4 ms·

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc. Stem is actually merely the brawn for the humanities brain. Stem without the humanities is a baby with a gun.

WalterBright 3mo ago
I haven't noticed that liberal arts majors are better at deciding whether to build a bomb or a bridge. Just look at all the boneheaded decisions by government.
- Brian_K_White 3mo ago
  A supposedly smart engineer type should be smart enough to spot the hole in this argument in their sleep. "You need flour to make a cake." "I have plenty of flour and it never turned into a cake." You have observed that it's possible to be educated and unwise. Any individual may or may not be worth a damn at anything regardless of anything. But you very rarely arrive at wisdom just by ignorant native intuition. At best some people are naturally well-intentioned, but being well intentioned in ignorance isn't very good. You're just easy for everyone else to manipulate. It works the other way too. If you want to be effective at abusing and manipulating everyone else, you are a lot more effective at your negative goals if you aren't ignorant. Basically there is no way to spin it that being ignorant is better than being educated.
  - WalterBright 3mo ago
    > Basically there is no way to spin it that being ignorant is better than being educated. Being educated in things that are not true is worse than being ignorant. For example, advocacy of things like socialism that do not work.
    - Brian_K_White 3mo ago
      It's just as important to know untrue things as true things. Believing untrue things is something else entirely, and the only way to know the difference...is to be fucking educated instead of ignorant. Simply being experienced is also being educated. I didn't say any particular method of becoming educated. Being eductaed does not mean "someone else tells you something and you adopt it end program".
wannabe44 3mo ago
> The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc. That's just the justification they give for their existence. You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that. The only reason humanities departments are this big today is because of the biological waste who can't make it to STEM or any other useful profession. If we limit humanities to classicists, linguists etc... whose work is actually rigorous and not just peddling political nonsense, humanities would not have such a bad rap.
- XorNot 3mo ago
  > You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that. I like how this criticism can never point to anything real, people just make something up and then assign an implausibly large budget to it and then say everyone is doing that.
  - wannabe44 3mo ago
    Good that you asked, I found even worse wastages of your taxpayer money. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/1d69a970-812a-4325-bb98-b2196a0ee3e4 https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/1d69a970-812a-43... Or let's talk about our own field: https://www.felienne.com/archives/8470 https://www.felienne.com/archives/8470 Everyone knows how ridiculous anti-science, anti-logic, and anti-progress propaganda has gotten. Anyone arguing otherwise is engaging in bad faith rhetoric. Aside- the right had all the chances to be the side of science and logic, given how left-liberals deny genetics and realities of evolution. Alas, they have worse issues.
- vineyardmike 3mo ago
  > You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' I like how we just make up fake arguments in incoherent grammar as a reason to criticize the humanities. There'd be irony there if people still were taught what that meant. > just peddling political nonsense Is this because the word liberal is in the name? Because that's not what that word means in this context.
BuyMyBitcoins 3mo ago
>“The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc.” This sounds good, but I suspect this is only applicable on a surface level due to the fact that the decision making will involve an extensive amount of stem-based analysis.
- Brian_K_White 3mo ago
  Agreed that stem is a tool. Tools help accomplish goals. Tools do not set goals.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

WalterBright 3mo ago

I haven't noticed that liberal arts majors are better at deciding whether to build a bomb or a bridge. Just look at all the boneheaded decisions by government.

Brian_K_White 3mo ago
A supposedly smart engineer type should be smart enough to spot the hole in this argument in their sleep. "You need flour to make a cake." "I have plenty of flour and it never turned into a cake." You have observed that it's possible to be educated and unwise. Any individual may or may not be worth a damn at anything regardless of anything. But you very rarely arrive at wisdom just by ignorant native intuition. At best some people are naturally well-intentioned, but being well intentioned in ignorance isn't very good. You're just easy for everyone else to manipulate. It works the other way too. If you want to be effective at abusing and manipulating everyone else, you are a lot more effective at your negative goals if you aren't ignorant. Basically there is no way to spin it that being ignorant is better than being educated.
- WalterBright 3mo ago
  > Basically there is no way to spin it that being ignorant is better than being educated. Being educated in things that are not true is worse than being ignorant. For example, advocacy of things like socialism that do not work.
  - Brian_K_White 3mo ago
    It's just as important to know untrue things as true things. Believing untrue things is something else entirely, and the only way to know the difference...is to be fucking educated instead of ignorant. Simply being experienced is also being educated. I didn't say any particular method of becoming educated. Being eductaed does not mean "someone else tells you something and you adopt it end program".

wannabe44 3mo ago

> The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc. That's just the justification they give for their existence. You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that. The only reason humanities departments are this big today is because of the biological waste who can't make it to STEM or any other useful profession. If we limit humanities to classicists, linguists etc... whose work is actually rigorous and not just peddling political nonsense, humanities would not have such a bad rap.

XorNot 3mo ago
> You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that. I like how this criticism can never point to anything real, people just make something up and then assign an implausibly large budget to it and then say everyone is doing that.
- wannabe44 3mo ago
  Good that you asked, I found even worse wastages of your taxpayer money. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/1d69a970-812a-4325-bb98-b2196a0ee3e4 https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/1d69a970-812a-43... Or let's talk about our own field: https://www.felienne.com/archives/8470 https://www.felienne.com/archives/8470 Everyone knows how ridiculous anti-science, anti-logic, and anti-progress propaganda has gotten. Anyone arguing otherwise is engaging in bad faith rhetoric. Aside- the right had all the chances to be the side of science and logic, given how left-liberals deny genetics and realities of evolution. Alas, they have worse issues.
vineyardmike 3mo ago
> You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' I like how we just make up fake arguments in incoherent grammar as a reason to criticize the humanities. There'd be irony there if people still were taught what that meant. > just peddling political nonsense Is this because the word liberal is in the name? Because that's not what that word means in this context.

BuyMyBitcoins 3mo ago

>“The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc.” This sounds good, but I suspect this is only applicable on a surface level due to the fact that the decision making will involve an extensive amount of stem-based analysis.

Brian_K_White 3mo ago
Agreed that stem is a tool. Tools help accomplish goals. Tools do not set goals.

deleted 3mo ago

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