15 ms·

The author was quite harsh on the soft sciencies and humanities and I'm going to attempt a defense. First, he characterises these subjects as merely what, facts

• throwanem 9y ago
  "Begin"? The prior century is replete with horrific examples of societies, spanning - perhaps defining - the modern ideological spectrum, which behaved in precisely such fashion. I agree that the study of history is the best method yet found for recognizing the errors which produced those enormities, in order to avoid repeating them. But I'm not sure how effective undergrad history courses, or even history specializations, are likely to be in equipping their students with the tools for such study. Granted I've never taken such a course myself and so cannot speak with authority on even one example of the type - but I have found it not at all unusual for people who do have such education to be surprised in even so elementary and recent a matter as the American origin of the eugenic idea. Quite aside from being in my opinion a necessary antidote to the idea that the United States are somehow blessed with a permanent immunity to such enormities as we here discuss, such ignorance, on the part of so many supposedly educated in history and - if you're to be taken at your word - historical analysis, does not inspire enormous confidence in the value of such education.
  • dougmwne 9y ago
    I'll offer a specific example of historical context. The University of Virginia offers an undergraduate level Coursera course on modern history.[1] That course's treatment of the causes and importance of the industrial revolution suggests that access to cheap energy is the key difference between an agrarian and high technology civilization. That idea and that particular history professor's connections to Washington (he was executive director of the 9/11 commission) helps to explain a forever war in the Middle East and climate change denial. [1]https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world
    • throwanem 9y ago
      That looks to be an excellent treatment of the subject. Are many undergrad courses, or even just Coursera courses, similar in quality, or is this one exceptional?
      • ellius 9y ago
        Anecdotally, as a history undergrad and grad student, almost all collegiate history courses are like that if they’re any good at all. You do occasionally get low-level surveys that seem more like laundry lists of names and dates, but overwhelmingly in my experience courses will focus on the question of why. You’re studying the interplay of people, ideas, economies, technology, et al to understand how and why a particular thing happened.
  • josinalvo 9y ago
    > I agree that the study of history is [a] method [...] for recognizing the errors which produced those enormities, in order to avoid repeating them. Why? Do we have any evidence for that it helps at all? Here's what I find weird: when one is talking about learning history, usually the "pro" side cites the importance of the subject, and the "no" side, the methodological "flaws". It seems that this discussion is a bit pathological: Everyone agrees that if a certain avenue of study can reduce the probability of genocide, it should be undertaken. The question is that maybe (probably) these avenues of study do nothing of the sort. Of course, we can disagree about that. But how would we settle/improve our knowledge of the question?
    • fjsolwmv 9y ago
      Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
• hudibras 9y ago
  I don't think he was that harsh, and he actually praised the "knowing what" subjects. He simply meant that at MIT, the "knowing how" is more important.
  • foldr 9y ago
    What I don't understand about this comparison is that there's actually an awful lot of "knowing what" involved in math and science too. You won't get far in solving math problems if you try to derive everything from first principles. You could make fun of historians for learning lists of dates, but you could also make fun of mathematicians for learning lists of trigonometric identities.
    • skybrian 9y ago
      It seems like a mathematician should be able to derive a trig identity if asked? Otherwise you don't know it very well. Often mathematicians will make informal arguments but the idea is that you should be able to add rigor when needed.
      • foldr 9y ago
        Sure, and a historian who knows a particular period should be able to explain what evidence is available that event X happened on date Y.
    • kmill 9y ago
      It is true that you need to remember a lot of things to do math effectively, but a big difference between knowing dates and knowing theorems is that you can re-derive the theorems by yourself given enough time. A not-insignificant reason I got into mathematics was that I have difficulty remembering specifics, so I could lean on reinvention. I frequently forget the trig identities, but I know the basic definitions of trigonometry and that there ought to be certain identities, so I know I can re-derive them or look them up. But, I only need to do this when I teach calculus.
      • 9y ago
• brudgers 9y ago
  An MIT professor can be naive. A history major learns how to read and analyze documents...and how to write. An art major learns how to create art. An even more significant difference between these and many contemporary STEM subjects is that an undergraduate is expected to know how to create original work...there's no copying art homework especially not in an advanced class. These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other.
  • HarryHirsch 9y ago
    These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other That's simply not true. The reason that software is eating the world is that the rate on investment return is so much higher. Every time I read a publication from Phil Baran's group I have to pause several times to think it through, it's very deep, very subtle. Website is here, btw: http://openflask.blogspot.com/ http://openflask.blogspot.com/ It's actually worrying that computing has overtaken science and engineering. Back then, Arnold Beckman made a fortune in scientific instruments and enabled the world to do better science. Nowadays, Google and Facebook sit on huge corpora of natural language texts, and the only thing they do is build better AI for better targeting of ads.
    • brudgers 9y ago
      It is entirely true that I think that, these days.
      • HarryHirsch 9y ago
        Don't do that. That notion does not conform to observable reality.
        • brudgers 9y ago
          One might find familiarity with Hume useful here.
• rayiner 9y ago
  The charactetization is incorrect. The liberal arts do teach “how.” Creative writing or political philosophy or history teaches you skills you can use to analayze scenarios and communicate with people in different ways to different effect. Where the author is correct is that in those fields the output isn’t falsifiable. Your math skills allow you to construct proofs that can be verified. Your study of history allows you to write accounts explaining and putting in context historical events in a way that is pursuasive to other people. But they are not falsifiable. I agree with holding the former in higher esteem. Being able to communicate with people is important, but it’s an impoverished basis for an education. It’s terrifying that many students manage to graduate without much exposure to the world of objective reality and truth that exists around them (and which makes their lifestyles possible).
  • wsy 9y ago
    Your argument would be more convincing if brought as falsifiable science-style theory. In its current humanities-style argumentative form, you somewhat contradict yourself: either your argument holds power, then why do you dismiss this family of arguments as inferior? Or your argument doesn't hold power, then why would you expect us (or even yourself) to be convinced?
  • falcolas 9y ago
    > But they are not falsifiable. I disagree. Historians are constantly making predictions of events happening today, based on their knowledge of history. Some are accurate, some are not. They can then take this output, and use it to refine the views of history. This doesn't even cover how history is written by very unreliable narrators, and historians have to do more than learn the "what" to uncover the "how". Your argument is also somewhat limited to History, when Philosophy, Psycology, and other liberal arts degrees do not have the same limitations.
    • rayiner 9y ago
      “Falsifiability” is a word with meaning. If you identify a single counter example to a mathematical conjecture, the conjecture is wrong. That is not true for history, philosophy, psychology, or the other liberal arts.
• brians 9y ago
  It may be relevant that the author held dual chairs in Mathematics and Philosophy (phenomenology, I think).
• jack_pp 9y ago
  For anyone interested in learning more about people (and yourselves) I highly recommend Jordan Petersons' lectures on youtube. I believe he has started working on an online university for the humanities with all the money he's bringing in from patreon (he wisely hid it recently but it was close to 60k per month last time it wasn't)
  • pault 9y ago
    I really enjoy his lectures but people should be aware that he's been in the middle of some controversy over LGBT legislation in Canada and has attracted a following of vocal red pill types. The comments on his YouTube videos are kind of disturbing. His psychology lectures are great and I mostly share his views on post modernism, but I wouldn't want to be associated with his fan club.
    • kelukelugames 9y ago
      Don't forget Peterson's claim that only men have high enough motivation to be successful in competitive industries. His view is problematic because some VCs grill female founders not on their products but on their motivation level and how they will take care of their kids. Most power couples I know hire nannies. It's common enough where people shouldn't ask. Anyway, I concede people can be good in one way or another while also being a total shitstain. See Spacey, etc. But Peterson has always been too angry for me. He's like Colbert with no satire.
      • pjscott 9y ago
        I was curious to see if he'd actually said that or if you were misrepresenting a more reasonable claim. I'm not familiar with Jordan Peterson but managed to find this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q ... in which he says that high-powered careers are very unpleasant due to hyper-competition among people who are exceptionally willing to tilt their work-life balance way toward work, and that most (but not all) of such people are men. Which doesn't sound like that unusual a claim, really: it's a fairly mainstream belief that women average more family-focused than men, and you only need a small difference in means between populations to get a big difference in representation at the far tails of a trait's probability distribution. (I would have preferred that he make the point with less bluster and more graphs, but that's just a matter of taste.) Is that what you were alluding to, or does he somewhere else contradict this to make the crazy and very different claim that "only men have high enough motivation to be successful in competitive industries"?
• sharevipinfo 9y ago
  i think this very ok. https://sharevip.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Loi-Active-offiec-2010.png https://sharevip.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Loi-Active-...
• czbond 9y ago
  People are machines - simply meat machines. The underlying mechanics and operating systems differ, but the processes and 'tasks to be done' are similar. =) IMHO
  • dougmwne 9y ago
    Meatsack.WhoIs:[your_owner] Meatsack.PurchaseRequest:[internal_organs]
    • czbond 9y ago
      I found this darkly funny;Despite being downvoted, I am suggesting that one can observe the body as computer's systems and processes emulate a biological system at a certain level.
    • mmirate 9y ago
      If the purchase-price being offered exceeds the sum I think I'll be able to give my heirs as inheritance, then I should actually accept that transaction.
      • dougmwne 9y ago
        In that case I have A Modest Proposal. http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
        • mmirate 9y ago
          Well, is the total lifetime earning potential of an 18th-century Irishman greater than the value of the meat on an infant? If not, then his proposal would have had merit outside of satire...
• sokoloff 9y ago
  > [The author] characterises these subjects as merely what, facts to be learned, instead of how, skills to be mastered. Indeed. I owe a significant amount of my professional and financial success to being able to communicate my/my teams' ideas and breakdown and communicate company strategy to my teams. After a certain base level of excellence in engineering or another technical field, the distinguishing characteristic among levels of accomplishment seems to be communication, not a further 0.5% better at engineering. I see so many great technical people who are unable to communicate effectively and suffer badly from this.
  • oddlyaromatic 9y ago
    > I see so many great technical people who are unable to communicate effectively and suffer badly from this. I learned a lot of my communication skills studying the arts, and staging plays, musical performances, etc. My best teachers about clearly communicating expectations and deadlines, and giving meaningful feedback in a respectful way, have been people in the arts. At my first hackathon, I got the same vibe I often did in the last few days before a play or concert. Then when I started running a civic tech project, more and more patterns with working in the arts became apparent. Lots of volunteers, everybody has day jobs, you need to provide people with opportunities to do work they care about, but not pressure. And you need to provide leadership without being a dictator, and meet external milestones with a "show must go on" attitude when the time comes.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jccalhoun 9y ago
  I wouldn't say he was harsh. I would just say he is mischaracterizing them and creating a split that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
• nothis 9y ago
  I'd argue that "learning how" to write good texts or understanding a person psychologically, for example, is a rather valid example of a soft science having a real impact on the world that can easily compete with engineering problems. It's a bit like arguing that construction work is more valuable than planning architecture, which might be true in a hierarchical sense but ultimately it's just a matter of perspective and scale.
• indubitably 9y ago
  It's also releveant that the author feels perfectly justified in making recourse to a hypothesis about history which far from easy to test: “The idea of genius elaborated during the Romantic Age (late 18th and 19th centuries) has done harm to education.” Compared to what? Clearly he doesn’t know how to make a historical argument — perhaps he considers such arguments beneath him.
  • sn9 9y ago
    That's a rather unreasonable criticism. I'm sure if you could ask the author (before he died a few years ago), he could provide you with more detail. Requiring an author to expand on every question a piece brings to the readers' mind is just an unreasonably high bar.
• mmirate 9y ago
  > treat people as machines We are machines. Squishy, carbon-based machines with certain unique computational capabilities, I'll grant - but still, machines.
  • oblio 9y ago
    Armed with this insight, does it actually help us interact with humans? I'd argue that it does not...
    • eli_gottlieb 9y ago
      Bayesian brain theories are very helpful for interacting with other humans, actually.
    • mmirate 9y ago
      Yes, it does. Provide input, expect output, send to maintenance dept. when errors occur.
• Spooky23 9y ago
  He’s an engineer or scientist. The world needs engineers and scientists, and it makes them feel good to assert their superiority. At the end of the day, these guys always work for somebody, who is usually some sort liberal arts or business major. It’s something to keep in perspective when somebody asserts that math and science run the world.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • jonnybgood 9y ago
    Math and science does run the world, but the mathematician and scientist does not. I believe this is more accurate.
    • Spooky23 9y ago
      Once stuff is discovered and productized, the scientists and math people often become redundant. My grandma doesn’t know what machine learning is, but can benefit from it greatly on her iPhone or spam filter. Hell, once the frameworks get mature, even the programmers don’t need to know much. My understanding of the math behind crypto is incomplete, but I successfully implemented validated systems with other people’s “Lego bricks”
  • eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >At the end of the day, these guys always work for somebody, who is usually some sort liberal arts or business major. Usually that someone is a liberal-arts major because they had a trust fund, not because the liberal arts turn you into an insightful, far-seeing, compassionate leader.
    • Spooky23 9y ago
      Liberal arts help you to analyze information in front of you and express the outcome of such analysis in prose or speech.
  • fjsolwmv 9y ago
• harrisjt 9y ago
  Ya, lots of history courses have a discussion along side that teach how to interpret texts instead of fact memorizing. These skills are surprisingly useful.
• eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >I suggest that a society only interested in the workings of machines rather than the workings of people will soon treat people as mere machines. Let the nightmare begin. So far the society that treats people as mere machines is constantly mouthing platitudes about the humanities to itself, chanting, "Think about people! Think about philosophy!" as though this will actually alter the balance of class power. USAians already take more humanities courses in a STEM degree than almost anyone else in the world. It doesn't seem to accomplish much to turn everyone into fluent humanists.
  • davidgay 9y ago
    AFAICT, in many cases (e.g., history) that's just to catch up with the rest of the world's pre-university humanities' level (and that the same applies in reverse for the humanities degrees).
    • eli_gottlieb 9y ago
      AFAICT, that's pretty similar in STEM, except that Americans who don't take STEM degrees don't ever take what other countries would consider pre-university STEM courses. Mind, other countries specialize their students in early or late secondary school, so the differences may not be quite commensurable. A UK, French, or German student going into a STEM degree will probably have taken calculus and linear algebra by the end of secondary school, but they may not have taken an equivalent to America's AP World History. If you told them they ought to take a first-year university course in world history to get into a STEM degree, they'd look at you a bit weird, but this is admittedly how American admissions works. I also know an American who basically took every available AP course, had a perfect grade average, volunteered in Girl Scouts, won valedictorian of her well-regarded high school. She ended up wait-listed to MIT, admitted with no financial aid to Cornell, admitted with a moderate scholarship to McGill, and admitted with a full-ride and honors to her state flagship school. She took the full ride. (Also, we met and later married :-p.) This contrasts with Technion (I did research there), where you could get into the top-flight STEM institution of the whole country just by earning sufficiently high marks in your matriculation exams. It really does give me the impression that both other countries educate more rigorously at the secondary level, and Americans have a perverse fetish for inhumanly grueling competition. I think this may be precisely the opposite of a good system: a good system would assure that everyone has a very solid baseline, and then maximize the fraction of top talent that makes it through the training pipeline to do the most difficult work.
• deleted 9y ago
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• kamaal 9y ago
  >>A great course in history teaches you how to think differently and with deeper context about world events and your country's politics. Context matters. If you are studying history when you are about to be promoted to be the general of your army, or pursuing a career in diplomacy these things make sense in the context of your career. For general folks the value of this information for all practical purposes is zero. Compared to say an education in STEM where many concepts can readily used applied across other disciplines, as its just Math at the end of they day. For this very reason, some civil engineering graduate can pick CS way easily than say with a graduate degree in history.