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I think you're mischaracterizing humanities as not falsifiable as if it should be like mathematics. The content is not wrong in the same way a math question is

I think you're mischaracterizing humanities as not falsifiable as if it should be like mathematics. The content is not wrong in the same way a math question is, but many humanities classes are explicitly about taking arguments presented in essays, books, journals, by the government, by public interest groups, by private industry, and testing them against "objective reality and truth that exists around them." No humanities course just takes every argument at face value. Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny. At least from my takeaway, just saying someone or an argument is "wrong" is not really what the humanities are about anyway. The humanities focus on the reasons people have and give for their claims. Often reasons are complex and are tied into complex human contexts. Reasons are not just evidence, they are the entire baggage of argument, logic, context, culture, and history. The humanities focus on understanding those reasons. Whether deciding whether those reasons and claims are wrong is important, but not the entire purpose of the humanities, and never was. To be sure, there are people who come out of humanities programs with distorted views of the world. I have met many, and it worries me in some ways what more and more do to the humanities. But there are also those that come out of STEM fields with wildly distorted views of the world as well. And I think that is because they lack a solid humanities education.

wallace_f 9y ago
>No humanities course just takes every argument at face value. Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny Here is Orwell on the matter: >"When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all."[1] Feynman: >"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." People lived for a very long time without a proper appreciation of controlled, repeatable experiments, and progress was very slow. 1 - www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_saw
- oblio 9y ago
  Until we come up with a mathematical model for human interaction or other humanities, we have to make do with what we've got. Who knows if it is even possible to model human interactions?
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Yea, and even if it were possible, it would still only be the realm of theory until it could be experimentally proven
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    I have an unpopular view, that physics is probably the easiest science. Chemistry is harder, biology is even harder. Heading up the chain into social sciences is just unbelievably hard to get good answers. With physics, you can build a machine an test to your hearts content to determine what the underlying rules are. That's real tough to do when you're studying, say, an economy. So, i don't mean this as a slight to physicists. It would never occur to me to use oil drops to measure the mass of an electron. It was a brilliant insight. But, with modern tools, I kinda think i could replicate that experiment in my apartment. Evolution? I mean, golly, that's a really subtle insight. I might be able to do something with petri dishes and poisons, but that seems like a pretty tough thing to detect. I'd like to compare Darwin to Newton, but Darwin is probably closer to Aristotle. We haven't begun to get to the really good stuff yet. I'm skeptical of phycology, there are issues with replication all the time. But clearly they're on to something. The whole advertising industry is built on psychological insights. I've dealt with crazy race conditions that make me want to pull my hair out. They're not consistently reproducible. Eventually i work out the logic and things fall into place. But i have access to the source :) I can't imagine how hard it is to get anything out of random interactions of black boxes. Social sciences just aren't for me. Anyway, yeah, i believe it's possible to model human interactions. We do it all the time. As with all things, some models are just more useful than others.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      I think your unpopular view is very true. Worse, it's the key to finance and politics. I used to know someone who had nothing but contempt for developers and the IT team, because while he was busy playing the corporate ambition game, they just wanted to do a good job. As far as he was concerned, this made them easy prey. Guess which kind of person runs the world? Engineering and science won't teach you this. You can finish your PhD with a completely unrealistic view about how politics works, and how political outcomes are generated. Neither science nor engineering are immune to this. Popular beliefs and high-status areas of research are decided politically, not dispassionately. It's tempting to say that things would be better if we had dispassionate objective AIs deciding policy, instead of individual and tribal ambition - but of course one of the challenges of AI is that instead of simply automating math, AI has the potential to automate and amplify influence and persuasion. When you don't really understand influence and persuasion - but others do, in practice if not in theory - that's not necessarily a good place to be.
WalterBright 9y ago
> Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny. The reason we have a "left" and "right" in politics is it is impossible to prove one true and the other false. No matter how intense the scrutiny or clever the arguments.
- jacalata 9y ago
  No, it's because people have fundamentally different end goals.

wallace_f 9y ago

>No humanities course just takes every argument at face value. Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny Here is Orwell on the matter: >"When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all."[1] Feynman: >"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." People lived for a very long time without a proper appreciation of controlled, repeatable experiments, and progress was very slow. 1 - www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_saw

oblio 9y ago
Until we come up with a mathematical model for human interaction or other humanities, we have to make do with what we've got. Who knows if it is even possible to model human interactions?
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Yea, and even if it were possible, it would still only be the realm of theory until it could be experimentally proven
- jfoutz 9y ago
  I have an unpopular view, that physics is probably the easiest science. Chemistry is harder, biology is even harder. Heading up the chain into social sciences is just unbelievably hard to get good answers. With physics, you can build a machine an test to your hearts content to determine what the underlying rules are. That's real tough to do when you're studying, say, an economy. So, i don't mean this as a slight to physicists. It would never occur to me to use oil drops to measure the mass of an electron. It was a brilliant insight. But, with modern tools, I kinda think i could replicate that experiment in my apartment. Evolution? I mean, golly, that's a really subtle insight. I might be able to do something with petri dishes and poisons, but that seems like a pretty tough thing to detect. I'd like to compare Darwin to Newton, but Darwin is probably closer to Aristotle. We haven't begun to get to the really good stuff yet. I'm skeptical of phycology, there are issues with replication all the time. But clearly they're on to something. The whole advertising industry is built on psychological insights. I've dealt with crazy race conditions that make me want to pull my hair out. They're not consistently reproducible. Eventually i work out the logic and things fall into place. But i have access to the source :) I can't imagine how hard it is to get anything out of random interactions of black boxes. Social sciences just aren't for me. Anyway, yeah, i believe it's possible to model human interactions. We do it all the time. As with all things, some models are just more useful than others.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    I think your unpopular view is very true. Worse, it's the key to finance and politics. I used to know someone who had nothing but contempt for developers and the IT team, because while he was busy playing the corporate ambition game, they just wanted to do a good job. As far as he was concerned, this made them easy prey. Guess which kind of person runs the world? Engineering and science won't teach you this. You can finish your PhD with a completely unrealistic view about how politics works, and how political outcomes are generated. Neither science nor engineering are immune to this. Popular beliefs and high-status areas of research are decided politically, not dispassionately. It's tempting to say that things would be better if we had dispassionate objective AIs deciding policy, instead of individual and tribal ambition - but of course one of the challenges of AI is that instead of simply automating math, AI has the potential to automate and amplify influence and persuasion. When you don't really understand influence and persuasion - but others do, in practice if not in theory - that's not necessarily a good place to be.

WalterBright 9y ago

> Every argument is subject to intense scrutiny. The reason we have a "left" and "right" in politics is it is impossible to prove one true and the other false. No matter how intense the scrutiny or clever the arguments.

jacalata 9y ago
No, it's because people have fundamentally different end goals.