Comment by DudeOpotomus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DudeOpotomus | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity.

In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate.

People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real.

Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.

I agree with your axioms but not your conclusion.

People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this.

I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department.

Edit:

Forgot to add my second point: AI is going to let people outside the mainstream produce genuinely credible, professional-level work without a massive budget.

That means further devaluing of establishment institutions like humanities departments. It strips away the gatekeeping power, deciding who gets to count as legit. AI blows that up.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted. Art degrees aren't aimed at artists. There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degrees, but those aren't the sort of humanities degrees that we're talking about.

I vaguely recall even creative art degrees as being looked down upon by artists as teaching you to conform to certain styles, essentially mimicry rather than creativity (though it has been some years since anyone in my network attended one).

In any case, despite the waxing philosophical of the personal growth value of a humanities degree, there's still the fact that every college and university also advertises job placement rates of their majors. Individual courses may focus on specific topics, but the people taking your money are promising job opportunities to parents and school councilors to convince them that the over inflated price tags are worth it.

> Art degrees aren't aimed at artists.

Yes, they are.

> There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degree

Yes, there are dedicated trade schools for graphic design just like there are coding bootcamps.

There are also university degree programs designed for creative artists. (And yes, there are universities that specialize exclusively, or nearly so, in those degrees and are highly regarded within them, just as is the case in STEM.)

There are some art-adjacent degrees that aren't primarily focussed on doing art (Art History being the most common and well-known one) and some of the creative-focussed programs may have options to focus on more critical/analytical vs. practical concentrations available, as well.

But creative degrees focussed on actual creative output whether writing or film or theater or dance or music or photography or other visual art are a very big slice of the humanities.

> But creative degrees focussed on actual creative output whether writing or film or theater or dance or music or photography or other visual art are a very big slice of the humanities.

But the result doesn't seem to be very creative, so what is the point?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com