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>should we close scientific research labs because they're cost centers? Should we forbid exploratory work because it lacks a clear road to shareholder value? c

>should we close scientific research labs because they're cost centers? Should we forbid exploratory work because it lacks a clear road to shareholder value? closing implies the government does it by force, my point is that things that provide value- whether economic or more abstract, will be fine without government subsidizing it. Research labs have proven ROI and benefits for society, humanity majors no so much. If humanities majors had so much value companies would be paying for them or other nations governments would be recruiting these debt ridden students and poaching them to benefit their own country Like I said, people can learn anything humanities related by reading free resources online. No need to rack up massive amounts of debt to do that The fact you have to make a value judgement of it being "reprehensible" and act like without humanities majors we'll be "a world where value is a pure function of expected production" is a sign of a weak argument. It's a very common argument style I see of people stuck in the past with rose-tinted views of what college is about

woodruffw 4y ago
> If humanities majors had so much value companies would be paying for them or other nations governments would be recruiting these debt ridden students and poaching them to benefit their own country They do, all the time: as journalists, economists, political dissidents and, most saliently in this context, programmers. It turns out that obtaining a well-rounded education means that those who can program (or perform other technical roles) do so better than their purely technical counterparts! You can learn anything online, with enough effort, discipline, and engagement from others. Lots of people try to learn programming (not Computer Science, just the technical aspect of programming) online each year, and I'd wager that the overwhelming majority fair. It turns out that the classroom environment is conducive to learning in ways that self-directed online learning is not! Yes, it is a value judgment. It is one I stand by: it is reprehensible to eliminate sources of value in our society just because we don't have an instrument capable of measuring them. One wonders how many fewer adolescents and young adults would be inspired to study aerospace should Tom Wolfe have been told to study it instead of writing The Right Stuff; one also wonders whether we'd even be having this conversation over the Internet were it not for a bunch of "worthless" philosophizing in Viennese cafes over the nature of mathematical structure.

woodruffw 4y ago

> If humanities majors had so much value companies would be paying for them or other nations governments would be recruiting these debt ridden students and poaching them to benefit their own country They do, all the time: as journalists, economists, political dissidents and, most saliently in this context, programmers. It turns out that obtaining a well-rounded education means that those who can program (or perform other technical roles) do so better than their purely technical counterparts! You can learn anything online, with enough effort, discipline, and engagement from others. Lots of people try to learn programming (not Computer Science, just the technical aspect of programming) online each year, and I'd wager that the overwhelming majority fair. It turns out that the classroom environment is conducive to learning in ways that self-directed online learning is not! Yes, it is a value judgment. It is one I stand by: it is reprehensible to eliminate sources of value in our society just because we don't have an instrument capable of measuring them. One wonders how many fewer adolescents and young adults would be inspired to study aerospace should Tom Wolfe have been told to study it instead of writing The Right Stuff; one also wonders whether we'd even be having this conversation over the Internet were it not for a bunch of "worthless" philosophizing in Viennese cafes over the nature of mathematical structure.