Comment by donbright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by donbright | Hacker News Reader

You know what's funny is how many topics on 'hacker news' are basically questions of sociology or anthropology or economics or psychology. If you could make some kind of AI that would color the comments here based on what academic discipline they were most closely linked to, I think it would just be a sea of colors that fall under the 'humanities' or 'liberal arts' umbrella.

It's not that people aren't deeply interested in these topics. It's just.... maybe academia's current model doesn't work so well anymore. Woudln't be the first time scholarship as a profession adapted to changing society. I hate that it will happen, I hate what we are losing... but I feel like the fundamentals are strong in the long term. You can go to a book store or library ... the books that have staying power represent the ideas that have staying power, and software products that have a life time of 7 years (which is what a lot of classes selling themselves as STEM actually teach) do not make the long term cut in the marketplace of important ideas.

The biggest difference between STEM and everything else is the issue of externalities. Heck, even within STEM you see a spectrum based on externalities.

What do I mean? Major in biology and do life-saving research. Unless you can translate that into a biotech patent (or better yet, a biotech company) you won't see much in the way of compensation. The same goes for the humanities and much of the social sciences. Unless the work you do can be directly captured and used to generate profit, you won't be compensated adequately. The positive externalities you produce that benefit society come right out of your own pocket.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have people doing CS and mathematical finance working as quants for banks like Goldman Sachs or people studying geo engineering and working in oil/gas/mineral exploration. There you are capturing everything for your employer and pushing the negative externalities on society. Little wonder that those happen to be some of the most lucrative opportunities for STEM grads.

Are you saying that engineering has no benefit to society?

> Are you saying that engineering has no benefit to society?

Surely it has. But you are compensated for it, because it has a financial benefit for some company.

Those topics are intrinsically harder and more intractable. They deal with far more complex and chaotic systems. This is the fundamental issue.

Looking at it this way, it isn't surprising that humanity has a much less productive grasp of such subjects. The topics are of great interest, but it is difficult to make substantial, concrete progress.

This doesn't mean we should give up. It just means we should expect to struggle greatly as we seek to move forward in these areas.

Another important lesson is the value of the indirect approach. Progress and changes from other domains can have a massive impact in the long run, sometimes even dwarfing the majority of efforts from those who are working directly on the thing. I think we need to study these dynamics more.

It's also important to remember that fundamentally, humanities are a part of cultural production and reproduction. Anything that can be rigorously proven migrates to the realm of science. Humanities are by definition supposed to construct knowledge that guides our decision-making about issues where no certainty is possible.

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