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Parent's point was that while those phrases sound like word jumble to some, they actually have very specific and well-understood meanings. Imagine a non-techie

Parent's point was that while those phrases sound like word jumble to some, they actually have very specific and well-understood meanings. Imagine a non-techie person listen to two software engineers talking. Closures, event bubbling, monads, abstract classes - they'd say the same thing. Can someone without CS / programming knowledge really judge a good abstraction versus a bad one? Similarly, it's arrogant of us to assume we can do the same in the humanities, because it means we assume the humanities are easy / trivial and so on, which they are not. It's like the "my kid could paint that" cliche of Modernist painting - maybe your kid could, but, you saying that just indicates that you aren't educated about what the artist is doing, why they choose to do it, and the previous works of art the artist is responding to or in dialogue with. Kind of like, "why can't everything be HTML/CSS, with maybe a little JQuery?" Sure, you have a point, but there are clearly more sophisticated use-cases where that approach is not the most effective, and, your saying that kinda indicates you may not have encountered or had to deal with those use-cases. Truth be told I think computer science, at least the parts of it where you get to create abstractions which then define the bounds of what is possible within that programming paradigm (see - word jumble!) is closer to the "soft" humanities than many are aware of or would care to see. Tech folks tend to love/desire "certainty" in one form another, and, the easiest way to achieve that is to rule out everything which is "uncertain", and, constrain your domain until "certainty" can be achieved. Which can be a great approach for certain technical problems, but also IMHO results in ignorant behavior towards anything which threatens said certainty.

pgwhalen 6y ago
I enjoyed this comment - as someone that is occasionally skeptical of these lofty ideas in the humanities, the analogy to abstractions/concepts in programming never occurred to me. On the certainty thing, though - I see what you're saying about tech folks desiring certainty, but I've also found that quantitative or hard-science thinkers are often very good at dealing with uncertainty. One reason being that they have the strongest sense of what true certainty is, and the ability to measure uncertainty relative to that. For example, proving the efficacy of a vaccine: we really can be extremely certain that a vaccine is effective. Other areas of study (that I believe are still entirely valid and important), just can't achieve that level of rigor. I should note my views may be skewed as the entirety of my career has been as a software engineer at an options trading firm, where we are buying and selling uncertainty in a sense, so we have to be comfortable with it. After writing that all out.. maybe I'm just confirming you example of constraining uncertainty until there can be certainty, or at least a well-quantified form of uncertainty.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Thank you! Much appreciated. > I've also found that quantitative or hard-science thinkers are often very good at dealing with uncertainty. One reason being that they have the strongest sense of what true certainty is, and the ability to measure uncertainty relative to that. That's an excellent point and I agree with you. My statement about tech folks and certainty was a bit too broad, tbh, and maybe expresses some personal frustration as much as anything. At the end of the day we're all human and vulnerable to the same tricks of psychology and human foibles. [EDIT: I want to share in a quote another poster shared that's relevant to our discussion: 'Math is hard because it is easy. The humanities are easy because they are hard.' It's not just about math being quantifiable, but that there's a much lower barrier of entry to discuss "the humanities" - justice, ethics, the meaning of life, etc. Maybe a good analogy would be we can all discuss the weather, but that means sometimes we think meteorologists are just quacks? : )]. [EDIT EDIT: If interested in learning more about the humanities I highly recommend the Socratic dialogues as starting point. They're still the foundation of all Western Philosophy, including the postmodern stuff people love to hate on. They're pretty approachable and interesting and readable and short and don't have any jargon, really. A course of some kind is ideal but you could read them on your own.]

pgwhalen 6y ago

I enjoyed this comment - as someone that is occasionally skeptical of these lofty ideas in the humanities, the analogy to abstractions/concepts in programming never occurred to me. On the certainty thing, though - I see what you're saying about tech folks desiring certainty, but I've also found that quantitative or hard-science thinkers are often very good at dealing with uncertainty. One reason being that they have the strongest sense of what true certainty is, and the ability to measure uncertainty relative to that. For example, proving the efficacy of a vaccine: we really can be extremely certain that a vaccine is effective. Other areas of study (that I believe are still entirely valid and important), just can't achieve that level of rigor. I should note my views may be skewed as the entirety of my career has been as a software engineer at an options trading firm, where we are buying and selling uncertainty in a sense, so we have to be comfortable with it. After writing that all out.. maybe I'm just confirming you example of constraining uncertainty until there can be certainty, or at least a well-quantified form of uncertainty.

adamsea 6y ago
Thank you! Much appreciated. > I've also found that quantitative or hard-science thinkers are often very good at dealing with uncertainty. One reason being that they have the strongest sense of what true certainty is, and the ability to measure uncertainty relative to that. That's an excellent point and I agree with you. My statement about tech folks and certainty was a bit too broad, tbh, and maybe expresses some personal frustration as much as anything. At the end of the day we're all human and vulnerable to the same tricks of psychology and human foibles. [EDIT: I want to share in a quote another poster shared that's relevant to our discussion: 'Math is hard because it is easy. The humanities are easy because they are hard.' It's not just about math being quantifiable, but that there's a much lower barrier of entry to discuss "the humanities" - justice, ethics, the meaning of life, etc. Maybe a good analogy would be we can all discuss the weather, but that means sometimes we think meteorologists are just quacks? : )]. [EDIT EDIT: If interested in learning more about the humanities I highly recommend the Socratic dialogues as starting point. They're still the foundation of all Western Philosophy, including the postmodern stuff people love to hate on. They're pretty approachable and interesting and readable and short and don't have any jargon, really. A course of some kind is ideal but you could read them on your own.]