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> Anecdotally I've seen people coming from a heavy STEM background struggle with nuance and ambiguity more than people coming from a well-rounded or heavy human
by worrycue 4y ago
> Anecdotally I've seen people coming from a heavy STEM background struggle with nuance and ambiguity more than people coming from a well-rounded or heavy humanities background.
Engineers deal with ambiguity all the time. They do so in a logical and systematic fashion using statistics and probability. Noise is an unfortunate fact of life.
- FreakLegion 4y agoWe're talking about undergraduate degree programs, which for STEM consist substantially of problem sets and tests that have right answers. Sometimes they're just answers, sometimes they're more like Pareto frontiers, sometimes they're programs, but in any case the bulk of the work is verifiable, which is a luxury. It's a bit (but only a bit) like the difference between solving a chess puzzle and actually playing chess. We teach people with puzzles, then send them out into the world to play real games.
- worrycue 4y agoThey do teach statistics in undergrad engineering though.
- FreakLegion 4y agoThey do, substantially in the form of problem sets and tests that have right answers. This is the point; it's not a counterpoint.
- worrycue 4y agoBut the statistics they learn is exactly what they use to deal with noise.
- throwaway173738 4y agoPeople are ambiguous in ways that defy statistical reasoning.