jesus christ. But also I am singularly unsurprised by this. Try teaching humanities/ethics in STEM dominant environments, and you will confront these attitudes repeatedly from CS/tech/engineering students. Their education is sadly lacking, and the industry makes it worse. - ThreadSky

disabilitystor1.bsky.social • 17 hours ago

jesus christ.
But also I am singularly unsurprised by this.
Try teaching humanities/ethics in STEM dominant environments, and you will confront these attitudes repeatedly from CS/tech/engineering students.
Their education is sadly lacking, and the industry makes it worse.

Reposted from Jordan S. Carroll

the rise of the fascist nerds was anticipated by Ellen Ullman's 1995 essay "Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life."

Comments

rtr.tombob.com•16 hours ago

The whole article is well worth reading, a PDF is at: https://gandt.blogs.brynmawr.edu/files/2009/03/ullman.pdf

jenlooper.com•15 hours ago

1000% agree. There is a gross lack of respect. I was told that at Stanford, humanities students are called “fluffies” or “fuzzies” - I remember calling that out and getting dunked on for it

woollahra.bsky.social•16 hours ago

This results in a pedantic TERF, not a well-rounded gentleman. They will push technically correct code, but not know when to floor the brakes and ask for a review of what's intended or refuse to write code that can be deliberately run to harm people

lynettereid.bsky.social•16 hours ago

Yes I started noticing a few years ago that, when teaching ethics in STEM contexts, I had to back up and try to see if we were all on the same page about the fundamental worth and dignity of every human life.

g0s1.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It’s what happens when you put the $ at the top of the value system and let such business model dictate the education system

catblossom.bsky.social•14 hours ago

My kid is a CS major and he was horrified at both the professor and his fellow students during his one required ethics class. Twice weekly (or more, they had spirited online discussions!) it was the hot topic here at home. 😬

midianitemanna.bsky.social•15 hours ago

They got where they are by being told they were inherently “better” than others - smarter, etc. Everything in their academic “meritocracy” has primed them to value some people differently than others.

dystopos.bsky.social•15 hours ago

I was helping on a service project with a group of volunteers yesterday, and it turns out they’re all in favor of “the purge”.

cgordi.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Da fuqqq

dystopos.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Or maybe just “a purge”. I didn’t interrogate, I just found another area to work in.

disabilitystor1.bsky.social•16 hours ago

Im just always glad when I hear people are teaching ethics in STEM contexts, its a hard job. As to the shift, I wonder if social media normalization of eugenicist rhetoric has something to do with it at all

orman.bsky.social•15 hours ago

On top of all the stuff that came along with Musk taking over the other place, it was disturbingly mainstream back when covid first appeared and people were implicitly saying grandma must be sacrificed so life goes on as "normal"

orman.bsky.social•15 hours ago

People were all for making life harder for others who had "additional conditions" or whatever the term was, and had no idea how expansive that was! And how quickly they could acquire or discover one!

haredurer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Back when I was an English professor, I was talking to an historian who worked at an IT and I asked him how he found teaching there. "The students doing pure sciences, if you can get them into the material, are great. Very supple minds, interesting work. The engineers scare me a bit."

disabilitystor1.bsky.social•15 hours ago

this actually is parallel to my experience. And of course its not all engineers/tech people. But enough to make me believe there is something profoundly wrong with the way tech education operates/we understand and communicate the value of tech over other fields.

davidweinfeld.bsky.social•16 hours ago

I teach humanities in a regional public STEM dominated university in NJ. I haven’t seen this, yet, but what I do see is tremendous apathy and lack of political engagement. Several of my students admitted to me that they didn’t vote in November. And honestly it’s not just the STEM students.

disabilitystor1.bsky.social•16 hours ago

And before you come for me saying "humanities people are awful, too" Im begging you to understand how power works. We live in an increasingly technocultic, not even technocratic, world. We SHOULD be critical of tech education, Big Tech, and how tech today seeks to reshape/exploit the planet.

glebaron.bsky.social•16 hours ago

I teach people that computers and software are very political. Intensive ethics education should be required of all STEM students.

rolferd.bsky.social•16 hours ago

Amen! We’re sucked into a universe where colossal energy drains like AI and cryptocurrency are unquestionably worshipped where they should have been rolled out more slowly, with skepticism, limited application, and thoughtful regulation if at all.

orman.bsky.social•15 hours ago

The worship of those things at least superficially isn't surprising because you know lots of people either are or hope to make lots of money out of it and will propaganda to that end. I just hope that eugenics and the like don't share in those people becoming popular

laprofmme.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Had the world’s most depressing convo with the person hired to teach the one required ethics course to our CS undergrads. Tellingly, young, female, non-TT. And totally unable to break through the complete disdain of students and senior (all-male) faculty

disabilitystor1.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Sigh. Again, unsurprising. And every time I post about this, I get "not all techbros" and "you people in the humanities are awful too". Which...is not the point, and does not convince me there will be any kind of reckoning at any time.

laprofmme.bsky.social•16 hours ago

Let’s just say that in the spring of 2020, I never had a single student in virtual office hours weeping about a humanities prof who decided to double the reading & problem sets “since we’re all at home and you don’t have anything else to do, we can get through more”

tchrgrrrl.bsky.social•16 hours ago

I have stood before students who saw me as an unfit human, and I still tried to teach them useful things.

I tried to work with folks who thought I had been afflicted by God and somehow the spiritual stain would rub off on them.

I have many stories. None of them are good. 😑

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