Great article. I'm an English major; most of my colleagues in tech policy were humanities majors. There's a lot to be said about the need for more humanities perspectives in crafting policy, but most underrated is this: humanities lets you understand *people.* And that's not optional. - ThreadSky

mrose.ink • 1 day ago

Great article. I'm an English major; most of my colleagues in tech policy were humanities majors.

There's a lot to be said about the need for more humanities perspectives in crafting policy, but most underrated is this: humanities lets you understand *people.* And that's not optional.

Reposted from David M. Perry

"Learn to code" was always bad advice, unless you actually like to code. College students have the best chance of professional success if they major in topics that interest them. Today in @startribune.com. Please tell high school students and parents.

www.startribune.com/what-should-...

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thelongshot2112.bsky.social•1 day ago

One of the best coders I knew in my young career was a poly-Sci major.

joshzenker.com•1 day ago

In my case, he was a mentor early in my career, and he got his degree in theater. I can never repay him for all the knowledge he imparted to me.

calisalvo.com•1 day ago

You talk about it as “humanities” in my college, we talked about it as “being a liberal arts college/university” where your gen ed requirements included a lot of those humanities courses that helped you understand people. The problem then was the people who scorned the gen eds as wasteful.

mrose.ink•1 day ago

The superpower of the humanities (particularly history) is that you learn to spot the common threads of human nature that link us to our own past. Once you know that, you can start to see the rhythm and the rhyme of history, and you can, in a very general way, make better guesses about the future.

mrose.ink•1 day ago

For better and for worse, people have always been people. We're just as animated by love, hatred, fear, greed, charity, and curiosity as we always have been. We've always told stories to make sense of the world. We've always laughed at dick jokes and cried at sad stories. It's just us.

daedricnonsense.bsky.social•1 day ago

I was an engineering undergrad. From my POV, if you want to understand how to make something or how something was made, study engineering. If you want to understand why you should make something or why something was made, study humanities.

joshzenker.com•1 day ago

They’re not mutually exclusive. I would argue that you must know why you’re making something in order to make it properly. Distressingly few of my fellow computer science majors seemed to understand this in the required ethics course we took.

daedricnonsense.bsky.social•1 day ago

I satisfied my humanities requirement with a class called Ethics of International Affairs. It sent me down a path to learn about epistemology and ethics in my own time and has had a way bigger impact on how I live than Microelectronic Circuits.

barlowadams.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yes!

adelebuck.com•1 day ago

My undergrad degree was in theater performance. And yes, it helped me understand people. It also helped make me a solid public speaker which helped my career a lot.

rockshrimp.bsky.social•1 day ago

I was a Communications major. I work in marketing for science/techy things and it's crazy how important being able integrate understanding of people and basic understanding science has been in my career and how under-promoted it is as an avenue for people to nourish.

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