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Intellectual humility is a beautiful thing. Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world. It makes engineers run tests and s

Intellectual humility is a beautiful thing. Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world. It makes engineers run tests and scientists run experiments. What better way is there to get people to question their own knowledge but by showing them other viewpoints? It also arrogantly presupposes the professor's intellectual environment to be less bubble-like than the students' I think the professor's intellectual environment is a different kind of bubble. Maybe it's a higher level of dogma, but we need students to believe in themselves while simultaneously understanding that what they believe could be wrong.

mkramlich 16y ago
> Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world. In some cases, agreed. However, in other cases, it seems to do just the opposite: it seems to introduce new or enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies. From my perspective, it appears to happen most often with the so-called "soft" sciences, and most especially in things like literature and gender/race and non-mainstream sexual studies. There's very much a cult-like aspect to some academic fields, making them have more of the characteristics of a religion than of science.
- danenania 16y ago
  Math and hard sciences also introduce and enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies and exhibit cult-like qualities--for example, a belief that other disciplines are less intellectually important or serious. Don't get me wrong, math and the hard sciences certainly provide extremely important and foundational knowledge, but the prevalence of egotism and nerd machismo in these fields is as obnoxious to me as the flakiness that can be found in 'softer' fields. Alas, I agree that it's all a big ripoff anyway. Just another entrenched, obsolete business model waiting to be put out of its misery.
  - entangld 16y ago
    Problems regarding close-mindedness of different disciplines are complaints shared among the educated. But some uninformed people believe many things that are factually unsupported (vaccine myths, economic myths, etc). These are not things that educated people argue about. People who argue without any factual or reasonable theoretical basis do not better our society.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

mkramlich 16y ago

> Education usually blasts away many natural preconceived notions about the world. In some cases, agreed. However, in other cases, it seems to do just the opposite: it seems to introduce new or enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies. From my perspective, it appears to happen most often with the so-called "soft" sciences, and most especially in things like literature and gender/race and non-mainstream sexual studies. There's very much a cult-like aspect to some academic fields, making them have more of the characteristics of a religion than of science.

danenania 16y ago
Math and hard sciences also introduce and enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies and exhibit cult-like qualities--for example, a belief that other disciplines are less intellectually important or serious. Don't get me wrong, math and the hard sciences certainly provide extremely important and foundational knowledge, but the prevalence of egotism and nerd machismo in these fields is as obnoxious to me as the flakiness that can be found in 'softer' fields. Alas, I agree that it's all a big ripoff anyway. Just another entrenched, obsolete business model waiting to be put out of its misery.
- entangld 16y ago
  Problems regarding close-mindedness of different disciplines are complaints shared among the educated. But some uninformed people believe many things that are factually unsupported (vaccine myths, economic myths, etc). These are not things that educated people argue about. People who argue without any factual or reasonable theoretical basis do not better our society.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]