It makes me smile to see programmers having the same arguments about language that philosophers have been having about stories for three thousand years.
@Mainebot I suspect that many programmers would consider philosophy the least relevant branch of the humanities.
Kind of a real shame.
The humanities in general get endless amounts of shit from other disciplines, but then you see shockingly immoral silicon valley 'disruption' and then suddenly "oh no how could we ever have foreseen this no one could have predicted this," but seriously, a philosophy student, an English major, or even just a rhetorician could have fixed your problem before it started.
@Mainebot @starbreaker Yeah, but humanity majors have basically run the world for the past hundred years. Don't most politicians have backgrounds in Poli sci and law?
From my experience, Poli sci and law are pretty well-removed from what traditionally passes for the humanities.
When I was in school, the only time we had anyone from either discipline in a class was because it was a firm requirement to graduate. Non-participatory, simple classes, in it for the grade. In the same way I had science prerequisites, so I took weather science and statistics.
I am not a meteorologist, nor am I a statistician.
@Mainebot @starbreaker My frustration when I took most history classes was there was no way to prove if you are right, so what is the point? If I disagree with another scientist, I can go into the lab and figure out which one of us is right. Whereas when I took Science, Technology And the World, a history class, it basically felt like every essay was an opinion piece.
@starbreaker @Mainebot @Canageek
So it's not about seeking truth but convincing everyone around you that you've found it.
@drequivalent @Canageek @Mainebot Once you leave physical reality behind truth becomes amorphous.
@Mainebot @drequivalent @starbreaker But how do we know that is correct? It appears to match historical conclusions, but that could just be modelling to fit past trends, and the examples could be cherry picked. If I were setting it up, I would also look for present examples then watch them for a few years to test its predictive power. Also look for counter examples.
@starbreaker @drequivalent @Mainebot I have a number of problems with mandatory humanities for chemists. 1) HEAVY emphasis on writing. Scientists need to communicate, yes. But not all of us are going into scicomm, management, profs etc. Lots of us wind up as lab techs who do experiments and fill out forms. Blocking people from those jobs as they are bad at writing is unreasonable.
@Canageek @starbreaker @drequivalent
I think mandatory science for humanities is a great idea. I'd love to see more scientific writing in the arts, and a less apocalyptically steep learning curve for the arts and humanities to get into the sciences.
@Mainebot @starbreaker @drequivalent The second part of that is a terrible idea. The reason we have a steep learning curve is to filter out those who aren't qualified to have degrees. If anything you should be increasing your difficulty to match ours. I was taking 2nd year history classes as bird courses, since all you had to do was pay attention in class, study a few hours then make a few good arguments in a paper.
@Canageek @starbreaker @drequivalent
I'd agree, but I haven't taken a class in English that was difficult until my 4th year.
I think a 19th-20th century literary theory course for science students would be enormously beneficial.
Get in post-enlightenment and take a hard look. Do some Judith Butler, some Foucault, Slam up against some Derrida for a while.
Maybe even add in a little light sociology.
Horrible stuff sicence has done Show more
Horrible stuff sicence has done Show more
@Canageek @drequivalent @Mainebot Mandatory humanities education isn't only about writing. At least, it shouldn't be.
Remember that bit in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum's character talks about getting so caught up in "can" that "should" goes forgotten?
Ideally, humanities education would give STEM people the tools they need to deal with "should we? " questions and not just "can we?"
Because "can we?" is the easy part.
@starbreaker @drequivalent @Mainebot Writing was a huge part of all four history classes I took. One had biweekly writing assignments, one had two major essays (probably the best bits of writing work I've done), the other had one semester long essay, and the easy first year one had several writing assignments. All of them had essay questions on the exam.
@starbreaker @drequivalent @Mainebot I'm skeptical of humanities being able to provide that answer, since they won't provide evidence for it. Science policy paper on water management: You go out and take water samples and measure them, and prove X method is bad for the people around it as it lets Y contaminants through to hurt people. You can prove that.
@Canageek @drequivalent @starbreaker
Doesn't this sort of assume, a sociological context, that the cultural and social forces that dictate actions are static, homogeneous, and unknown? If the underpinning rules that guide only semi-rational actions are themselves subject to change in unknowable ways, doesn't that mean that a rigorous scientific understanding is out-of-reach?
@Mainebot @drequivalent @starbreaker Right, so how do you use humanities to set policy then if they can't provide a firm answer?
@Canageek @drequivalent @starbreaker
it isn't easy, and it's a matter of constant give and take and reexamination and requires the collaboration of so, so many people in so many fields.
Lately, this is all fucked up and you aren't getting the right people in the right jobs. Just people versed in law and politics.
ideally, science and sociology work together. Philosophy and technology.
In reality, away from metrics, there is no right answer. there's just the best we can do right now.
@Mainebot @drequivalent @starbreaker I think if humanities wants respect they need to start talking in language and methods people in STEM can understand, and start providing provable evidence. Also scientists shouldn't be able to jump over and take your classes, do half the work of our easiest classes and get A+s. It makes it real hard to respect it when humanities majors claim it is just as hard.
@starbreaker @drequivalent @Mainebot (Of course, two people dropped out of my year of chemistry to do pure math, and I also took CPU design as an easy elective compared to chemistry, so it might just be Chem is a really hard degree)
@Canageek @Mainebot @drequivalent
Who say they can't? Immanuel Kant argued for treating people as ends in themselves rather than as means to an end. John Rawls argued for the "veil of ignorance" that one should design policy on the assumption that they won't be the one to benefit from said policy.
Conversely, how do you use science to determine policy when the experiment requires testing on human populations and getting informed consent would distort the results?
@starbreaker @Mainebot @drequivalent Model systems would be popular. Or do it in a small, uninhabited area. (Canada has several lakes devoted to this). Computer simulations. Or past data. Usually we have to fight for years after the fact to get anyone to listen.
Or you find countries similar in most ways but with different policies.
@drequivalent @Mainebot @starbreaker To be honest though, I think a lot of our informed consent laws go to far, and should be based on harm done. But that is based more in Soc Sci, which isn't real science anyway. (Really. It had a different name until Science got prestigious then changed its name to get more respect)
@Canageek @starbreaker @drequivalent
Shouldn't the people who the policy is going to affect have a direct say on the implementation of that policy? Arbitrarily subjecting people to it because the science was there ignores the human component entirely.
Like, historically, that hasn't really worked out well for the marginalized individuals.
Also, the data can be interpreted in a way favorable to some, and not to others. It doesn't speak for itself.
@Mainebot @starbreaker @drequivalent They should be consulted, but I'm VERY skeptical of that as it has lead to more harm being done to people REPEATEDLY. See: Vaccination laws. People demanded it not be mandatory, when the science clearly saws that is best for everyone, doubly so marginalized people.
Other examples: Calgary recently stopped fluorinating its water due to public demand. The childhood cavity rate went up by over 200% in a year.
@Canageek @Mainebot @drequivalent Those are clear-cut cases compared to shit like tax policy.
Economics isn't real science, either. It's ideology dressed up in statistics.
@starbreaker @Mainebot @drequivalent My definition of real science is "Natural Philosophy", ie the physical world. I think other disciplines benefit from our approach, but should get their own name. Engineering doesn't pretend to be science, and no one claims it gets less respect because of it.
@Canageek @Mainebot @drequivalent I agree with you re science as natural philosophy. But getting back to an earlier point, once you get away from the bare metal of physical reality and involve the human element, finding truth becomes a lot more complicated. Science alone isn't enough, but the humanities aren't enough either.
At the very least, I've yet to see a humanities major who wouldn’t benefit from training in formal logic.
@starbreaker @Mainebot @drequivalent I thought you got that? A CS prof told me that he found philosophy majors usually did well in his class due to formal logic training.
@Canageek @Mainebot @drequivalent I guess I should have mentioned that I was a CS major. I wanted to be a writer, but realized I needed to earn a living, so I chose my major accordingly.
Of course I dropped out halfway through because I was lonely, miserable, and had a programming job offer that would at least let me be lonely and miserable in my own apartment.
But not all humanities/liberal arts types get the training in formal logic that comes from studying philosophy.
@starbreaker @Mainebot @drequivalent Makes sense. I was a chem major and thought to do a minor in CS, took about half of the needed courses, but knew they got SUPER hard in 3rd year when they switched from 'for everyone' to 'lets write a compiler as a project' so I took history classes instead. They always seemed like if you actually put a decent amount of time into them, it was hard to fail.
@drequivalent @Mainebot @starbreaker Like, I'd get an essay, start on it a few weeks before it was due, read parts of six or seven books on it, then write it up over the course of a week. English majors I talked to (including one who went to grad school at OXFORD) seemed to think you wrote the essay first, then found sources, and you did it all the night before.
@Canageek @starbreaker @drequivalent
I'm an English major with a minor in print and digital publishing, along with two degrees in creative writing. I've never found it difficult, but it's my vocation.
I was told it was a waste, useless, it wouldn't get me anywhere etc etc, so of course now I have a career in marketing, writing professionally.
I've done essays both ways. One gets you a B if you're paying attention. The other gets you grants and bursaries.
@Mainebot @starbreaker @drequivalent Yeah, the people I know who tried that in chemistry DID pass, but barely. I once lowered my mark in lab class from A+ to A- by putting off too many lab reports until the end of the semester and doing them all at once.
@Canageek @starbreaker @drequivalent
The problem wasn't the act, the problem was an ignorant people making a decision. The answer isn't to remove the ability to choose, because that's totalitarianism. You don't even need to take that to a logical extreme to see that's a bad idea.
@Mainebot @starbreaker @drequivalent Oh, I agree. However, populism scares me about 80% as much as totalitarianism. We are in an age where expertise is despised and the idea is that the public knows just as much or better then an expert in the field.
@drequivalent @starbreaker @Mainebot Which terrifies me. Scientists have been warning about climate change since the 90s, and no one listens as everything thinks they know better. Vaccines. Etc. I would like a way of establishing a respect for expertise more without becoming totalitarian.
@Canageek @drequivalent @starbreaker
This is crashing into the real problem now. An educated populace. I have no clear answer, except a slash in military funding to subsidize post-secondary education.
@Mainebot @drequivalent @Canageek what about K-12 education? What about the anti-intellectualism in our culture that leads to kids who care more about their studies than they do about being social with other kids getting marginalized?
@starbreaker @Mainebot @drequivalent Related problems? If you increase how much power scientists have, we are GOING to ask for more K-12 science focus, AND more funding for it. PLUS that makes science more prestigious, which leads to more kids wanting to go into it. Look how much less marginalized computer geeks are now then in the 90s?
@starbreaker @Canageek @drequivalent
Clearly it needs better funding too. Like, as a given.
@Mainebot @starbreaker @drequivalent But yeah, I'm not sure that the current approach of science outreach focusing on being "one of you" is the best approach? The whole break down the ivory tower might work to make it more accessible, but also works to remove the ideal that hey, we know more then you, when we say this will hurt you, listen dammit.
@Canageek @Mainebot @starbreaker
That's Thomas Kuhn, IIRC.
@starbreaker @drequivalent @Mainebot Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. One of the things we discussed was a model of how scientific thought develops. The idea was there is a padiagram that is developed that fits current thinking. Then most people will defend it, as more holes are poked in it, eventually it will tear and a new one developed.