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Is this a point you'd like to elaborate on? Without accusing you of anything, when I read a one sentence dismissal of humanities/social sciences, what I tend to

Is this a point you'd like to elaborate on? Without accusing you of anything, when I read a one sentence dismissal of humanities/social sciences, what I tend to think is that this is someone who thinks "post-modernism is bullshit", "third wave feminism is bad", "intersectionality isn't real", "everything is cultural marxism", "safe spaces", etc. and who is appealing to Jordan Peterson as an expert on everything. If we're lucky, they'll throw in Sokal or some other sincere attempt to engage with problems in the discipline. This might be an unfair judgment of you personally -- certainly it doesn't suggest charity on my part. But I just mention it because, in the event that you have something to add to the discussion that isn't just boilerplate, you might want to know that in the absence of actually adding it, you are being judged in this way. (Personal disclaimer: I'm not in the humanities, I have my own critiques of where major humanities disciplines are. I am an academic. But I also waste enough of my time on awful websites that I am very acclimatized to driveby dismissals of anything that emerged out of critical theory, and I can't say I agree with that.)

lovich 8y ago
It might have been my school but I found the degree poorly taught. You could get a fairly easy B+/A- by just parroting the teachers opinion on the topic at hand. STEM classes had some teachers like that, but most of the work there had objectively wrong and right answers. My friends from other schools all had the same experience for the most part with only a handful of exceptions for particularly good teachers, who also all happened to be employed at other jobs and working as an adjunct professor to teach single courses on their topics. The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach, but as much of the humanities has no right or wrong answer then the professor can bullshit as much as they want. I don't think that the teachers are any worse than STEM teachers. If STEM courses were as subjective I'm sure we'd see the same problems
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach Why do you think faculty’s lack of desire to teach is something limited to the humanities? In STEM fields too you will commonly see faculty delegating their workload to teaching assistants so that they can focus on things that interest them more.
  - lovich 8y ago
    Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I think the lack of desire to teach is a country wide problem for universities in the US. I think it's more apparent in the humanities because a teacher can define their opinion as "right" and put very little effort into educating students on the topic since they can just grade less harshly if they need to keep a certain pass rate on their students. On the other hand there is a much larger proportion of STEM work that is right or wrong and a teacher can't just pass students without it becoming obvious to the department that the students coming out of Professor N's classes have no grasp on the topic, and so they are forced to teach more skills that are useable in any class or jobs that touch on that subject
nradov 8y ago
OK I'll bite. In what sense is post-modernism not bullshit? What has it ever done to actually increase practical human knowledge, improve standards of living, or create a better society? Humanities and social sciences in general have created a lot of value, but post-modernism appears to be uniquely worthless due to never actually making any progress. Just a lot of empty pontificating and spinning in circles.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I'm not sure you know what you've bitten off. What does your question even mean? What aspect of "post-modernism" are you hoping to tear down? One assumes you're referring to hopelessly abstruse liberal arts senior theses, and is left to wonder whether you're aware of e.g. postmodern architecture. Deliberate, original works of postmodern literary theory might be incomprehensible, but the ideas of postmodernism --- metafiction, irony, intertextuality --- dominate our culture. Have you never seen or heard a remix?
  - nradov 8y ago
    What does your definition even mean? On that basis you could claim almost anything as "postmodern". It's so vague as to be utterly meaningless. I assert that we would have remixes even if postmodernism had never become a thing. Prove me wrong.
    - speedplane 8y ago
      The term "postmodernism" is a broad descriptor intended to inject some understanding into changes that have already occurred. For example: - Music went from pristine classical chords to overlapping remixes of existing music; - architecture went from symmetrical glass boxes to crooked chaotic dissonance; - visual arts went from seeking the perfect form to an acknowledgment that just about any form can be perfect for the right time/viewer/artist/etc.; - morality went from religious absolutism to moral relativism; - even physics went from clean equations that worked everywhere to requiring the observer's viewpoint to be considered (relativity) and more extreme, accepting randomness and unknow-ability as inherent principles (quantam mechanics). Are these cultural changes related at all? You may say no, each is it's own independent thing that happened for its own separate reasons. But even if that's the case, there are definitely some commonalities among them, chiefly that "value" or even "truth" is far more complex and uncertain than we previously thought. So to answer your question, yes remixes could exist without postmodernism. But I wonder if postmodernism could have existed without remixes.

lovich 8y ago

It might have been my school but I found the degree poorly taught. You could get a fairly easy B+/A- by just parroting the teachers opinion on the topic at hand. STEM classes had some teachers like that, but most of the work there had objectively wrong and right answers. My friends from other schools all had the same experience for the most part with only a handful of exceptions for particularly good teachers, who also all happened to be employed at other jobs and working as an adjunct professor to teach single courses on their topics. The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach, but as much of the humanities has no right or wrong answer then the professor can bullshit as much as they want. I don't think that the teachers are any worse than STEM teachers. If STEM courses were as subjective I'm sure we'd see the same problems

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> The humanities to me seem like they are of lower quality because professors have no incentive or desire to actually teach Why do you think faculty’s lack of desire to teach is something limited to the humanities? In STEM fields too you will commonly see faculty delegating their workload to teaching assistants so that they can focus on things that interest them more.
- lovich 8y ago
  Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I think the lack of desire to teach is a country wide problem for universities in the US. I think it's more apparent in the humanities because a teacher can define their opinion as "right" and put very little effort into educating students on the topic since they can just grade less harshly if they need to keep a certain pass rate on their students. On the other hand there is a much larger proportion of STEM work that is right or wrong and a teacher can't just pass students without it becoming obvious to the department that the students coming out of Professor N's classes have no grasp on the topic, and so they are forced to teach more skills that are useable in any class or jobs that touch on that subject

nradov 8y ago

OK I'll bite. In what sense is post-modernism not bullshit? What has it ever done to actually increase practical human knowledge, improve standards of living, or create a better society? Humanities and social sciences in general have created a lot of value, but post-modernism appears to be uniquely worthless due to never actually making any progress. Just a lot of empty pontificating and spinning in circles.

tptacek 8y ago
I'm not sure you know what you've bitten off. What does your question even mean? What aspect of "post-modernism" are you hoping to tear down? One assumes you're referring to hopelessly abstruse liberal arts senior theses, and is left to wonder whether you're aware of e.g. postmodern architecture. Deliberate, original works of postmodern literary theory might be incomprehensible, but the ideas of postmodernism --- metafiction, irony, intertextuality --- dominate our culture. Have you never seen or heard a remix?
- nradov 8y ago
  What does your definition even mean? On that basis you could claim almost anything as "postmodern". It's so vague as to be utterly meaningless. I assert that we would have remixes even if postmodernism had never become a thing. Prove me wrong.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    The term "postmodernism" is a broad descriptor intended to inject some understanding into changes that have already occurred. For example: - Music went from pristine classical chords to overlapping remixes of existing music; - architecture went from symmetrical glass boxes to crooked chaotic dissonance; - visual arts went from seeking the perfect form to an acknowledgment that just about any form can be perfect for the right time/viewer/artist/etc.; - morality went from religious absolutism to moral relativism; - even physics went from clean equations that worked everywhere to requiring the observer's viewpoint to be considered (relativity) and more extreme, accepting randomness and unknow-ability as inherent principles (quantam mechanics). Are these cultural changes related at all? You may say no, each is it's own independent thing that happened for its own separate reasons. But even if that's the case, there are definitely some commonalities among them, chiefly that "value" or even "truth" is far more complex and uncertain than we previously thought. So to answer your question, yes remixes could exist without postmodernism. But I wonder if postmodernism could have existed without remixes.