8 ms·

E.O. Wilson Sounds Off on the Trouble With STEM

82 points by etiam 7y ago

gumby 7y ago
> I am unhappy about STEM. That is, I’m unhappy about how it’s presented as the principal portal for careers in science and technology. Hear hear! Much as I hate anti-vaxxer know-nothings, much support from the sciences is also “science fandom” rather than scientific thinking. And from my time on a school board (where almost every discussion involves axe grinding) I learned that there was a talismanic belief in magical “STEM” that would help us create the “thinkers of tomorrow”. “Technology” was super important, but its definition was absurdly restrictive: teach the kids Word and PowerPoint so they’ll be prepared for the jobs of tomorrow. Hey, the wheel and inclined plane were triumphs of technological thinking which is what people need to develop, not Gadgrindesque “skilled” organized by an institutional ontology.
- joeyrideout 7y ago
  Thank you for the succinct description of '“science fandom” rather than scientific thinking'. This perfectly expresses my trouble with most scientific discourse nowadays. Many people brandishing "science" as a tool to win arguments instead of thinking scientifically, and often can't explain the scientific method. That, and the constant appeal to authority (fallacy) of "scientists say..." are my biggest pet peeves. This problem isn't easily solved, unfortunately, because scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone. If anything this amplifies the responsibilities placed on scientists to communicate their findings and caveats as clearly as possible to the public.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    >most scientific discourse nowadays I don't think it's right to call what you're describing "scientific discourse," it's more like "popular discourse." >scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. In fact the main strength of science is that anyone can eventually reproduce the conclusions, it's just that some people would take longer than others. If it was a priesthood of oracles who could, alone, speak to nature then you couldn't reasonably expect the non-oracles to believe any of it.
    - ndiscussion 7y ago
      >There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. Not sure what your intent was, but I don't think the following statement is any less valid as a result >scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone >careful thinking is difficult and not for everyone
      - whatshisface 7y ago
        Anyone can think carefully, and everyone needs to think carefully sometimes.
    - foldr 7y ago
      >There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. I don't think this can be right unless you have a very broad definition of "scientific". Lots of people think carefully about lots of things. Only a tiny minority of them are doing science.
      - gumby 7y ago
        I interpreted the statement as "the process of thoughtful reflection, learning, and decision is no different in the scientific domain as any other". The problem is so few people do engage in critical thinking. I think that's a human universal though.
      - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        You are correct, there's certainly more to the scientific process than thinking. Theology isn't science, but not for lack of careful thinking. Mathematics isn't science either. Science is about empirical investigation, by definition. I think whatshisface's point was that scientists don't have unique access to some special mode of inquiry. It's expertise, not a priesthood.
    - joeyrideout 7y ago
      Yes, you're right, popular discourse is better wording. Or perhaps I could put scare-quotes around "scientific" discourse. I see scientific thinking as more in line with skepticism and general disagreeableness. (Is that really true? Where's the data? What was your methodology? How did you come to that conclusion?)
  - matt4077 7y ago
    Nuclear technology fanboys are the worst in this regard. They seem to be forever trapped in some 1950’s futurism, not noticing that renewables have improved while their favorite technology has stagnated. Actual scientists improved batteries and photovoltaics by magnitudes, but these people are still litigating some argument from the 80s about risk assessment.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  That's what bothers me about the whole idea that if everybody beams a coder the world would be a better place. STEM is an important of education but there are plenty of other things that are as important. that coming from someone who has an engineering mind but I know I wouldn't the world to be run exclusively by people like me. I like the phrase “science fandom”.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that we too often learn whether things are good or bad without learning why. It gets discussed most with politics and ethics, where people can revile a past movement while happily reinventing all of its beliefs. But the same goes for "science fandom", where 'science' is the good thing which knows settled facts, rather than the actual investigative process that discovered them. Or too for replication-crisis academia, where everything from peer review to significance testing are treated as ritual barriers to getting published. (Not just by publish-or-perish; people like Wansink seem to genuinely have no idea why they need good methodology.) My old school district has repeatedly cut funding for science, non-core tech classes from programming to computer art, and any sort of 'extra' content from accelerated classes to non-teacher experts. (For years, they had a floating "science demonstrator" who was one of the best and most scientifically-minded educators I've ever met. Not anymore.) Meanwhile, there's constant talk about how teaching students to be at the cutting edge of STEM is a major priority. They've rationalized that divide with things like 'science and technology studies' (meaning Powerpoints about science topics) and 'STEAM' (I'm all for arts education, but it's basically being used here as a broadened slogan to avoid talking about science). Outside of one great physics teacher, the most science-minded class I remember taking was actually a machine shop class. Giving up the STEM talisman and taking on inherently open-ended problems like "it's making a funny noise" did wonders for getting people to think inquisitively and logically.
- rosser 7y ago
  > “science fandom” See also Scientism [0], especially in the sense Popper meant it. The place I keep getting stuck is trying to understand how we went from skepticism meaning, "I will neither believe, nor disbelieve, without evidence" to something more like "if the thing doesn't confirm my (probably very limited) understanding of our (definitely limited) understanding of reality, the thing should be dismissed, if not mocked." I get the value of things needing to be proved — which, in context, just means "the theory still works", not the "it is known" that notion seems to have become — in order to be believed, but the one just doesn't follow from the other. My guess is tribalism. When people are mocking things, they're doing it to advertise some kind of tribal affiliation, or enforce some tribe's norms. EDIT: Phrasing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
majos 7y ago
One point stood out to me: he thinks one "trouble with STEM" is that young hopeful scientists get herded into the math/engineering side of things -- if you dig biology, then you must know chemistry, hence physics, hence math! -- and he, as a naturalist, wants to push back on this tendency. I think this is a good point. Yes, a good biologist should probably have some quantitative chops, or at least know what p-hacking is, but pre-college it's plausible to me that a hopeful biologist is best served studying the parts of biology they like effortlessly. Once you have something you feel in your heart is cool, it becomes much easier to overcome challenges to better study that cool thing. In contrast, if you immediately jump into all the other stuff necessary for a good understanding of that cool thing, you might never develop enough attachment in the first place to power you through the hard, not-so-fun parts. I have definitely seen this in my own research career. Learning supposedly useful tricks for their own sake in a class has been much harder than picking up tools to solve problems I already have and care about. And using those tools in a context I liked made me appreciate them more.
- dnautics 7y ago
  Oh man, in my experience the problem was exactly the opposite. I would talk to biologists who would propose an utterly insane mechanism or demand a molecule with impossible properties for their analytical purposes (hey chemist can you make a thing that does exactly this under these constraints for me). Or once there was a physicist doing biophysics that spent weeks obsessing over an interesting discovery he's made using AFM, that ordered structures appeared when he had prepped it slowly, disordered structures when he prepped it quickly. I told him he'd forgotten to get rid of the bulk salt from the sample. It was constantly a problem that interdisciplinary research was encouraged but interdisciplinary knowledge was not (because that is hard)
  - majos 7y ago
    That's certainly a problem, too. I'm suggesting that it's useful to really kindle an interest before starting in on the harder parts of studying it, not that the harder parts should be put off indefinitely. In particular, learning the hard parts early may make a person dislike them more than they should, e.g. biologist's might see p-values as some annoying hurdle to clear rather than a useful tool for finding real conclusions.
chicob 7y ago
I suspect the Humanities seem to be at an advantage here. In the Arts, students learn about the basic physiology of the human eye, the Physics behind color and also some Geometry. In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course. In Archeology, Nuclear Physics, Plate Tectonics and Astronomy are unavoidable. In Physics, it is almost impossible not to make use of History timelines for the sake of understanding the evolution of ideas. But that's that. I think some course in the History of Science would be highly valuable in STEM. Philosophy of Science would also be very beneficial. There are many writings by Bertrand Russell that would fit in Math courses and that have a lot to do with Philosophy and that are very pertinent to any math student.[1][2] In my opinion, one of the books that better makes the bridge between the Humanities and Science is Florian Cajori's History of Mathematical Notation. No only it is a very interesting book, shedding light at the intimate relationship of our symbol lexicon, our skills at abstraction and the progress in Mathematics, but it also teaches about cuneiform writing, rhetorical Math teaching in ancient Egypt, and how fundamental the invention of typography was for the stability of Mathematical notation. A Professor I once knew lend me his only copy just because I mentioned the topic, and after skimming through I knew I had to buy my own. (For all of those of have lent books, you must know how much of a gamble it is, specially when the person you're lending the book is some random student!) [1] Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html) [2] On Denoting (http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/ http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/)
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course. I a look at my local university's requirements - I knew that Stats was a requirement for psychology (my minor), but oddly enough, it's apparently not for sociology. That's bizarre. I do agree with you on the rest though - for the longest time "Science" was "Natural Philosophy" - arts and science were all a mishmash, and as an arts student you see that progression far better - there's a focus on the methods of thought of before and of now, as opposed to a science education, which is a progression of complexity in regards to the current state of the science. I don't know if you spend much time looking at what came before, unless those ideas or models still can hold true.
- 7y ago
matt4077 7y ago
I’ve been seeing more and more of a sort of “Two Cultures” Aggression among the tec crowd, and I’m somewhat baffled by it. I even share some of the misgivings (Hegel: ugh...). But all grievances about the shortcomings of individual sub-fields together still don’t feel like they would justify what to me often seems a very emotional antipathy against anything that isn’t “pure” science. Someone like Richard Feynman, who was arguably at the forefront of making fun of the humanities, never devolved into today’s unthinking “learn to code” sort of hatred: he heaped scorn on certain practices that deserved it (coining “cargo-cult science”), but remained open to fall in love with ideas he liked, and even succeeded in writing, painting, music, education, and cultural diplomacy. He would seem to be an excellent role model, showing how to constructively engage in other fields without compromising your principles. I also think we sometimes overlook the triumphs of the humanities because they look so different than those in the natural sciences. While physics has the nuclear bomb, philosophy may well lay a claim to that bomb never being used after 1945. Only the latter connection is far more diffuse, with ideas percolating through layers of society, bouncing between academia/media/politics/literature/etc. Democracy, the rule of law, (international) cooperation, capitalism, and so on are similar: these ideas don’t just randomly appear, and are very much in the wheelhouse of “the humanities”. But from inception to general acceptance their trace gets lost, and they often become so common we don’t even notice them anymore, much like the proverbial fish who doesn’t know what water even is.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Has our society reached a tipping point, where we're establishing a consensus, correctly or not, that there's a "scientific" way to do nearly everything? Adopting "data-driven approaches" to every industry; optimizing each decision; cargo cult science indeed. A social movement where hearts and minds and investors believe that data is more important than intuition, that design is more important than luck, and that talent is more important than guts.
  - matt4077 7y ago
    It’s almost tautologically true that the scientific method is the gold standard. The problem is rather that not everything is easily studied in such fashion. In fact, physics is almost unique in being easily reducible to smaller and smaller problems that can be studied independently. That approach fails already for many problems of biology: our understanding of isolated cells and genetics has grown exponentially, yet we have made barely a dent when in comes to treatment of, for example, depression. As you zoom out to, say, sociology or political science, it gets even worse.
uxp100 7y ago
It sounds like such a different world in school than when I went (born in the late 80s). Like the idea that anyone would be pushed towards math is incredible. It was constant art and English and foreign languages. Learning to express yourself. To be good at math was pointless, the higher level math teachers had this sort of beaten down feel, even they didn't want to be teaching math, they wanted to teach physics and there weren't any openings. (Aside from one very good statistics class I should say) But if students have an interest in biology or even an interest in math but if they don't achieve highly in particular subjects in High School they think they can't go on to study it in college, then something is wrong.
- matt4077 7y ago
  I was born in the early 80s, went to school in the US and Germany, and really cannot connect my experience with yours. If anything, there was a universal attitude that math and science were harder, while the others were easy to pass with just enough engagement in class. But the dominant theme of my recollection would really be that there just wasn’t any such narrative of “the humanities” vs “tech”.
  - kurthr 7y ago
    I remember it being about "well rounded" students who knew History, Philosophy. Literature, Foreign Language... and of course some Biology, and Math, but not really Calculus or Quantum or Programming. Those were for nerds who played D&D!
astazangasta 7y ago
I agree with this. Kids don't need to learn math. Now we have R, which gives you a foothold. You can build your understanding of linear models, etc., by using them.
m0llusk 7y ago
Adam Grant's book Give and Take suggests that altruists acting over prolonged time periods bring not merely superior but optimal rewards to themselves and their group. Group selection may also be involved but hard science now strongly suggests that altruism brings great benefit to individuals when the full situation is taken into account.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  The altruism things is actually pretty easy to understand with one simple fact: it takes way less energy to destroy something than it does to create something. So if you can have an arrangement where everybody agrees to just go about their business and create things, rather than constantly trying to destroy other people and their things, then it's hugely beneficial in sum. The caveat is that the viability of such an arrangement depends on an ecological niche not being at capacity; the game not being zero sum, in other words. If you're playing a zero sum game, then things become nasty and brutish pretty quickly.
paganel 7y ago
> One of the people who helped me the most was Margaret Mead, of all people, the great anthropologist. When the American Anthropological Association had its meeting and was entertaining a resolution to condemn sociobiology, at least human applications of it, she rose to ask: Are you out of your minds? Are you actually going to judge a piece of science according to political ideology? And they voted it down. I'm not sure this would happen again in this day and age of people mixing pseudo-politics with almost anything.
- chengiz 7y ago
  And sometimes with good reason. If someone comes up with evidence based research that, say, blacks are less intelligent than whites, should that be supported? Science does not exist in a vacuum.
  - vajrabum 7y ago
    That would be more convincing if someone came up with a supportable notion of what intelligence is and then validated that some testing instrument could reliably measure it across cultures. So far not so much. IQ tests have their uses but they don't exactly measure intelligence.
    - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      But suppose they did? Suppose we find a well defined and a very valuable trait. And got a well validated test for that. And uncovered a fact what some group of people are worse off in that trait in general than some other group. What should be done about those particular findings and that research in general if group of people in question is historically disadvantaged? And that trait is applicable to the areas they are disadvantaged in? Suppose you want to improve the situation and make outcomes more equal (or opportunities more equal, or say you are evil and want the opposite, or whatever actual effect you want to achieve). Do you think you would have better success knowing the facts or not knowing them? You can say it might be better not to know some facts because they give people who want opposite things more leverage. Sure. I disagree with that tactics, but it might work if not for the following: how would you know which facts to deny them if you don't know what the facts are? Only way that move can make sense if you secretly suspect what the outcome of the research would be and think that it will be detrimental to your preferences.

82 points by etiam 7y ago

> I am unhappy about STEM. That is, I’m unhappy about how it’s presented as the principal portal for careers in science and technology. Hear hear! Much as I hate anti-vaxxer know-nothings, much support from the sciences is also “science fandom” rather than scientific thinking. And from my time on a school board (where almost every discussion involves axe grinding) I learned that there was a talismanic belief in magical “STEM” that would help us create the “thinkers of tomorrow”. “Technology” was super important, but its definition was absurdly restrictive: teach the kids Word and PowerPoint so they’ll be prepared for the jobs of tomorrow. Hey, the wheel and inclined plane were triumphs of technological thinking which is what people need to develop, not Gadgrindesque “skilled” organized by an institutional ontology.

joeyrideout 7y ago
Thank you for the succinct description of '“science fandom” rather than scientific thinking'. This perfectly expresses my trouble with most scientific discourse nowadays. Many people brandishing "science" as a tool to win arguments instead of thinking scientifically, and often can't explain the scientific method. That, and the constant appeal to authority (fallacy) of "scientists say..." are my biggest pet peeves. This problem isn't easily solved, unfortunately, because scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone. If anything this amplifies the responsibilities placed on scientists to communicate their findings and caveats as clearly as possible to the public.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >most scientific discourse nowadays I don't think it's right to call what you're describing "scientific discourse," it's more like "popular discourse." >scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. In fact the main strength of science is that anyone can eventually reproduce the conclusions, it's just that some people would take longer than others. If it was a priesthood of oracles who could, alone, speak to nature then you couldn't reasonably expect the non-oracles to believe any of it.
  - ndiscussion 7y ago
    >There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. Not sure what your intent was, but I don't think the following statement is any less valid as a result >scientific thinking is difficult and not for everyone >careful thinking is difficult and not for everyone
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      Anyone can think carefully, and everyone needs to think carefully sometimes.
  - foldr 7y ago
    >There's no difference between scientific thinking and careful thinking. I don't think this can be right unless you have a very broad definition of "scientific". Lots of people think carefully about lots of things. Only a tiny minority of them are doing science.
    - gumby 7y ago
      I interpreted the statement as "the process of thoughtful reflection, learning, and decision is no different in the scientific domain as any other". The problem is so few people do engage in critical thinking. I think that's a human universal though.
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      You are correct, there's certainly more to the scientific process than thinking. Theology isn't science, but not for lack of careful thinking. Mathematics isn't science either. Science is about empirical investigation, by definition. I think whatshisface's point was that scientists don't have unique access to some special mode of inquiry. It's expertise, not a priesthood.
  - joeyrideout 7y ago
    Yes, you're right, popular discourse is better wording. Or perhaps I could put scare-quotes around "scientific" discourse. I see scientific thinking as more in line with skepticism and general disagreeableness. (Is that really true? Where's the data? What was your methodology? How did you come to that conclusion?)
- matt4077 7y ago
  Nuclear technology fanboys are the worst in this regard. They seem to be forever trapped in some 1950’s futurism, not noticing that renewables have improved while their favorite technology has stagnated. Actual scientists improved batteries and photovoltaics by magnitudes, but these people are still litigating some argument from the 80s about risk assessment.
maxxxxx 7y ago
That's what bothers me about the whole idea that if everybody beams a coder the world would be a better place. STEM is an important of education but there are plenty of other things that are as important. that coming from someone who has an engineering mind but I know I wouldn't the world to be run exclusively by people like me. I like the phrase “science fandom”.
Bartweiss 7y ago
I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that we too often learn whether things are good or bad without learning why. It gets discussed most with politics and ethics, where people can revile a past movement while happily reinventing all of its beliefs. But the same goes for "science fandom", where 'science' is the good thing which knows settled facts, rather than the actual investigative process that discovered them. Or too for replication-crisis academia, where everything from peer review to significance testing are treated as ritual barriers to getting published. (Not just by publish-or-perish; people like Wansink seem to genuinely have no idea why they need good methodology.) My old school district has repeatedly cut funding for science, non-core tech classes from programming to computer art, and any sort of 'extra' content from accelerated classes to non-teacher experts. (For years, they had a floating "science demonstrator" who was one of the best and most scientifically-minded educators I've ever met. Not anymore.) Meanwhile, there's constant talk about how teaching students to be at the cutting edge of STEM is a major priority. They've rationalized that divide with things like 'science and technology studies' (meaning Powerpoints about science topics) and 'STEAM' (I'm all for arts education, but it's basically being used here as a broadened slogan to avoid talking about science). Outside of one great physics teacher, the most science-minded class I remember taking was actually a machine shop class. Giving up the STEM talisman and taking on inherently open-ended problems like "it's making a funny noise" did wonders for getting people to think inquisitively and logically.
rosser 7y ago
> “science fandom” See also Scientism [0], especially in the sense Popper meant it. The place I keep getting stuck is trying to understand how we went from skepticism meaning, "I will neither believe, nor disbelieve, without evidence" to something more like "if the thing doesn't confirm my (probably very limited) understanding of our (definitely limited) understanding of reality, the thing should be dismissed, if not mocked." I get the value of things needing to be proved — which, in context, just means "the theory still works", not the "it is known" that notion seems to have become — in order to be believed, but the one just doesn't follow from the other. My guess is tribalism. When people are mocking things, they're doing it to advertise some kind of tribal affiliation, or enforce some tribe's norms. EDIT: Phrasing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

majos 7y ago

One point stood out to me: he thinks one "trouble with STEM" is that young hopeful scientists get herded into the math/engineering side of things -- if you dig biology, then you must know chemistry, hence physics, hence math! -- and he, as a naturalist, wants to push back on this tendency. I think this is a good point. Yes, a good biologist should probably have some quantitative chops, or at least know what p-hacking is, but pre-college it's plausible to me that a hopeful biologist is best served studying the parts of biology they like effortlessly. Once you have something you feel in your heart is cool, it becomes much easier to overcome challenges to better study that cool thing. In contrast, if you immediately jump into all the other stuff necessary for a good understanding of that cool thing, you might never develop enough attachment in the first place to power you through the hard, not-so-fun parts. I have definitely seen this in my own research career. Learning supposedly useful tricks for their own sake in a class has been much harder than picking up tools to solve problems I already have and care about. And using those tools in a context I liked made me appreciate them more.

dnautics 7y ago
Oh man, in my experience the problem was exactly the opposite. I would talk to biologists who would propose an utterly insane mechanism or demand a molecule with impossible properties for their analytical purposes (hey chemist can you make a thing that does exactly this under these constraints for me). Or once there was a physicist doing biophysics that spent weeks obsessing over an interesting discovery he's made using AFM, that ordered structures appeared when he had prepped it slowly, disordered structures when he prepped it quickly. I told him he'd forgotten to get rid of the bulk salt from the sample. It was constantly a problem that interdisciplinary research was encouraged but interdisciplinary knowledge was not (because that is hard)
- majos 7y ago
  That's certainly a problem, too. I'm suggesting that it's useful to really kindle an interest before starting in on the harder parts of studying it, not that the harder parts should be put off indefinitely. In particular, learning the hard parts early may make a person dislike them more than they should, e.g. biologist's might see p-values as some annoying hurdle to clear rather than a useful tool for finding real conclusions.

chicob 7y ago

I suspect the Humanities seem to be at an advantage here. In the Arts, students learn about the basic physiology of the human eye, the Physics behind color and also some Geometry. In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course. In Archeology, Nuclear Physics, Plate Tectonics and Astronomy are unavoidable. In Physics, it is almost impossible not to make use of History timelines for the sake of understanding the evolution of ideas. But that's that. I think some course in the History of Science would be highly valuable in STEM. Philosophy of Science would also be very beneficial. There are many writings by Bertrand Russell that would fit in Math courses and that have a lot to do with Philosophy and that are very pertinent to any math student.[1][2] In my opinion, one of the books that better makes the bridge between the Humanities and Science is Florian Cajori's History of Mathematical Notation. No only it is a very interesting book, shedding light at the intimate relationship of our symbol lexicon, our skills at abstraction and the progress in Mathematics, but it also teaches about cuneiform writing, rhetorical Math teaching in ancient Egypt, and how fundamental the invention of typography was for the stability of Mathematical notation. A Professor I once knew lend me his only copy just because I mentioned the topic, and after skimming through I knew I had to buy my own. (For all of those of have lent books, you must know how much of a gamble it is, specially when the person you're lending the book is some random student!) [1] Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html) [2] On Denoting (http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/ http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/)

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> In Sociology, surely there must be some Statistics course. I a look at my local university's requirements - I knew that Stats was a requirement for psychology (my minor), but oddly enough, it's apparently not for sociology. That's bizarre. I do agree with you on the rest though - for the longest time "Science" was "Natural Philosophy" - arts and science were all a mishmash, and as an arts student you see that progression far better - there's a focus on the methods of thought of before and of now, as opposed to a science education, which is a progression of complexity in regards to the current state of the science. I don't know if you spend much time looking at what came before, unless those ideas or models still can hold true.
7y ago

matt4077 7y ago

I’ve been seeing more and more of a sort of “Two Cultures” Aggression among the tec crowd, and I’m somewhat baffled by it. I even share some of the misgivings (Hegel: ugh...). But all grievances about the shortcomings of individual sub-fields together still don’t feel like they would justify what to me often seems a very emotional antipathy against anything that isn’t “pure” science. Someone like Richard Feynman, who was arguably at the forefront of making fun of the humanities, never devolved into today’s unthinking “learn to code” sort of hatred: he heaped scorn on certain practices that deserved it (coining “cargo-cult science”), but remained open to fall in love with ideas he liked, and even succeeded in writing, painting, music, education, and cultural diplomacy. He would seem to be an excellent role model, showing how to constructively engage in other fields without compromising your principles. I also think we sometimes overlook the triumphs of the humanities because they look so different than those in the natural sciences. While physics has the nuclear bomb, philosophy may well lay a claim to that bomb never being used after 1945. Only the latter connection is far more diffuse, with ideas percolating through layers of society, bouncing between academia/media/politics/literature/etc. Democracy, the rule of law, (international) cooperation, capitalism, and so on are similar: these ideas don’t just randomly appear, and are very much in the wheelhouse of “the humanities”. But from inception to general acceptance their trace gets lost, and they often become so common we don’t even notice them anymore, much like the proverbial fish who doesn’t know what water even is.

i_am_proteus 7y ago
Has our society reached a tipping point, where we're establishing a consensus, correctly or not, that there's a "scientific" way to do nearly everything? Adopting "data-driven approaches" to every industry; optimizing each decision; cargo cult science indeed. A social movement where hearts and minds and investors believe that data is more important than intuition, that design is more important than luck, and that talent is more important than guts.
- matt4077 7y ago
  It’s almost tautologically true that the scientific method is the gold standard. The problem is rather that not everything is easily studied in such fashion. In fact, physics is almost unique in being easily reducible to smaller and smaller problems that can be studied independently. That approach fails already for many problems of biology: our understanding of isolated cells and genetics has grown exponentially, yet we have made barely a dent when in comes to treatment of, for example, depression. As you zoom out to, say, sociology or political science, it gets even worse.

uxp100 7y ago

It sounds like such a different world in school than when I went (born in the late 80s). Like the idea that anyone would be pushed towards math is incredible. It was constant art and English and foreign languages. Learning to express yourself. To be good at math was pointless, the higher level math teachers had this sort of beaten down feel, even they didn't want to be teaching math, they wanted to teach physics and there weren't any openings. (Aside from one very good statistics class I should say) But if students have an interest in biology or even an interest in math but if they don't achieve highly in particular subjects in High School they think they can't go on to study it in college, then something is wrong.

matt4077 7y ago
I was born in the early 80s, went to school in the US and Germany, and really cannot connect my experience with yours. If anything, there was a universal attitude that math and science were harder, while the others were easy to pass with just enough engagement in class. But the dominant theme of my recollection would really be that there just wasn’t any such narrative of “the humanities” vs “tech”.
- kurthr 7y ago
  I remember it being about "well rounded" students who knew History, Philosophy. Literature, Foreign Language... and of course some Biology, and Math, but not really Calculus or Quantum or Programming. Those were for nerds who played D&D!

astazangasta 7y ago

I agree with this. Kids don't need to learn math. Now we have R, which gives you a foothold. You can build your understanding of linear models, etc., by using them.

m0llusk 7y ago

Adam Grant's book Give and Take suggests that altruists acting over prolonged time periods bring not merely superior but optimal rewards to themselves and their group. Group selection may also be involved but hard science now strongly suggests that altruism brings great benefit to individuals when the full situation is taken into account.

toasterlovin 7y ago
The altruism things is actually pretty easy to understand with one simple fact: it takes way less energy to destroy something than it does to create something. So if you can have an arrangement where everybody agrees to just go about their business and create things, rather than constantly trying to destroy other people and their things, then it's hugely beneficial in sum. The caveat is that the viability of such an arrangement depends on an ecological niche not being at capacity; the game not being zero sum, in other words. If you're playing a zero sum game, then things become nasty and brutish pretty quickly.

paganel 7y ago

> One of the people who helped me the most was Margaret Mead, of all people, the great anthropologist. When the American Anthropological Association had its meeting and was entertaining a resolution to condemn sociobiology, at least human applications of it, she rose to ask: Are you out of your minds? Are you actually going to judge a piece of science according to political ideology? And they voted it down. I'm not sure this would happen again in this day and age of people mixing pseudo-politics with almost anything.

chengiz 7y ago
And sometimes with good reason. If someone comes up with evidence based research that, say, blacks are less intelligent than whites, should that be supported? Science does not exist in a vacuum.
- vajrabum 7y ago
  That would be more convincing if someone came up with a supportable notion of what intelligence is and then validated that some testing instrument could reliably measure it across cultures. So far not so much. IQ tests have their uses but they don't exactly measure intelligence.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    But suppose they did? Suppose we find a well defined and a very valuable trait. And got a well validated test for that. And uncovered a fact what some group of people are worse off in that trait in general than some other group. What should be done about those particular findings and that research in general if group of people in question is historically disadvantaged? And that trait is applicable to the areas they are disadvantaged in? Suppose you want to improve the situation and make outcomes more equal (or opportunities more equal, or say you are evil and want the opposite, or whatever actual effect you want to achieve). Do you think you would have better success knowing the facts or not knowing them? You can say it might be better not to know some facts because they give people who want opposite things more leverage. Sure. I disagree with that tactics, but it might work if not for the following: how would you know which facts to deny them if you don't know what the facts are? Only way that move can make sense if you secretly suspect what the outcome of the research would be and think that it will be detrimental to your preferences.