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Comment by 7952 | Hacker News Reader

A scientific predication is not enough to make a decision in these kind of cases.

For example, consider the building of a wind farm...

* The site is on the migration path of a species of endangered goose. You can model the number likely to be killed.

* Climate change is a problem. You can model the effect on the atmosphere of CO2 emissions.

* The turbines will be visible from a beauty spot and could effect tourism. You can model where the turbines are visible.

* People think that turbines are really ugly. You can quantity this with a questionnaire.

Lots of scientific predication and analysis going on here. But none of that tells you what you should actually do about these issues. It doesn't tell you how many geese you are allowed to kill to reduce CO2 Any more than science can be tell you what flavor of ice cream to eat. It is a question of morality, geography, asthetics, sociology and politics. Why wouldn't you want to understand those things?

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If I know all of the above mentioned quantifiable objective variables with a reasonable accuracy I can make a much more informed decision.

Again, why do I need humanities for that decision? What are the solutions they have to offer? How can they do anything else than to say "You have to do it that way, because we say so"?

If they say "this solution is morally right, ascetically beautiful, sociologically correct and politically desirable" aren't they imposing their own subjective unverifiable "truths" onto others?

Just as having an in depth understanding of mathematics, physics, or engineering helps us to make more informed decisions, so too do the humanities. Fields of study such as philosophy, sociology, or aesthetics do not attempt to establish, as you put it, subjective unverifiable "truths" (to do so would be quite infeasible in the first place). Instead they allow for discussion and aggregation of information and reasoned opinions, so that a comprehensive understanding of the field and its many schools of thought may be reached.

Coming back to the wind farm, even once we have the objective variables, the decision we make will be based on factors of morality, geography, aesthetics, sociology and politics. By having a broad understanding of these fields and the various paradigms contained within them, we can produce a more informed decision than if these aspect were ignored completely.

In a problem that lacks definitive truth you have to apply subjective thinking. That is all you have left. And the wind farm is a good example of that. There is no scientific truth that means we have to care about threatened species, or the effect on tourism, or even climate change. Deciding to care about those things is a subjective decision. If you look at things from a higher level of abstraction the certainty just fades away.

I don't see the point in defending the humanities as some utilitarian tool. It is always a good idea to become more educated, and to try and understand the world a little beter from different perspectives.

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