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> I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. Whereas the knowledge, technology, wealth, and all-around good stuff gained from e
by Chinjut 11y ago
> I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. Whereas the knowledge, technology, wealth, and all-around good stuff gained from electrical engineering, astrophysics, materials science, etc. is as limitless as the universe.
What a fatuous statement. One could just as well say the humanities are as limitless as human thought and experience.
- jackcosgrove 11y agoThe humanities will not extend human lifespan, bring us to new planets, or end suffering caused by disease. It's not fatuous at all. It boils down to replicability and universality, and the sciences produce techniques that are replicable and knowledge that is universal.
- Fomite 11y agoThe humanities may help stop things that shorten human lifespans, like war, or health disparities. The sanitation movement that did so much for ending suffering caused by disease was as much a product of the humanities as it was science, and this is from an epidemiologist.
- tmptmp 11y agoI disagree. Far many times it has been seen that the humanities have just sided with the rulers (especially true in case of communists) so that they be spared. It is a fashion amongst many humanities people in the western world to criticize the western systems and to please their ideological masters and glean any benefits out of it. Do we see any humanities criticizing the communism and Marxism based on the flaws in these corrupt ideologies? No. We see them criticizing only the western system. I am not to say that western market based capitalist system is a panacia but it orders of magnitude better than the communism and Marxism based hell.
- Fomite 11y ago"Far many times it has been seen that the humanities have just sided with the rulers (especially true in case of communists) so that they be spared." Because lord knows scientists have never worked with horrific regimes, right? "Do we see any humanities criticizing the communism and Marxism based on the flaws in these corrupt ideologies?" Umm...I see these all the time. Indeed, my first encounter with both Marx and the flaws of that system were from the humanities.
- tmptmp 11y agoI didn't say scientist didn't work for communists or other tyrants. Also, AFAIK there is no loud and unequivocal criticism published by these academics on the same scale/volume as they have for the western systems. Can you give me some papers published by these academics which contain loud and unequivocal criticism of communism/Marxism?
- Fomite 11y agoI'm not going to do a literature search in a field that's not my own just to satisfy someone on HN, but I will give you two paraphrased quotes from classes I took: - "How the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariate' was ever supposed to just naturally fade away was left undiscussed, and clearly never occurred." - "Marx's writing, while a well-reasoned critique of capitalism, failed to provide a workable alternate solution." Both of these were from fairly leftist professors. One should note that, at this point, "Western Systems" are really all that's left, so yes, there's going to be more criticism of them. The Soviet Union collapsed. And China is now some sort of weird hybrid system - and if you're seriously going to argue that there's not academics in the humanities criticizing China, I really don't know what to say.