to but we would not want to.
unfortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)
True enough. Unfortunately, a lot of the social sciences these days just teaches a view of history in which the Enlightenment, the Roman Empire, and technology are just tools of the male patriarchy to suppress women and Africans. Social science departments at universities like Yale have explicitly defined themselves as institutions for political change, not institutions concerned with seeking truth. And that's why social sciences as taught in academia are pretty much worthless these days.
Fortunately, you don't need to be a history major (or minor) in order to learn these things, there are plenty of excellent books and online lectures, and I encourage everybody to listen to them. But listen critically and distinguish between indoctrination, advocacy, and scholarship.
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True enough. Unfortunately, a lot of the social sciences these days just teaches a view of history in which the Enlightenment, the Roman Empire, and technology are just tools of the male patriarchy to suppress women and Africans. Social science departments at universities like Yale have explicitly defined themselves as institutions for political change, not institutions concerned with seeking truth.
You make it sound so Soviet.
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It has nothing to do with me; I'm just relating how they describe themselves.
Re: unfortunately... (Score:2)
Re: unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
Jonathan Haidt gives a lot of references and examples [heterodoxacademy.org], both of explicit mission statements and indicators (actually, he ranks a couple of hundred schools based on objective criteria):
He says it's somewhat analogous to how universities split along religious/secular lines a century ago.
Re: unfortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't refer to him for his ideas on social justice, but for for the facts he cites, specifically that American social science departments and universities that have declared themselves to be dedicated to social justice.
How prescient: that, in fact, what many social science departments graduate these days.
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the way to counter the argument is to show that they are based in truth
That belief is why alternative facts are such a powerful weapon. For an extreme example look at the flat earth movement, they often cite carefully selected and distorted "scientific evidence" that the world is in fact a disc.
Many politicians and, dare I say it, social justice warriors like Jordan Peterson have build careers around doing that. They are very effective too, people don't notice the tricks they use such as claiming that anything which undermines their position is the result of the person making
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What makes you think that I don't "listen critically and distinguish between indoctrination, advocacy, and scholarship"?
Or are you pointing out that I am engaging in advocacy? I am! Good for you to recognize it!
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What gave you that idea? Did I say that anywhere? If so, please point out where.
To be clear: you can study science and engineering on your own as well; you don't need to go to university either.
Re:unfortunately... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, look, an Serviscope_minor's Oxford education at work: "it sounds made up, that proves that it is made up!"
No. I used to be a Democrat but left the party when Hillary started lying about her past support for gay rights, threw her weight around to take the nomination from Sanders, and laughed about killing people.
How about you? Did you vote for Hillary... illegally? Just out of interest.
Not true (Score:2, Funny)
A musician is king in a world in which you can 3D-print anything that you can imagine.
I've been 3D-printing a lot of the music I've composed. So far no one wants to listen to it. If you want a sample, PM me your phone number and I'll send it to you on my quantumfax with teleport enabled.
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Yeah but wouldn't 3D printing music in braille be a good idea?
Eh... no. (Score:3, Insightful)
The humanities teaches nothing accept discrimination and indoctrination because it has now relegated itself to an "in crowd" echo chamber and is becoming more and more anti-science as time has gone by.
It pretty much creates the premise that only "accredited" people are allowed to discuss human issues with any authority which is total bunk. The goal seems to be taking possession of humanity/liberal arts as an idea away from everyone else that did not attend. Every person unto themselves, regardless of race, minority/majority, religion, politic, ethnic, or whatever "label" you can think of has a right to represent their own ideas about humanity and life. It is a natural extension of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy except it is now a formally indoctrinated fallacy.
You want to be a philosopher then go be it, Academia needs to keep its pie hole clamped on the subject as it no longer caters to all possible philosophers and only says that "certain ones" should be allowed the right to speak.
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Where did you get the idea that I was accusing them of political correctness? I agree with you, many of them are hardly politically correct, but what is the natural pursuit of most education? Take in information, process it as the professor wants it processed and then to regurgitate that information to their satisfaction in order to get a passing grade.
You see, unless the professor is passing everyone based on participation only, then indoctrination is occurring this is not an accusation for any particula
Re:Eh... no. (Score:5, Informative)
I took an ethics class as part of my CS curriculum. There was a lot of psychology in it, and we weren't graded for approved opinion or how well we memorized the material. What the professor wanted to see was how well we understood what was being taught - and yes your participation is a good way of measuring that. It's like that because a good professor will understand that different opinions are to be expected - so long as you gave it sufficient thought, you're doing good. Not every student wants to do that. Some people just want to be told what the answer is so that they can commit it to memory and regurgitate it later - these are most in need of such classes.
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The humanities teaches nothing accept discrimination and indoctrination because it has now relegated itself to an "in crowd" echo chamber and is becoming more and more anti-science as time has gone by.
To be fair, the humanities could have taught you things like "what words mean" and "how to arrange words into coherent sentences", but you've made it abundantly clear that you opted to not show up on those days.
It's a pity. You could have been worth listening to, but now there's just no point, is there?
Humanity (Score:2)
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Yep, pretty much this (Score:5, Interesting)
As for why you want to train people to think critically, well, if you don't like dictatorships & fascism then you want an electorate that thinks critically. I mean, ever notice how one of the 1st things a dictator does is go after the intelligentsia?
Re:Yep, pretty much this (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly this. Whether fascism, communism, or any ism in between, one of the first steps in any new dictatorship of the modern era is to purge the academy. If you want to find the wannabe dictators of today, look for the ones who want to do that. You'll find them on all sides of politics.
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Yes, purge the academi selectively of people critical of them, while elevating people who helped those dictators. If you look at Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, they and their reprehensible ideologies all were strongly supported by many academics and intellectuals, both in their countries and abroad. Intellectuals are not a bulwark against dictatorships, th
Democracy... (Score:2)
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"Republic" and "democracy" are orthogonal concepts and the US is both.
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Yeah, that's a key tenet of fascism.
Democracy is any form of government that originates with the people; that includes the US.
What was supposed to protect the US from authoritarianism was limited government, not representative government. Representative government without limits is even worse than direct, majoritarian democracy.
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Democracy, as has been pointed out many times, is three wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. It's for this reason that the people of the United States can't, by themselves, vote to make the First Amendment null and void. This is generally considered to be a good thing.
"When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It h
Re:Yep, pretty much this (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you do. Unfortunately, most liberal arts programs don't produce that. In fact, throughout the 19th and 20th century, academics and universities were often key institutions in promoting totalitarian ideologies.
They don't go after "the intelligentisa", only after those intellectuals who are critical of them. The intelligentsia, on the other hand, has often been instrumental in bringing communists and fascists into power. Both Hitler and Stalin were powerfully supported by intellectuals, academics, and universities.
Title should change to "humanities need your money (Score:4, Interesting)
Tanking enrolment means less profit for the university.
http://sappingattention.blogsp... [blogspot.com]
Only enrolment in Gender Studies remained stable. No surprise there. They cry the loudest to get "diversity programme" running. There are lucrative (although parasitic) jobs for that segment.
"Growing Poor By Degrees" Ben Stein, Playboy 1978 (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to agree with Ben Stein, but about 40 years ago (while finishing college at beer drenched Michigan State) I read a short essay in Playboy and never forgot it...
If I recall correctly at my advanced age, the claim was that before World War II when far fewer Americans went to college, many students from wealthy backgrounds studied liberal arts because they would not really have to work or else they already had nice careers waiting for them because of their birth.
After World War II and the G.I. Bill explosion in college students, many students from modest backgrounds wanted to study liberal arts so they, too, could have the traditional polish of the wealthy. But Stein claimed this was a fallacy - that those working class background students assumed that the intellectual, liberal arts background caused those in the upper class to become successful, but actually they had the liberal arts education precisely because their wealthier backgrounds allowed them the luxury of not really having to learn a trade.
Of course, we will always need English professors, historians, philosophers, et cetera, but not nearly at the quantity produced by colleges each year.
Looking back, I had a great time at a big, fairly average college in the late 1970's, but now I realize it was only because my late father had worked so hard, lived cheaply, and invested for many years. But as a straight economic investment in my future, it did not really pay off. Of course I have no one to blame for my choices but myself.
Tom from Traverse City
The Two Cultures (Score:5, Interesting)
Snow noted the divide, and suggested that "Literary" types needed to learn science, while noting that "Scientific" types already knew, or at least valued, Arts and Literature.
The debate has now been going for over 50 years and shows no signs of resolution.
While I'm not sure that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics should be the touchstone, I would argue that any graduand that can't demonstrate both a knowledge of the scientific method and an appreciation of art or literature should be required to do so before they can graduate.
I'd also like to see something like Ethics 101 and Aesthetics 101 as compulsory subjects.
I'm realistic enough not to actually expect any of these things to happen.
Re: The Two Cultures (Score:3)
No, C. P. snow didn't say that. He said that science types were lamentably under-exposed to literature and particularly the arts, and that arts types were even more ignorant of science. Neither side came off positively.
Re:The Two Cultures (Score:4, Interesting)
Over the past 50 years this is exactly what happened, especially inside Silicon Valley:
- The "technological determinist" mindset is rampant, claiming that technology is neutral (it's not, see Facebook), that it is inevitable and can't be stopped (it can, see nuclear energy). Even the author is unable to avoid the 'technology develops exponentially' trap.
- We've seen the spread of this mindset to other areas in society, such as politics, where "technological solutionism" is rampant. Complex issues in a neighbourhood? Just build an app!
The author mentions the fields literature and history, which for a lot of techy people are the first things that come to mind when they think of the humanities. Sure, get those people in. But there is more obvious humanities knowledge we need:
- a lot of ethics experts (hello Facebook)
- ethnographers and sociologists (in theory the field of design already incorporates this for things like user research. But in practice students focus more on the tech..)
- psychologists (so far only the marketing world has embraced this knowledge, to incredible effect. See Cambridge Analytica for example.)
- some philosophers. ("What does it mean to be human? What is good communication?" I'm always glad to see these questions discussed on Slashdot, but the discussions often lack the knowledge and depth that can be found... in the humanities)
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it's called "marketing" not "humanities" (Score:3)
The commercial application of "humanities" is called "marketing," and yes, it is very relevant to the modern world.
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read what he's actually saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Who knew! Upper management consists of people with little technical skills and good people skills! And if you want to be one of those people, by all means, don't get an engineering degree and get a social science degree instead.
But let's be clear about this: these people are by and large not successful because they understand the Enlightenment or good design, they are successful because they understand Machiavelli and politics, something that success in a social science environment prepares them for.
Whoa, what a jump. CEOs and heads of product engineering don't "work hand in hand" with people, they lead and direct.
Well, that is certainly good advice. Add to that the notion that government shouldn't pick winners and losers among academic fields and instead let the market decide.
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We get it (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry. liberal arts and humanities majors, you are _also_ important and valuable members of society. Ok, so maybe you are not as smart as the engineering majors, but that's ok. You are _emotionally_ intelligent, and that is also a valuable trait. And true, your deep understanding of the human condition has not prevented you from going down a path that pretty much guarantees you will never be able to buy a house, but you can compensate for that by finding a line of work where your mastery of human interaction will in fact be appreciated.
And yes, I would like some fries with that, thank you for asking!
Someone is angry (Score:4, Funny)
That their liberal arts degree isn't making them as much as their STEM pals.
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Nobody disputes that there's no money to be made in studying the liberal arts. Indeed, look at all the bankers who screwed over the economy in the leadup to 2007. If any of them had stopped to think about what they were actually doing or what it actually meant, or stopped to consider ethics in any form at all, they'd be just as not-in-prison as they are now, but ever so slightly less rich.
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The author is an engineering professor.
Like fuck he is.
He's a journalist with a B.A. in "Computer Studies" and an MBA in marketing.
All this "engineering professor" stuff is just him marketing himself.
There be dragons (Score:2)
But it had a problem. The tutiton was ~$3500 (at the time about average for any Uni in Canada). But $3500 didn't cover the cost of educating
Zuckerberg said they were all dumb fucks! (Score:2)
Taking Facebook as the example - The ethics were clearly understood from the outset. It wasn't a fuzzy or difficult line to comprehend. The real problem is free markets have no rules. If Zuckerberg didn't beeline to the bottom then someone else would've.
Presumably Facebook will subsequently strongly advocate for certain rules to be cast into law as suits them.
Humanities asks the question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Humanities asks questions. Engineering provides solutions. That's pretty much the difference right there.
Camels (Score:2)
Back a long time ago, my economics professor started his economics 101 for engineers with following statement:
Engineers are the camels salemen ride one.
This is still true today.
As to liberal arts and humanities being necessary to create better products, that might be true, if those branches would offer any systematic or useful approaches to apply them. Those sitting around and just discussing which reality is more worthy are just a wast of time.
Don't expect to make the same amount of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberal arts are as important as engineering, indeed. Where would we be without our artists, our philosophers, musicians, playwrites and humanists? But if you do pursue liberal arts, please don't expect to earn the same amount of money as STEM. On the other hand, a four year liberal arts degree is generally more fun, a bit easier and you get laid a whole bunch more. Fact.
If you can possibly manage it, consider a combined STEM + liberal arts path. The technical term for it is "renaissance".
Everything is useful if you use it. (Score:3)
A problem with liberal arts is that whatever its merits, it frequently isn't applied.
Consider medicine... we value people with medical degrees, right? But what if you don't use it? I mean, you don't do anything with it at all.
It is all well and good to say that some CEOs in tech were able to use it to help their product design. But that is a very obscure and rarefied context. What about everyone else in the company?
Ultimately, you're going to be left arguing it does in "mysterious ways"... that there are subtle influences that help all sorts of things in ways that you can't really prove one way or the other.
You could do that with theology though as well... that's where this argument goes.
And I could show you lots of company heads from times gone by that said as much about their faith in God or whatever as helping them with their company.
I'm not disparaging liberal arts, rather I'm suggesting that they take a greater interest in applying themselves. Instead of going always for this "holistic person" concept, they should look at how language can help an individual... how art and history and philosophy, etc can help.
I'm not saying don't teach roughly the same thing. I'm saying teach it in a different way so that it has a better chance of being used.
Because if it isn't used, it is useless. The most amazing machine for doing whatever has zero value if it isn't used. The most amazing information about whatever is useless if it isn't used.
It MUST be used or it is useless.
Only artists have empathy? (Score:5, Insightful)
but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature and psychology provides a big advantage in design
This is complete nonsense.
There are just as many people with empathy who study useful subjects as there are who study arts and humanities. And just as many sociopaths and crazies, too. Writing turgid prose, discordant music, and making self-indulgent art or design does not imbue someone with empathy. Nor do "deep" and ambiguous creations mean someone is enigmatic, insightful or more intelligent - it often means that they are confused, unable to communicate clearly and don't really know what it is they are trying to put across. Just as scientists are often accused of being.
Most of the artists I know will tell you "I do it for myself, not for other people" when asked to explain their work. That is not the sign of an "empathic" personality.
Pay attention to the actual words (Score:3)
Liberal Arts and the Humanities are indeed as important as Engineering.
However, Liberal Arts DEGREES are not as important as Engineering DEGREES.
Yes, it's important to have art and music and an appreciation for history, but I really would like someone to be ACTUALLY TRAINED AND CERTIFIED when they start calculating the load-moment on that bridge they're building.
Re:First post... in before... (Score:4, Insightful)
In before the anti-intellectual comments about "snowflakes" and "gender theory majors" commence.
No need. The anti-intellectuals in those majors have already done a bang-up job of showing why they need to have funding cut. Bret Weinstein explains it very well, Jordan Peterson shows a great example of those students who trash private property to stop views from being expressed. And Melissa Click is an exemplar of that egotism wrapped in a bubble of anti-intellectualism, that supports and teaches students to shutdown view points that are contrary to the groupthink. Being a victim is profitable, pretending you're outraged is currency.
But hey, believe whatever you want. Don't pretend that there's a swath of the humanities and liberal arts that have their heads shoves so far up their own asses that they sniff farts. Don't believe that this same elitism isn't a cancer that gets people fired from their jobs for making a joke based on personal experience(Sir Tim Hunt) and then drives them from their own country. Or creates a climate of intimidation and fear over wearing the "wrong kind of shirt" like with Matt Taylor.
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Plenty of people in the engineering and I.T. fields also have their heads up their anal orifices. Elon Musk anyone? Look at Tesla's parts availabilily ... how dare a mere plebe un-authorized mechanic presume to want to work on a Tesla? Tim Cook. Let's show some courage by stripping useful functionality out of our products and reduce them to toys for the lowest common denominator.
Frankly, people SHOULD have the right to protest against wrong or abhorrent views. The Earth is NOT flat. Global warming is
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Sure, and let's look. When was the last time Elon Musk was going out of his way to push his ideology on everyone, and then stating that if you don't follow it you're a racist/sexist/homophobe/fascist/nazi/. When was the last time that Tim Cook used his position to turn around and shutdown free speech? But we can see the organized events from university professors, to shut down a group of MRA's who are gathered to talk about the inequality in family law. Pulling fire alarms, making fake police calls, and
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When was the last time that Tim Cook used his position to turn around and shutdown free speech?
I don't know about Tim Cook specifically, but please. The Apple Store does it all the time.
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I don't know about Tim Cook specifically, but please. The Apple Store does it all the time.
And we're talking about individuals, education, universities, and not the corporate environment at the moment.
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+1, We as a society don't value things that are important.
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... uh ... still not entirely sure how you got that from what I said.
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This argument is such BS. Like you said... they have to have taken a class, they can only have an opinion based on YOUR idea of things, they can only have a say or voice in the way you thing they should have it.
You basically just said, you are not allowed to have an opinion of something because you did not attend a class. What about if they have experience garbage coming out of the mouths of those that did attend? Is that not a fair assessment? The first foundation of science is observation. If people
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And none of them would disagree with the thesis of this article.
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One engineer can build a fire. Two or more will still be arguing about whether to optimise it for light, heat, efficiency, ease of use etc when the rescuers arrive.