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.
@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.
@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 @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 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.
