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I've always been fascinated by people's propensity to write about things they don't know, with the excuse that it's just humanistic sciences. There's a huge bod

I've always been fascinated by people's propensity to write about things they don't know, with the excuse that it's just humanistic sciences. There's a huge body of work that's largely ignored on the Internet, because while the average geek knows a lot about hard sciences, they're very ignorant on humanities (maybe because it's not taken as seriously). (As a side note, it's ironically hard to find out what this guy actually does!)

smacktoward 13y ago
In this particular case it may also have something to do with the LTOV's association with Marxist economics. The only thing Americans are expected to know about anything even vaguely associated with Marxism is that it's bad (mmmkay?), so U.S. educational institutions tend to avoid teaching things in that category to students who aren't specializing in economics. Which leads to Americans coming up with their own labels and descriptions for things that Marx observed and labeled long ago. All of which is too bad, because Marx had a lot of interesting and valuable things to say about the problems of industrial economies (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 for a good introduction), even if the solutions that were tried in his name didn't work out. It just wastes people's time and energy having them spin their wheels re-discovering things he discovered 150 years ago.
zeidrich 13y ago
The average geek doesn't know a lot about hard sciences. The average geek is self taught and knows how to impress other people with scientific language. Rarely do I run into "geeks" that make me think, "Wow, this guy could write a novel paper on this". More often it's more a matter of "Wow, this guy knows just enough to completely misunderstand the subject but speaks like he has all the answers."
- Crito 13y ago
  You should hang out with better geeks. Geeks that do, instead of just talk.
  - themusicgod1 13y ago
    I do not think that you'll find geeks who do without gaping holes in their knowledge.

smacktoward 13y ago

In this particular case it may also have something to do with the LTOV's association with Marxist economics. The only thing Americans are expected to know about anything even vaguely associated with Marxism is that it's bad (mmmkay?), so U.S. educational institutions tend to avoid teaching things in that category to students who aren't specializing in economics. Which leads to Americans coming up with their own labels and descriptions for things that Marx observed and labeled long ago. All of which is too bad, because Marx had a lot of interesting and valuable things to say about the problems of industrial economies (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 for a good introduction), even if the solutions that were tried in his name didn't work out. It just wastes people's time and energy having them spin their wheels re-discovering things he discovered 150 years ago.

zeidrich 13y ago

The average geek doesn't know a lot about hard sciences. The average geek is self taught and knows how to impress other people with scientific language. Rarely do I run into "geeks" that make me think, "Wow, this guy could write a novel paper on this". More often it's more a matter of "Wow, this guy knows just enough to completely misunderstand the subject but speaks like he has all the answers."

Crito 13y ago
You should hang out with better geeks. Geeks that do, instead of just talk.
- themusicgod1 13y ago
  I do not think that you'll find geeks who do without gaping holes in their knowledge.