Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackcosgrove | Hacker News Reader

I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.

View on HN

And yet at this moment you are engaged in philosophy.

People should grapple with these questions in a sustained, deliberate way, with reference to what's already been said and where arguments are evaluated critically by many eyes. That's what academia is for.

You can engage in philosophy without having to have a humanities department sucking up tonnes of state money. You can prepare yourself for philosophical and critical thinking without some people leading cushy life doing nothing in state funded humanities departments.

He engaging in philosohpy doesn't necessarily justifies the existence of humanties departments in universities. With spread of internet and MOOCs the first even departments that should cease to exist on state money are the humanities departments.

I'd say the exact opposite: if industry requires trained worker bees, it can pay for their training. It is not our collective responsibility to meet workforce needs. State-funded engineering and CS programs are corporate welfare.

Humanities are the only departments that should exist on tax money.

History is interesting otherwise I generally agree that much of the humanities are opinions masquerading as knowledge.

It's not there is no value in opinions, there is, it's just that people have come to expect the rewards of knowledge for having opinions. And reality doesn't work that way.

You do make my point well. What used to be taught in an arts degree is how to structure an argument, e.g. 'psychology studies cannot be replicated' should really be 'some psychology studies cannot be replicated' use of the existential quantifier changes the statement totally. This used to be taught in a first year philosophy subject, but do they even teach philosophy any more?

You're trying to change the topic based on grammatical nitpicking, while being haughty in the process and ignoring the larger point. I spy an academic!

And for anyone who actually cares about this point, there was a well known study of psychological experiment replicability I was alluding to which should be part of the assumed context for anyone discussing such topics. It is also painfully formalistic to attach qualifiers to every statement when that is not the cant of a forum like this. You should know this, but instead you're latching onto a lingusitic formalism as a defense of your point instead of arguing the point head-on.

Sorry humanities people. The science and technology people are way more useful than you and most of them are smarter than you too. There is no intellectual equivalency between the domains despite the perennial protestations of the humanities faculty.

It's not grammatical nitpicking it's teleological nitpicking. You've made some incredibly broad statements without a shred of evidence, this I grant you is the norm for an internet forum, however it is not something that an arts graduate should be involved in. That was one of the points of an arts degree - critical thinking. Thats one of the reasons they called it an ivory tower imho, because instead of indulging in tabloid rants academics argued in logical progression to make their point.

If we lose this, then it will be a sad day imho.

Edit: PG even wrote a post on this http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com