/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3250604]

Why are STEM fields absolutely worshipped, but ANY liberal arts degree is shit on unrelentlessly?

[Anonymous No.3250605]

because STEM majors know that what they do will have practically no bearing on human progress, whereas with liberal arts majors, they're helping and interacting with actual people, not enslaved by a faceless biomedical and/or military design firm.

[Anonymous No.3250607]

>>3250605
>Writing a book about how forever alone you are
vs
>Building a rocket to the moon

[Anonymous No.3250614]

>>3250605
This is sort of right. The truth is that 99% of people from all different majors won't accomplish anything lasting nor truly excellent. STEM losers can at least hold onto the fact that some guy somewhere is going to cure cancer, and it'll be very loosely related to them and their career paths.

Let's not glorify liberal arts majors, lads. They're just as mediocre and useless as a majority of STEM majors.

[But is it art? !!m1xxKTDNCw0 No.3250613]

commodification of education

[Anonymous No.3250615]

>>3250614
What isn't "mediocre and useless" by those terms.

[Anonymous No.3250617]

STEM majors have a culture around gratification and competition, so they happen to be arrogant about what they do. A degree in any of the humanities imply that you are at least willing to talk about stuff.

So what happends is that STEM majors feel boost themselves up and shit on the humanities, but the humanities have no interest in shitting on STEM majors.

[Anonymous No.3250621]

>>3250607
>implying more than. .001% of all STEM grads work at NASA

10 times more people will design rockets that slaughter innocent civilians or design drones that take away civil liberties.

Imagine that. You get a bachelors in engineering and a masters in physics, then you go on to work for Raytheon Missile Systems. You're contracted for 40 years to design a rocket that kills hundreds of people each time it's fired.

[Anonymous No.3250622]

>>3250604
Because it's STEM majors worshipping STEM fields and STEM majors shitting on liberal arts fields. For some reason, STEM majors have this big thing about feeling superior to people, because they know that as soon as they're out of university they're going to end up under some bitter cunt in a laboratory or an engineering firm who went through the exact same stages they did, and that at some point they will transcend their petty status and become the bitter cunt. They are also acutely aware that their chances of ever doing anything interesting are very small, and that, at best, they might be an interchangeable part of the team under the man that does something interesting.

Of course, everybody is in this state, not exclusively STEM majors. Liberal arts majors also have just the tiniest, slimmest, most minuscule chance of doing anything slightly worthwhile with their degree or, indeed, their life, but STEM majors believe that because their degree involves more numbers and formulae and is, therefore, more challenging and difficult. And then there's the whole thing with them believing that philosophy is intrinsically worthless and that everyone involved with them is also useless because they refuse to bow down at the holy altar of pure fact and science.

[Anonymous No.3250623]

>>3250604
non-STEM field => losing real reason => religiosity => ignorance

[Anonymous No.3250625]

I don't know. Lib Arts degrees are pretty worthless really content wise unless you go into Academia. People seem to dislike the idea of people doing something they like with no goal at the end of it.

If you're a liberal arts student with a plan people will react differently. Don't ask me why people give a fuck about what other people do with their lives, they just do. I'd call it insecurity.

People also hate thought because they like to think they have everything sussed out. It takes a whole movement in science and some media reception to achieve that whilst only one well-educated liberal arts student could dislodge a naive person's world-view quite easily. Ever tried to talk to stubborn people about things? You should get where i'm coming from.

People seem to also value things like Law and Business degrees and to me that's more narcissistic than a lib arts degree. That is unless people want to go into business or law to change the world; it's often just to change the content of their wallet.

[Anonymous No.3250634]

I'm familiar with actual scientists (i.e. not /sci/entists but actually even /sci/ is not like what /lit/ makes it out to be) and guess what, they couldn't give much less of a shit about liberal arts. They're just normal guys trying to do their job for a shit pay and next to no recognition. Most of them are actually interested in the humanities.

You may be confusing humanities with social sciences; while literature and philosophy are highly regarded among scientists, fields that are still in their babbling stages such as psychology, sociology or psychoanalysis have indeed less credibility than hard sciences. But that's normal I guess.

[Anonymous No.3250638]

>>3250634
Those are real scientists, though. The "STEM/Lib. Arts" fight is essentially a phenomenon that exists exclusively between smug undergrads. Smug undergrads, as we all know, are not actually people.

[Anonymous No.3250646]

>>3250634
>>3250638
Would it be condescending or arrogant if I seconded this as someone who is being paid to do STEM research?

[Anonymous No.3250651]

>>3250638
>>3250617
These, pretty much.

[Anonymous No.3250661]

As a stem major my biggest problem with the lib arts is the fact it seems totally ok to just make shit up with no justification, or to discuss questions and terms that are so ill defined it becomes just wank.

Besides that, liberal arts are facinating hence me being on this board

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250664]

because of the utility of stem degrees to the global capitaalist hegemon

n00b

[Anonymous No.3250697]

>>3250661

>it seems totally ok to just make shit up with no justification


Such as?

[Anonymous No.3250709]

Smelly, superior computational engineering scientist (the very aspiest of STEM majors) here. It's true that many in my field consider themselves better than others. I don't but that's beside the point. I think the humanities are a worthy cause to study. If that's what you love to do and if you want to spend your life pursuing it. I admire great artists and I think that many have profited from academic inquiry into their subjects. If you want to get a creative writing degree and become an author, or get an English degree and devote your life to the study of literature, I admire that. But if you enjoy reading, get a bachelor's in English and bitch about not being employable, you're a dumbfuck with delusions of intellect. I love reading myself, but diff eq are something I want to do for the rest of my life. Math is an art form as well. That said, the pseudo-intellectual undergrad crowd makes your field laughable at times.

[Anonymous No.3250721]

>>3250709
You should read our Infinite Jest/Ulysses/Gravity's Rainbow debates

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250729]

>>3250709

>Math is an art form as well.

well, no, actually

if we accept the principle that works of art should be enduring -- and indeed even transitory forms such as performance art or even the humble snowman are meant to be remembered/recorded/preserved in some sense -- the supplanting of mathematical and scientific theorems by ones of greater accuracy creates a condition of pending obsolescence that is inimical to the definition of art

[Anonymous No.3250756]

>>3250729
You're an outstanding example of what I mean with that last sentence. Mathematical beauty is very real and I suggest you read Russel's description of math as an art form.

[Anonymous No.3250761]

>>3250661
>my biggest problem with the lib arts is the fact it seems totally ok to just make shit up with no justification
That is not ok in any humanities field. So now you know that what it first seemed to be so to you is not really what it is.

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250769]

>>3250756

russell errs in conflating beauty and art -- if a thing is merely discovered and not created, it may be beautiful, but not art (e.g., a sunset, anne hathaway, mathematics)

[Anonymous No.3250783]

>>3250769
Math is not discovered, it is sculpted.

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250787]

>>3250783

k prove your positive claim

[Anonymous No.3250809]

>>3250787
The beauty is not entirely on the side of the underlying principle. It is largely in the elegance of the expression. There are brilliant logicians who can prove a great deal, but some proofs and defintions reveal a world of creative thinking. It's an acquired taste.

[Anonymous No.3250820]

This thread is absolutely pathetic. STEM graduates are the vanguard of innovation. There are so many opportunities and fields in engineering that almost no one is going to be stuck working on something the don't agree with or want to. The salary can be any where from 80k for a ME to 120k for a PE. and these are just starting positions. You are even bitching about STEM on a device invented by someone in a STEM field. The most humanities can work for is HR or becoming a teacher, although not worthless by any means, they are easily replaceable.

[Anonymous No.3250829]

>>3250820
And here is one of those smug undergrads.

[Anonymous No.3250846]

>>3250829
I'm in quantitative finance, not a STEM degree. I can understand defending humanities as at least be being better than no education, but to as far as even suggesting any of those are better than a STEM...I can't even imagine how far up your ass you had to reach to pull that out. Also only the schooling for engineering degrees is brain numbing, STEM graduates have consistently rated the highest in job satisfaction.

[Anonymous No.3250854]

>>3250846
My argument (see other "smug undergrads" post) was that neither are better than the other, and that the only people willing to waste their time arguing about it are undergrads who feel that they have something to prove about their own choice. Real scientists and people who have graduated with STEM degrees and gone into actual jobs stop caring about the puerile made-up 'war' between the two sides.

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250885]

>>3250846

somebody in finance with no understanding of aesthetics? now i've seen everything

[Anonymous No.3250906]

>>3250621
>war does not advance human progress

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250912]

>>3250906

"There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm."

[Anonymous No.3250921]

>>3250912

pretty much what I said, but not as pithy

[Richard Feynmann !Hwop/gspA. No.3250925]

>>3250921

actually the literal antithesis but hey

[Anonymous No.3250932]

Why would you even study liberal arts? If you like to literature why cant you read on your own? I know its not exactly the same but i with all the resources online today you can get close to the same experience. STEM will get you money and I don't think you can teach yourself engeneering

[Anonymous No.3250943]

>>3250925

[Anonymous No.3250962]

>>3250604
>Why are STEM fields absolutely worshipped

Because, at least at most schools and in popular culture, we're inculcated from a young age with ideas of science and progress which privilege modern scientific authorities above all others and present them as objective, disinterested, intrepid, etc. We aren't taught how to conceptualize "science" or "scientific progress." We don't have a distinct idea of what we mean when we say this beyond a vague understanding of something called the scientific method and a mental image of men in lab coats mixing chemicals to cure diseases, build marvelous inventions, and explain the workings of the universe. Scientific progress is understood to be strictly progressive and linear. It is inconceivable to the modern person of average-to-slightly above average intelligence how anybody could question modern scientific epistemology, which, again, is the highest and most perfect authority according in the popular understanding (except WRT a few basic questions about God and religious stuff.)

But I don't agree that it's as bad as STEM fields being "absolutely worshiped" and liberal arts being "shit on."

Surprised nobody has greentexted "unrelentlessly" btw... bunch of illiterates.

[Anonymous No.3250976]

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.

[Anonymous No.3250979]

>>3250962
>according in

welp