When facing the "All we need is STEM!" approach to education, my usual response is: Developing the vaccine was the STEM problem; distribution & getting shots in arms was the Social Science problem; getting people to trust it & combatting misinformation was the Humanities problem-- which did we fail?
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'Socrates Gone Mad' indeed. Dude was, by credible account, a walking fuck-you to society, and I would listen to him berate me for hours if I could. ...wouldn't understand a word, because I don't speak ancient Greek, but...y'know...
Pre-college I was more, "I JUST WANT TO PROGRAM", but some of my favorite classes ended up being non-STEM classes
Good technical products, low user friendliness interface and remote.
any education that provides insight on reducing human suffering rather than providing status and gatekeeping is going to have a harder time getting funded.
My new job has me working with hard right science skeptics. I hate hearing them speak through the cubicle walls. It's just ignorance and anger.
The work is different, not better. Hardest class I've EVER taken was a Victorian Lit class. Because we all have different talents.
Just because your experience was hard to learn does not mean it is the only experience hard to learn
Because a person with a background in social psychology can tell me a lot more about anti-vax thinking, for instance,than I can try to reason myself.
I also think there is something very close to the heart of the human condition expressed in literature. It's not easy.
https://theangrynoodle.com/words-are-powerful-things/
And that's exactly what happens! You end up internalizing it, and it's horrible for you.
Like, there's an answer. It's objectively right or wrong. No rebuttals or conflict of principles. I'm good at arguing but it can feel like a curse.
Literature has none of that. There are multiple points of view, different underlying philosophies.
Anyway, interfacing with tech bros was incredibly difficult because of the sort of institutional arrogance. 100x worse than finance (well, trading side). It was exhausting.
The woods are good.
(Let's not talk about Physical Anthropology lab, though. One bone looked like another to me!)
I bet there is some crossover between physical anthros and sculpture.
But Shakespeare is hard, Victorian Lit is dense and difficult. I love transcendental lit, but it requires thinking through feeling. It's HARD.
So many STEM people go with "couldn't cut it, huh".
No, it's that maybe, just maybe they don't care about the Fast Fourier Transform and Euler. Just like you don't care about Wuthering Heights.
THEM: The humanities are just distractions from science, schools only need to teach technical skills!
THEM, A LITTLE LATER: Why is my son's entire grasp of history based on YouTube videos from "ReichWing88"?
Unless you mean we need more revolutionary education, to which I'd agree. The system itself won't provide that education.
So, onward sHteAm soldiers?
The MIT faculty, 70% or more engineers and scientists, require our students to take 25% of their coursework in social science, arts and/or humanities.
Ideally, it’d be both, but if I had to choose, it’d be philosophy.