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I still regret not double majoring in one of the humanities when I was in college. There's lots of technical / science people on HN. Does anyone feel the same w

I still regret not double majoring in one of the humanities when I was in college. There's lots of technical / science people on HN. Does anyone feel the same way?

niels_olson 11y ago
Interest in humanities is going down among high school students because their parents and high school teachers rightfully advise them against it. Then they get to college realize their freedom get drunk and realize that hard majors are hard. Their interest in the humanities then goes up. This is not a paradox.
abritinthebay 11y ago
See the "humanities is easy" comment below. Too many STEM-Lords in HN a lot of the time sadly. It's a very immature view but a sadly common one in much of tech.
- omegaham 11y ago
  I think that both sides are doing the current situation a disservice. The STEM-Lords[1] are acting like everything without a clearly defined profitable career track is a complete waste of time. The guidance counselors are still living in the 90s, where any college degree could get you a job without question. The reality is in the middle - majoring in a humanities subject can still work out just fine, but you have be a lot more careful about what you do in college and what skills you develop. This scares the shit out of the STEM folks, as their idea of "be careful about what they do in college" mostly appears to be "Oh, so I need to do an okay internship or two over the summer." The humanities kids have to do a lot more research and a lot more gumshoeing to figure out where they're going to go after they graduate. Unfortunately, most kids aren't like that. They're going to college because Mommy and Daddy told them to do so, and they're majoring in History because it "sounded cool," not because it was their passion or because they decided that a History degree was the correct decision for achieving their goals in life. If you expect this apathetic kid to go out and look for himself to figure out exactly how his History degree can get him a job, you've got another thing coming. That's where we get the "barista with a master's degree" stereotype. Basically, if your chosen major doesn't have a well-defined career path, (This includes biology, incidentally) you need to work harder and be even more proactive in figuring out where your next move is going to be. This bodes poorly for the average immature 19-year-old who has absolutely no idea what he's going to be doing. [1]https://i.imgur.com/aHNyJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aHNyJ.jpg
  - tomlock 11y ago
    >>Basically, if your chosen major doesn't have a well-defined career path, (This includes biology, incidentally) you need to work harder and be even more proactive in figuring out where your next move is going to be. This bodes poorly for the average immature 19-year-old who has absolutely no idea what he's going to be doing. I think this slippery-slope outcome of this is that children are funneled into early tutoring, academic kindergartens, etc. It seems absurd to do everything in life just to optimize for profit. Bye bye holidays???
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      I'm not sure if we should call it a slippery slope so much as a water-slide: when you present the extreme version of this scenario people tend to eat the bullet and endorse it as virtuous/prudent/praiseworthy rather than rethink the assumptions.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >(This includes biology, incidentally) It actually includes most of the pure natural sciences, and mathematics. Engineering is the track with the careers.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      The "pure natural sciences" and mathematics are as much engineering as Computer Science is (or, perhaps more accurately, computer science is as little engineering as those other things), however much working programmers like to call themselves "Software Engineers".
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        Computer Science is a weird academic department. There is very much such a thing as the pure, non-engineering formal science of computing. However, most Comp Sci departments justify their budgets and existence by recourse to teaching undergraduates a minimal foundation in actual computer-science, and a substantial amount of software engineering, which is actually a separate field. Personally, I like pure computer science and CS academia, but most of the undergrads taking CS degrees are trying to learn software engineering, and will object loudly if asked to take, for instance, type theory, topology, computability and automata theory, statistical learning theory (ML courses have massive drop rates), computational complexity, Kolmogorov complexity theory, how to build an operating system, compilers and optimization, abstract interpretation for static analysis, mathematical logic, etc.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  The humanities ARE easy. This is why it is common for someone to give up on Computer Science / Math / Physics / Chemistry / Engineering, but go on to graduate in History or English or Journalism. Does anyone know a single person who tried and tried, but just couldn't manage a History degree, so they had to take the easy route and ended up majoring in Physics???? HA!
  - tomlock 11y ago
    Interesting assumption, but it could be that the humanities are more engaging than STEM fields, so people are likely to convert to them, but not go the other way. Maybe people are more likely to be unwillingly driven in STEM, but more likely to actively choose the humanities. All those silly assumptions explain the same behaviors. I'm sure that the situation is more complex than that.
    - justin_vanw 11y ago
      It's not complex at all. There is a large group of people that try to major in STEM but find it too hard, or can't pass the math classes. This is often because they can't pass the tests. This is often despite substantial tutoring and serious effort, and multiple attempts to pass the class. The same person breezes through whichever humanities curriculum, and the 'Physics for Poets' class they have to take to satisfy their 'Quantitative Reasoning' requirement.
      - tomlock 11y ago
        I can't say because I haven't seen the numbers on this. Even though I've got a philosophy degree I really need some solid quantification before I'll believe claims like that. For instance, do engineering graduates that do philosophy courses on average perform better in them than philosophy graduates? edit: Also what's your take on why Freshmen have diverged from high-school students in recent years? What changed?
        irishcoffee 11y ago
- spacehome 11y ago
  It's not that the humanities are too easy. The subject matter is impossibly convoluted. Unfortunately, this leads to a situation where the fields taken as a whole are incredibly not-rigorous. Very few of the conclusions seem to be justified, and few of the practitioners seem to be able to know how tell the difference.
  - jhanschoo 11y ago
    In my opinion, the humanities, despite being around for longer than STEM, are still nascent. The tools and models and perspectives we use today are still too inexpressive to solve problems beyond special cases, and we still have a hard time figuring out the boundaries of these special cases themselves. The systems that the humanities investigate are much more non-linear and complex than the systems STEM investigates, and so the conclusions are much less reliable.
sopooneo 11y ago
Absolutely yes. I with I'd doubled, or at least minored, in English literature. I was Physics/Math.
Thriptic 11y ago
I attended a liberal arts college which encouraged exploration of the humanities. I majored in biochem and was one course away from a minor in philosophy upon graduation. I stopped because philosophy as it was taught at my institution was frankly a waste of time. I pursued the courses because I wanted to engage in meaningful debate about concepts and come away with actionable insight on how to best live my life. Instead there was no real debate; I was lectured to about my professors' academic interpretation of works with no attempt at translation, and was then expected to mindlessly regurgitate their interpretation in essays. This continued up into the seminar level. It was also readily clear that many of my classmates were just there to coast through college, so that didn't help. Granted I went to a tier 2 school, so it's certainly possible that people might have vastly different experiences at top institutions.
- tomlock 11y ago
  I really loved the engaged debate and discussion I got in undergraduate philosophy. Sounds like you didn't have the same experience :(
joshmarinacci 11y ago
As with any good question, my answer is "yes and no". I feel that the humanities are too easy and too hard. I took the required ones but they were not very deep. There was a lot of memorization or assertion of some truth that I was expected to absorb. It wasn't until much later that I read things like Guns Germs and Steel that I started learning about "why things are". A Short History of Nearly Everything really got me hooked on the history of science and western culture. Nothing I read in college did that. The other challenge of deep humanities like philosophy is that college students simply don't have enough life experience to see value in what it provides. As a 40yr old adult (yesterday) I now understand the value, but no longer have the time for learning it all. Do I wish I had double majored in college? No, simply because my own Computer Science degree was already way to much to complete in four years and I was eager to go build something. Now that I'm an adult and dad and have no time to read, I really wish I knew those things. Mixed bag. In the end there's far more to learn than you can in a single lifetime.
wfo 11y ago
I did double major in the humanities and I would never go back and do it differently for any reason. I think the value I got out of my humanities major eclipses my technical major in what it's done for me in general. I think technical things are FAR easier to learn outside of university, so the experience you get doing humanities is invaluable and irreplaceable.

I still regret not double majoring in one of the humanities when I was in college. There's lots of technical / science people on HN. Does anyone feel the same way?

niels_olson 11y ago

Interest in humanities is going down among high school students because their parents and high school teachers rightfully advise them against it. Then they get to college realize their freedom get drunk and realize that hard majors are hard. Their interest in the humanities then goes up. This is not a paradox.

abritinthebay 11y ago

See the "humanities is easy" comment below. Too many STEM-Lords in HN a lot of the time sadly. It's a very immature view but a sadly common one in much of tech.

omegaham 11y ago
I think that both sides are doing the current situation a disservice. The STEM-Lords[1] are acting like everything without a clearly defined profitable career track is a complete waste of time. The guidance counselors are still living in the 90s, where any college degree could get you a job without question. The reality is in the middle - majoring in a humanities subject can still work out just fine, but you have be a lot more careful about what you do in college and what skills you develop. This scares the shit out of the STEM folks, as their idea of "be careful about what they do in college" mostly appears to be "Oh, so I need to do an okay internship or two over the summer." The humanities kids have to do a lot more research and a lot more gumshoeing to figure out where they're going to go after they graduate. Unfortunately, most kids aren't like that. They're going to college because Mommy and Daddy told them to do so, and they're majoring in History because it "sounded cool," not because it was their passion or because they decided that a History degree was the correct decision for achieving their goals in life. If you expect this apathetic kid to go out and look for himself to figure out exactly how his History degree can get him a job, you've got another thing coming. That's where we get the "barista with a master's degree" stereotype. Basically, if your chosen major doesn't have a well-defined career path, (This includes biology, incidentally) you need to work harder and be even more proactive in figuring out where your next move is going to be. This bodes poorly for the average immature 19-year-old who has absolutely no idea what he's going to be doing. [1]https://i.imgur.com/aHNyJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aHNyJ.jpg
- tomlock 11y ago
  >>Basically, if your chosen major doesn't have a well-defined career path, (This includes biology, incidentally) you need to work harder and be even more proactive in figuring out where your next move is going to be. This bodes poorly for the average immature 19-year-old who has absolutely no idea what he's going to be doing. I think this slippery-slope outcome of this is that children are funneled into early tutoring, academic kindergartens, etc. It seems absurd to do everything in life just to optimize for profit. Bye bye holidays???
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    I'm not sure if we should call it a slippery slope so much as a water-slide: when you present the extreme version of this scenario people tend to eat the bullet and endorse it as virtuous/prudent/praiseworthy rather than rethink the assumptions.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >(This includes biology, incidentally) It actually includes most of the pure natural sciences, and mathematics. Engineering is the track with the careers.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    The "pure natural sciences" and mathematics are as much engineering as Computer Science is (or, perhaps more accurately, computer science is as little engineering as those other things), however much working programmers like to call themselves "Software Engineers".
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      Computer Science is a weird academic department. There is very much such a thing as the pure, non-engineering formal science of computing. However, most Comp Sci departments justify their budgets and existence by recourse to teaching undergraduates a minimal foundation in actual computer-science, and a substantial amount of software engineering, which is actually a separate field. Personally, I like pure computer science and CS academia, but most of the undergrads taking CS degrees are trying to learn software engineering, and will object loudly if asked to take, for instance, type theory, topology, computability and automata theory, statistical learning theory (ML courses have massive drop rates), computational complexity, Kolmogorov complexity theory, how to build an operating system, compilers and optimization, abstract interpretation for static analysis, mathematical logic, etc.
justin_vanw 11y ago
The humanities ARE easy. This is why it is common for someone to give up on Computer Science / Math / Physics / Chemistry / Engineering, but go on to graduate in History or English or Journalism. Does anyone know a single person who tried and tried, but just couldn't manage a History degree, so they had to take the easy route and ended up majoring in Physics???? HA!
- tomlock 11y ago
  Interesting assumption, but it could be that the humanities are more engaging than STEM fields, so people are likely to convert to them, but not go the other way. Maybe people are more likely to be unwillingly driven in STEM, but more likely to actively choose the humanities. All those silly assumptions explain the same behaviors. I'm sure that the situation is more complex than that.
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    It's not complex at all. There is a large group of people that try to major in STEM but find it too hard, or can't pass the math classes. This is often because they can't pass the tests. This is often despite substantial tutoring and serious effort, and multiple attempts to pass the class. The same person breezes through whichever humanities curriculum, and the 'Physics for Poets' class they have to take to satisfy their 'Quantitative Reasoning' requirement.
    - tomlock 11y ago
      I can't say because I haven't seen the numbers on this. Even though I've got a philosophy degree I really need some solid quantification before I'll believe claims like that. For instance, do engineering graduates that do philosophy courses on average perform better in them than philosophy graduates? edit: Also what's your take on why Freshmen have diverged from high-school students in recent years? What changed?
      - irishcoffee 11y ago
spacehome 11y ago
It's not that the humanities are too easy. The subject matter is impossibly convoluted. Unfortunately, this leads to a situation where the fields taken as a whole are incredibly not-rigorous. Very few of the conclusions seem to be justified, and few of the practitioners seem to be able to know how tell the difference.
- jhanschoo 11y ago
  In my opinion, the humanities, despite being around for longer than STEM, are still nascent. The tools and models and perspectives we use today are still too inexpressive to solve problems beyond special cases, and we still have a hard time figuring out the boundaries of these special cases themselves. The systems that the humanities investigate are much more non-linear and complex than the systems STEM investigates, and so the conclusions are much less reliable.

sopooneo 11y ago

Absolutely yes. I with I'd doubled, or at least minored, in English literature. I was Physics/Math.

Thriptic 11y ago

I attended a liberal arts college which encouraged exploration of the humanities. I majored in biochem and was one course away from a minor in philosophy upon graduation. I stopped because philosophy as it was taught at my institution was frankly a waste of time. I pursued the courses because I wanted to engage in meaningful debate about concepts and come away with actionable insight on how to best live my life. Instead there was no real debate; I was lectured to about my professors' academic interpretation of works with no attempt at translation, and was then expected to mindlessly regurgitate their interpretation in essays. This continued up into the seminar level. It was also readily clear that many of my classmates were just there to coast through college, so that didn't help. Granted I went to a tier 2 school, so it's certainly possible that people might have vastly different experiences at top institutions.

tomlock 11y ago
I really loved the engaged debate and discussion I got in undergraduate philosophy. Sounds like you didn't have the same experience :(

joshmarinacci 11y ago

As with any good question, my answer is "yes and no". I feel that the humanities are too easy and too hard. I took the required ones but they were not very deep. There was a lot of memorization or assertion of some truth that I was expected to absorb. It wasn't until much later that I read things like Guns Germs and Steel that I started learning about "why things are". A Short History of Nearly Everything really got me hooked on the history of science and western culture. Nothing I read in college did that. The other challenge of deep humanities like philosophy is that college students simply don't have enough life experience to see value in what it provides. As a 40yr old adult (yesterday) I now understand the value, but no longer have the time for learning it all. Do I wish I had double majored in college? No, simply because my own Computer Science degree was already way to much to complete in four years and I was eager to go build something. Now that I'm an adult and dad and have no time to read, I really wish I knew those things. Mixed bag. In the end there's far more to learn than you can in a single lifetime.

wfo 11y ago

I did double major in the humanities and I would never go back and do it differently for any reason. I think the value I got out of my humanities major eclipses my technical major in what it's done for me in general. I think technical things are FAR easier to learn outside of university, so the experience you get doing humanities is invaluable and irreplaceable.