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Tech Suffers From Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head (theguardian.com)

The head of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, is warning that companies need to diversify their hiring practices to include more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology if they want to tackle the problem of misinformation online. He also "warned that hiring employees who mainly come from Stem -- science, technology, engineering and maths -- will produce a new generation of technologists with the same blindspots as those who are currently in charge, a move that will 'come back to bite us,'" reports the Guardian. From the report: "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

"Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

472 comments

  1. Pocket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    After Pocket, these guys lost the moral high ground.

    1. Re:Pocket by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      After whatnow?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Pocket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As Mozilla sways left ... into the arms of Trotsky-bitch SJW ... they will favor ill-educated GENDER/STUDY ... BLM ... SOCIOLOGY ... SEMIOTICS flavored basket-weavers. Ignorance = power and affirmative-actioned lambs shall ghrow teeth & cripple the swift.

  2. Thought most STEM workers went to college by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a CS degree. As part of that, I had to take quite a few humanities courses, do a lot of reading and research on other topics.

    Sure there are some workers from trade schools where that kind of thing is not as prevalent, but it seems like most tech workers I've run into have also been to college (and often not even for CS degrees so they have an even wider range of education). So I'm not sure if there really is the problem being claimed...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. Half of my general education requirements were lib arts. The other half was math/science. I think this is pretty normal. Since I got a BS the classes specific to my major were science-y (technical) as well. The lib arts classes were really boring to me and I didn't apply myself because of that. I got good grades in the courses I wanted to. I got all A's the classes related to my major and a few in the couple of lib arts classes that I actually enjoyed. Forcing me to do more busy work about subjects which I only cared about at the surface level, wouldn't have made me enjoy them more or made me more well rounded.

    2. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      I think the notion that college necessarily implies being well-versed in the humanities is kind of parochial. Lots and lots of college and university graduates have intense education but essentially minimal humanities exposure.

    3. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the notion that college necessarily implies being well-versed in the humanities is kind of parochial. Lots and lots of college and university graduates have intense education but essentially minimal humanities exposure.

      To be fair, at least half of each of the humanities is a complete waste of time, it's just that nobody can agree on which half...

    4. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A STEM graduate with some humanities is a far more useful employee than a humanities major with no STEM.

    5. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by terrycarlino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I seem to recall /. covering the problems with liberal arts majors not having to take real STEM courses while STEM students are forced to take the same liberal arts courses as liberal art majors.

      Rants aside (I'm looking at you Mr. Hammer) soft sciences like psychology seem incapable of producing reproducible research. Why anyone would think they should have a bigger role in fields based on real reproducible science is beyond me.

      Ethics will continue to be a problem in a culture where right and wrong continue to be treated as relative. I've taken numerous ethics courses. None of them would admit the existence of the concept of 'wrong' behavior or explain why, other than going to jail or getting sued one should not engage in it. As long as that paradigm exists ethics will be a problem.

    6. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I also took humanities courses. Some of my courses included Religion, Philosophy, History of Art and Programming Ethics (where I learned about Therac-25). I even had a very good literature professor who revealed so many things I completely missed while reading the classics.

      It was great to not have class-after-class-after-class of nothing but programming and labs. If there really is a problem out there then I must be an outlier.

    7. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by quenda · · Score: 1

      I have a CS degree. As part of that, I had to take quite a few humanities courses,

      Really, forced to do humanities units? Is that common in the US?
      As part of my CS degree, I chose to do a little psychology, but only because it topped off the points needed for my degree, without having to do any real work.

    8. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have a CS degree. As part of that, I had to take quite a few humanities courses, do a lot of reading and research on other topics.

      The psychology that you take in CS is entrance level. It is the scientific part, about perception and groupings and such.

      There is another level when you fill an entire study with it. You can go the clinical path (two friends of mine did that) which is basically where doctors go. This part also is reasonably well understood and has a mostly sound scientific basis.

      Or you can go the humanities path and then it becomes a wild mix of dogma and bullshit. There are extensive articles around (Google is your friend) about how most of the studies don't replicate, almost none of the studies replacate outside the lab, and how deeply ethics commissions and gender studies have applied a chokehold to necessary research.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    9. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I went to U of Michigan around the time that CS was moving from the liberal arts college to the engineering college. Actually, I was allowed to choose (I chose engineering in no small part because the humanities requirements were significantly less.) This might actually have transitioned with CS from math to engineering. As part of an engineering curriculem, only a few humanities are required.

    10. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, English and History courses are common. However, some ethnic and gender studies departments have lobbied to force every student to take at least one of their (insane) classes. I'm not sure how successful they've been (it might have happened at one college, or was just freshman orientation).

      Me? I got roped into a course taught by a Stalinist.

    11. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Funny

      We had to take a humanities focus area (3 courses in one 'focus area') in addition to our regular humanities coursework.

      Turns out every engineering student had run the same algorithm...best ratio. Hence the psych department had made themselves the only 'not eligible for humanities focus area' department.

      Best not to stick your dick into crazy. (psych major==crazy). But we were kids, didn't know better.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    12. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've taken numerous ethics courses. None of them would admit the existence of the concept of 'wrong' behavior or explain why, other than going to jail or getting sued one should not engage in it. As long as that paradigm exists ethics will be a problem.

      Have you taken numerous classes? The field of ethics in the way you are describing is the study of normative ethics. The problem is that ethics certainty is not objective. There is no measuring tape, no thermometer, no spectrum analyzer for right and wrong. Those concepts are human. We invented them. They are not part of reality separate from us. To not be so dry, let Terry Pratcht explain.

      Right and wrong are not part of our physical universe. Yet ethics is critically important to our everyday lives. So what do we do? What ought we do?

      Finding or creating answers to those unanswerable questions is the field of ethics.

    13. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Same in Europe. Successfully, I might add, if only because those gender bullshit classes are usually free credits. Tests are easy, if your answer is something along the lines of "white men are to blame" you pass.

      It's a bit like the Marxist/Leninist classes that were in the curriculum back in Soviet times. Also work in a similar way. And are about as useful as credit padding material, but little for anything else.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    14. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Lack of replication is often cited as evidence that science is bunk, e.g. climate science where we don't have a control Earth or a second planet to reproduce our findings.

      That's just the nature of some sciences. Can't replicate people. Yet the results we have are extremely useful, allowing us to cure many forms of mental illness.

      A great example is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is a very effective treatment for depression. It involves learning to change the way you think and react, and rebuilding some kind of life you don't hate. It's all very soft, people wonder how taking up a hobby can stop them feeling suicidal, but it works and has helped millions of people.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    15. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Leaving aside that many "hard" sciences have the same reproduction problem (e.g. climate science), software engineering isn't exactly great either.

      Look at the state of security in software and systems. We are learning as we go and improvement is rapid but often later found to be in error. Think about how many security related protocols have been found lacking and deprecated.

      Same with UI concepts, programming paradigms and languages, development methodologies etc.

      Engineering is not dissimilar. A lot of stuff was only discovered when things failed catastrophically and the solutions were sometimes not even understood for a long time after they were found to work. The rocket engines that took us to the moon are a famous example.

      So while psychology etc have their problems I don't think we should be so dismissive.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    16. Re: Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting how ~95% of posts until now only discuss hyperbole, instead of adressing the real issues here of technology ripping society and environments apart, and how to ensure more accountability and constructive incentives. Thinking outside the box shouldn't mean auto diversity hires either, but discussion strands there currently.

    17. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah. Half of my general education requirements were lib arts. The other half was math/science. I think this is pretty normal. Since I got a BS the classes specific to my major were science-y (technical) as well. The lib arts classes were really boring to me and I didn't apply myself because of that. I got good grades in the courses I wanted to. I got all A's the classes related to my major and a few in the couple of lib arts classes that I actually enjoyed. Forcing me to do more busy work about subjects which I only cared about at the surface level, wouldn't have made me enjoy them more or made me more well rounded.

      That's funny. I found the lib arts classes were the easiest to get A's. They were designed for students with no critical thinking skills, logic or ability to write coherently. I found if I just showed up I could ace them.

      I had three quarters of psychology with every single exam being multiple choice. I never looked at the book until night before the exams. I took three quarters of philosophy. Three papers per class, lowest grade dropped. I'd write two papers and never turned in a third. For one of my American history classes, I wrote a paper on a WWII subject by regurgitating the movie "Midway." Easy A's.

      Now... Let me see one of those political science majors take on physics or thermodynamics.

    18. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From Wikipedia:

      Liberal arts today can refer to academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences;

      Technically math and physics are liberal arts.

    19. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by sheramil · · Score: 1

      Sure there are some workers from trade schools where that kind of thing is not as prevalent...

      It can be difficult to keep them from dangerous accidents with the lathe if they're preoccupied with wondering "does existence precede essence?"

    20. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And a STEM graduate with no humanities, but more specialization in STEM is more useful than the STEM graduate who has "some humanities". These simply knows more of their field, hence more useful.

      Specialization is what makes modern society work. The corporation that needs competence in the humanities will do well hiring a humanities major - rather than hiring another STEM guy who had a little humanities stuff on the side.

      STEM people who has 'a little humanities on the side' doesn't have much humanities knowledge - just as a humanities guy 'with a little STEM on the side' aren't useful in STEM fields.

    21. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Software engineering does not have problems in tthe scientific sense - but perhaps in the managerial sense.

      Security? There is software that is proved correct. There is well-tested sw embedded in planes and satellites. There are also shoddy sw in consumer products. That doesn't mean there is a crisis in sw. Similarly, there is no crisis in material science, just because there is a lot of shoddy cheap plastic products for consumers.

      UI concepts? There is plenty of science on UI concepts. It is not being applied, therefore you have low-contrast webpages, UI that don't adapt to screen sizes the programmer didn't think of, buttons that look like text fields, and so on. There is no lack of science, the problem is that stuppid designers make decisions despite science saying they're wrong. Bad designs are fashionable, so bad design it is.

    22. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Leaving aside that many "hard" sciences have the same reproduction problem (e.g. climate science)

      That's the reason for a chunk of the deniers (besides the corporatist sheeple) - until you can make useful predictions, you're just talking out of your ass. One useful prediction in a thousand does not legitimacy make. It's like throwing the US GDP around based on the mutterings of an astrologist consortium.

    23. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      My experience exactly. The elementary nature of this crap is laughable. The people "studying" it actually believe their ideas are "complex". They are NOT!

    24. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Lack of replication is often cited as evidence that science is bunk

      Because, for replicatable studies, such so-called-science is indeed bunk. You can replicate psychological studies, and for any kind of treatments, you can have control groups, preferably blind. So that "behavioural therapy" of yours can be tested. And that it can but its proponents failed to do so is exactly why we call bullshit.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    25. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 4, Informative

      > Leaving aside that many "hard" sciences have the same reproduction problem (e.g. climate science)

      Yep, all this technology we have based on "Hard Science" only works randomly. It's like magic. The same magic that "Soft Sciences" rely upon.

      Laughable.

    26. Re: Thought most STEM workers went to college by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      > technology ripping society and environments apart

      More "LIberal Arts" bullshit. Technology doesn't rip apart society and environments. The exponential growth of the population using up all the world's resources do. Meanwhile, "LIberal Arts" pathological "sciences" like "Psychology" and "Economics" and "Business" continue to insist on "Growth" (i.e. "Exponential Growth") as the solution to everything. Business Majors and economists and psycho-pathalogical-ologists will bleed the producers of the world dry with their leeching and worthlessness while insisting everyone bow down to their superior "intellect" (that they don't have) all for their benefit. Again, I say, put them in a hole and pour lye on them. Kill two birds with one stone. Reduce the exponential growth in population that is "ripping apart society and the environment" and get rid of all the dead weight. Prove me wrong! Say my name BITCHES!

    27. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the notion that college necessarily implies being well-versed in the humanities is kind of parochial. Lots and lots of college and university graduates have intense education but essentially minimal humanities exposure.

      We worry about this and things like diversity. That's why China is the rising star.

    28. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of this classic study of randomized double blind trials to determine the effectiveness of parachutes in preventing death and severe trauma. Clearly parachutes are just bunk science until we shove some people out of aircraft with placebos to act as a control group.

      I assume you will be happy to volunteer, in the interests of science.

      Because psychologists aren't idiots they instead looked at the success rate on similar cases. I couldn't find any hard data but I imagine someone must have done a survey of parachute vs. no parachute falling from aircraft and found a statistically compelling result, same as they did for CBT.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    29. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not that you aren't well versed in it, it's that they can't be sure you've been correctly indoctrinated if you have not gone to college for it.

      In fact if you think about the subject for yourself, you are extremely dangerous.

    30. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Yep, all this technology we have based on "Hard Science" only works randomly.

      Yes a lot of it does have seemingly random failures until we learn more and understand them. Classic example is the DeHallivard Comet aircraft. They started randomly breaking up in mid air for no apparent reason. Eventually extensive tests figured out that it was due to pressure cycling.

      Note that there were no double blind tests on the fix (rounded corners on Windows), they just assumed that the fact that the aircraft didn't fall apart in mid air any more meant that it worked. The exact mechanism by which the fix works wasn't fully understood until some years later.

      Just because material science wasn't as advanced back in the 50s as it is now doesn't meant that it wasn't useful or that the science was bunk.

      Feel free to join that double blind test of parachutes though. Fingers crossed you don't end up in the placebo group.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    31. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by doom · · Score: 1

      software engineering isn't exactly great either.

      No, no, my new language will lower development and maintenance costs. It's so elegant it maps naturally to human mental capabilities! It's obvious! Why would I need to conduct experiments to prove something like this?

    32. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I need to agree. Colleges seem to try their best to shove humanities to tech majors. With a 4 year degree you get a 2 year degree worth of a humanity major. I have seen a lot of studytaking a double major in comp-sci and English mostly because it is an easy thing to do without cramming their workload.
      However for Humanity degrees there is almost no serious classes in math and science. They seem to have these Topics in Math class which is a Humanity approach to math. While not actually studying math.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    33. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Nature of 'design', every generation is compelled to change things. Even functional things that have evolved to their form for good functional reasons.

      The designer's managers need to limit their authority, until they are old enough to know why things are as they are. But PHBs are going to PHB.

      For ref outside software. Exploding toilets with squared off plastic pressure vessels. 'Designed', not 'Engineered'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    34. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Key word 'can'.

      There has always been tension between the 'arts' and the 'sciences'. 'Arts' trying to claim 'Sciences' is an on the ground example. _None_ of the Science people buy it.

      Vodka is science, Cognac is art.

      Vodka is perfectible (_pure_ ethanol and water), Cognac is not (matter of taste).

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    35. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a bad analogy because we already have evidence that falling from even dozens of feet can be lethal, never mind thousands. A claim to the contrary would be extraordinary, and those require extraordinary evidence.

      In contrast, we don't have evidence for most of the quack theories coming from sociology depts. It's mostly feel-good consensus mixed with half baked assumptions and, these days, a dash of karl marx on top.

      examples:
      1. sex vs 'gender'/ 'non-binary'
      2. intellectual capacity/make up of men and women
      3. the 'noble savage'
      4. 'intersectionality'
      5. class warfare/power vs "privilege"
      6. patriarchy theory

    36. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, tyrants like yourself ensure the rest of us don't have a choice in whether we accept or implement crackpot nonsense like

      1. critical theory
      2. post colonial theory
      3. patriarchy theory

      as the bases for our societies.

    37. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by epine · · Score: 1

      And that it can but its proponents failed to do so is exactly why we call bullshit.

      You're wrong if you think testing is always that simple.

      You basically have to gain consent from the study population that regardless of which blind group they wind up in, their therapist can't change horses in midstream.

      That's a lot to ask from a study population where first sign of a cure is suicidal behaviour (not unusual in treating major depressive disorder).

      Plus it's damn expensive.

      "Failed to do so" is pretty harsh language, though I'd definitely give you a pass if it turns out you have personally offered to foot the bill, and even then the ethics committee turned you down.

      Damn ethicists! Gift horse in the mouth! etc etc

    38. Re: Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You stick your dick into crazy kids?

      Found the bear.

      Captcha: outted

    39. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      That's a bad analogy because we already have evidence that falling from even dozens of feet can be lethal, never mind thousands.

      Sure, but how do we know parachutes stop people getting injured when they fall? Where are the double blind controlled, repeatable tests?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    40. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      So you say it's better to allow advertising and taking billions of revenue for make-believe treatments without any validation whatsoever? This is why we have homeopathy and the like.

      An "ethics committee" would fail its job if it allowed such a treatment to go forward (beyond a clearly marked experimental stage), not if it demanded validation.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    41. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Parachute design is an ENGINEERING problem, not a science problem. Part of doing the engineering might be some science on a specific nit.

      Might as well ask for double blind studies to prove guilt in court. Not even wrong, just WTF?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    42. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously have never been to europe.

      Sing your NPC song, it's an amusing tune. Meanwhile here on earth we'll be getting on with things.

    43. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by strikethree · · Score: 1

      So I'm not sure if there really is the problem being claimed...

      You would be correct. It is not the engineers that decide such things in anything other than Open Source projects. This is purely a management issue. Hiring touchy feely types as engineers will do nothing for what this guy is claiming.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    44. Re:Thought most STEM workers went to college by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Your point appears to have been defending non-reproducible 'science' by bringing up non-science.

      'Cognitive behavioral therapy' is supposed to be science. Your parachute 'analogy' is stupid. You can ethically do tests with control groups (standard treatment) for this kind of therapy.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. Companies with money to waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    can afford this silliness. My company can't, so, you go first.

    1. Re: Companies with money to waste by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't know where you work, but my company has people with humanities degrees who picked up technical skills after they graduated.

      Humanities majors can learn to perform well at technical skills. I see no reason why STEM majors can't do the reverse.

      To get a degree of any kind, you must learn how to think and how to self-educate. That sets you up for success across many fields.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    2. Re: Companies with money to waste by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Informative

      A great deal of modern humanities teaching is deliberately obfuscated pretentious bullshit. A person with a logical mind, especially one trained to rigorously solve technical problems, has a difficult time with such convoluted garbage.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    3. Re: Companies with money to waste by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      And yet Humanities majors can excel at technical roles.

      What was your point?

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    4. Re: Companies with money to waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet Humanities majors can excel at technical roles.

      Bullshit.

    5. Re: Companies with money to waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Name two.

    6. Re: Companies with money to waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet Humanities majors can excel at technical roles.

      Any examples? I have yet to see this. Humanities majors can be great bosses, and even lead tech people. This because a good boss makes use of expert advisors for what he don't understand himself. Other than that, a leader need some talent handling people - such talent exists among humanities people too.

      But try having a humanities guy do engineering work. Doesn't work, because he lacks 2-3 years of tech education. The guy may be useful on a team, having some different knowledge that comes in useful - but he can't do engineering drudge work on his own. Can be trained to do some of the simpler routine jobs, but not generic work in the field.

    7. Re: Companies with money to waste by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Traditional humanities majors can. Gender studies majors can't

      There's a big difference between a rational proto-science (heck, logic originated from philosophy!), quasi-science or even a sane description of something inherently non-scientific (like literature) -- and Orvellian doublethink that teaches people something contrary to obvious observation.

      The former group teaches students a way of thinking. The latter group is religion.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    8. Re: Companies with money to waste by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Maybe that has something to do with the fact that technical roles very often do not stress your education most of the time?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re: Companies with money to waste by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      The problem with hiring a humanities major is that anyone who could make it through 4 years of that crap is someone who is OK with lying to himself. Moreover such a person will have been thoroughly educated in grievance studies, so you can look forward to conflicts with coworkers over trivial matters as well as a lawsuit after you dismiss the disruptive employee. So where's the upside? We'd all rather have a technically trained individual rather than a self learning religious bot.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    You're an idiot. Many of those fields are critical. Psychology for one is HUGE. I've seen it change people's lives. Without it there would probably be a lot more caved in heads, but it sounds like that might be your thing...so...I can see why you might not want to be diagnosed.

  5. All your base by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... If I had my way I'd cave all of their skulls in with a hammer ... Sociology, Psychology, Management, HR, Political Science, Law, Philosophy, History ...

    What a succinct way to personally demonstrate the need for better Psychology, Management, HR, and Law.

    Fortunately, we will install these professions more seriously now that all your base are belong to us.

    1. Re:All your base by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      Thanks for proving my point.

    2. Re:All your base by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you think that your AC parent has proved your point, then you are spectacularly delusional. More like you proved hers/his.

  6. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0, Troll

    > Psychology for one is HUGE

    Yeah, right, it's BIGLY importante!

    > I've seen it change people's lives

    Bullshit. I've never seen anyone helped by a psychologist. It's nothing but a self-serving scam!

  7. You're an uneducated yokel if you can't by Spy+Handler · · Score: 0

    read Latin and ancient Greek. Seriously... as recently as 100 years ago, you were expected to if you've had any sort of an education. Go look up the Harvard college entrance exam from like 1890's.

    1. Re:You're an uneducated yokel if you can't by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 1

      It's pretty funky when you're reading Greek and it looks like a math equation

      --
      I tend to rant.
  8. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You seem upset. Got one of those useless degrees?

  9. Hidden Talents by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    flunkies who can't pay for their basket weaving

    Well, maybe basket weavers would be excellent at the creation of multi-threaded code?

    It's not like they could be any worse than the people who are supposed to know computers.

    If I had my way I'd cave all of their skulls in with a hammer

    I'm sure to non-programmers that sounds violent but it's just the natural reaction to working on an old code base. Even (especially?) one you wrote...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Hidden Talents by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      > Well, maybe basket weavers would be excellent at the creation

      Actually, I shouldn't have said "Basket Weavers". Actual basket weavers are valuable and wonderful individuals. People who majored in "Basket Weaving" not so much. There's a difference.

      > It's not like they could be any worse than the people who are supposed to know computers

      Depends on what axis you are measuring worse/better. If you're focused on jerking everyone off and making the "feel" good for your own benefit at their expense, you're not "good" by my definition. No matter how good you make people "feel".

      > I'm sure to non-programmers that sounds violent but it's just the natural reaction to working on an old code base. Even (especially?) one you wrote..

      LOL! Nice one! Funny since I've been pulling my hair out for the last 6 hours on another stupid "Framework" with bugs/issues. If I had a 1,000th of a Weimer Republic cent for every brain cell I've wasted on some new framework, I'd be a trillionaire in BitCoin!

    2. Re:Hidden Talents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I spent 1999 doing Y2K fixes where the most common phrase shouted in the offices was "fuck, more Kevin code!", referring to one particular past programmer who fucked up everything he touched and wrote with such horrible practices that it was difficult to follow what little logic he had.

      Yes, it is a well-deserved sentiment.

    3. Re:Hidden Talents by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      Look, I deal with all that dumb technical debt you do, but you're still an idiot incapable of recognizing that software requires good designers. We don't get good designers, and think that beyond that, we don't get good designers who can design for social science, heading off or making less violent the kind of legislation or policy that comes in later.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    4. Re: Hidden Talents by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      That was still just code. Imagine to have to code around bad hardware designs.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    5. Re:Hidden Talents by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Consider that your company does a poor job hiring technical expertise, but still you expect them to do a good job seeking out and hiring other qualifications...

      None of this computes because you are ignoring the for-a-fact evidence on the table.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    6. Re:Hidden Talents by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      flunkies who can't pay for their basket weaving

      Well, maybe basket weavers would be excellent at the creation of multi-threaded code?

      Maybe. But it would still be a basket case.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  10. Perspectives on Computers and Society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That was the easiest required CS class I ever took.

    Baker thinks the technologists are in charge? She's ignorant of what comprises a typical STEM education? Enjoys engaging in IT bashing?

  11. I have a humanities degree, feel free to hire me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, that's what I thought, bitch!

    Spare me the bullshit.

  12. Clearly. Clearly. by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Tech definitely needs more people with language skills when it comes to pasting the summary.

    Tech definitely needs more people with language skills when it comes to pasting the summary.

  13. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, right, it's BIGLY importante!

    You actually sound a lot like that guy.

  14. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If I had my way I'd cave all of their skulls in with a hammer and the world would be a better place.

    Which is exactly what all the other worthless mentally defective autistic errors of nature like yourself will flood this thread with.

    No manners, no social skills, no politeness or diplomacy, no empathy, no compassion. Pure sociopathy. You lot may be intellectually gifted, but from a human perspective, you are abominations who cause sorrow, pain, suffering and bloodshed wherever you go.

  15. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0

    > Many of those fields are critical

    So they claim and expect everyone to swallow without evidence for, but, plenty of evidence against.

    I say they're worthless and a net drain on society and a tax on people actually doing useful things. Prove me wrong.

  16. Ethics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior ..."

    Translation: lots of peoples are assholes and to be ethical you have to have a framework for how to properly deal with potential assholes. The whole "lack of focus on impact or result" is "you need to shepard people into right thought and action". I don't even mean this is in a right/left way which a lot of assholes seem to want to spin it. I really mean it in more of the panopticon draconian sense. It's little wonder that the US government, which sees itself as a shepard of the population through various tax and other shenanigans, would be so distraught that Facebook and Google both seem more inclined to just kick out trolls or others they see as genuine bad actors rather than using their platform to intentionally shape the dialog in a fashion the government desires.

    What I'm curious about is why the Mozilla Head drank the kool-aid.

  17. He also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    had a gender transition?

  18. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0

    > You actually sound a lot like that guy.

    That just shows how stupid an imperceptive you are. You probably think that you "know" people when in fact, you know shit!

  19. NO WE DO NOT! by Chas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The very last thing Tech needs more of are gender studies majors.

    Please stop trying to get intersectional loon-bags jobs where they can tell people what sexist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, blahblahblahblahblah pieces of shit they are and demanding they lower hiring standards to achieve a non-existent "perfect balance" of races, sexes and flat-out leftist-only ideology.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
    1. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty bold to say those things about your next boss...

    2. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, that is a problem. But that problem itself is also being studied in humanities fields such as evolutionary psychology and history.
      Because it's not just a subset of insane immature humanities students, it is a dangerous ideology regularly occurring worldwide, emerging from social and psychological phenomena.
      For example you can look at Gad Saad or Jordan Peterson.
      And (apparently) simplistic black-white thinking, and avoiding meaningful interaction with "the other side", is not limited to some humanities kids.

    3. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      The fact that you are so profoundly ignorant of these issues demonstrates the need for people with an understanding of them.

      Lewis's law in action.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by hey! · · Score: 1

      In my experience one consistent negative part of the experience of being a technically educated is the feeling that your influence in the workplace doesn't measure up to your intellectual achievements. That's because your education didn't prepare you to represent your positions in a way that does justice to them, or deal with people who look at things in a fundamentally different way than you do.

      Thus you get expressions like the above, which is very effective in a social media context where moralistic and emotionally charged attacks on strawmen draw upvotes from like-minded people, of which there are an endless supply. This is true whether you are a Genghis Khan style conservative or the most airy-fairy of leftists, it's easy to get upvotes if you are strident enough.

      Unfortunately this doesn't work in the workplace, where there is *not* an endless supply of ideological soulmates to back you up. Sometimes you are up against people in a position of power who disagree with you in a fundamental way, and then it's game over if you don't know how to play.

      If you think it is *impossible* to deal with people who believe in, say, "microagressions", than I'm talking about you. Sure they may be *wrong*, but if the best you can do is wish they'd magically disappear, then I'd say that's a limitation in your education. You can fixate on one thing, but this stuff is like a hydra; you can't escape dealing with people who think differently than you just by cutting off the gender studies head. If anything gender studies makes your job easier by codifying what you have to deal with.

      This is why engineering schools require distribution courses in the humanities; it's really about learning to work constructively with people who you'll never agree with. The problem is that the humanities courses engineering students take are too easy. This not only reinforces the the notion that all non-tech subjects are bullshit, it fails to accomplish the distribution requirement's purpose. Because you as an engineering student will take relatively few humanities courses, they need to be as challenging as possible.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think what he is getting at is that tech companies need a better understanding of why people behave they way they do online and with technology, why they are susceptible to false information and propaganda, and how to combat trolls, misogynists and misanthropes. However, the headline comes across as "Hire Idiots!".

    6. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you even read the first sentence past the title? It says...

      to include more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology

      Philosophy and psychology are not gender studies.

    7. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >> to include more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology
      > Philosophy and psychology are not gender studies.

      Well, not yet...

    8. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Assholes, people who disagree with you, or trolls don't justify anything by simply existing. Dealing with them is a "people" thing, which is by no means a uniquely feminist thing.

    9. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      The fact that you are so profoundly ignorant of these issues demonstrates the need for people with an understanding of them.

      He's NOT ignorant of them. He's pointing out how any observant person can see that marinating people in what has become the toxic absurdity of what now passes for a collegiate liberal arts program makes students, in fact, far less productive, civil, constructive and prosperous.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    10. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Chas · · Score: 1

      You assume I'm not the boss.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    11. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Chas · · Score: 2

      Bingo!

      I'm not saying there's NO place for people with Humanities degrees in tech.
      Because there ARE.

      However, the need for "more" is a HUGE over-simplification, and usually code-speak for "Inclusion, Equity & Diversity" people who "find" racism, sexism, etc-ism to justify their job and gerrymander how a company operates.

      People in tech have better things to do than figure out the nicest way to lie and weasel-word their way around telling someone their code, device, or performance is shit. Sometimes you just need to be blunt.

      Plus, we all know what the other use of "IED" is. And Inclusion, Equity & Diversity "professionals" are bad for mostly the same reasons.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    12. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Chas · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but I call BS.

      Gender studies most definitely does NOT make your job easier.
      Perhaps, at one point, maybe? But now, it's a divisive boil on the collective ass of sociology.

      When I'm at my job, I'm there to DO my job. Not coddle someone who thinks they can teach me to be a "good ally" to "oppressed women".
      As with every other communist ideology, they never tell the "ally" that YES, THEY get the bullet TOO!

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    13. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Chas · · Score: 2
      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    14. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by hey! · · Score: 1

      It's not gender studies per se, it's the skills you'd get if you actually forced yourself to study something that's maybe not attractive to you.

      Education is not the imparting of facts or truths. It is the training of the mind to be able to adapt and learn.

      You may have the luxury of having a job where they lock you in a room and give you specifications for what is to be done and dont' much care how you do it. But most people have to work with other people, and if you reach a certain point you have to supervise people, deal with customers and clients and other managers in the company. The idea that you see having to do that as "coddling" means you're lucky to have the particular job you have. There's a lot of jobs you wouldn't be able to do.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    15. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      What university? Someone should keep track.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    16. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Classic. Instead of arguing to convince, use a label and dismiss!

      Modern leftism is dying because of this anti-meritocarcy initiative. "The fact that you aren't on board with the destruction of merit proves that merit deserves destruction."

    17. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Raenex · · Score: 1

      The fact that you are so profoundly ignorant of these issues demonstrates the need for people with an understanding of them.

      Wow, Slashdot's #1 resident social "justice" idiot thinks we need more social "justice" indoctrination in tech. I'm shocked!

      But we do need more education on the issues. Everybody should know about the Lord of the Flies lunacy at Evergreen State, the Halloween costume mob at Yale, and the red-headed debacle at Mizzou, just to name a few.

    18. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      That's what I was taking about. Ridiculous generalisations, compete ignorance of what those issues are and what people in those roles actually do, and insistence that you are the victim of a conspiracy.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    19. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..and like a tyrant (or brainwashed sycophant), your ego is so profoundly grandiose (or insecure) that you believe the solution to criticism of your position is more of the same shit only with more force. Your path is the one that eventually leads to gulags.

    20. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      If true that lends credence to his statements about the toxicity of the garbage festering under the flag of 'intersectional social justice.'

    21. Re: NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have years and years of proof that prove you wrong.

      Mozilla, a failing company; telling people we need more humanity majors. That's rich.

    22. Re: NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I propose feminist computer science.

      Get rid of all the offensive language, and code it in glitter and sparkles.

      Imagine if we had a study that evolved around ONLY men. We wouldn't hear the end of it.

      Reap what you sow.

    23. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or deal with people who look at things in a fundamentally different way than you do.

      just as theirs did not prepare them to deal with people who disagree with them..In fact, it's worse. They were 'unprepared.' Whatever natural conciliatory tendencies they had as fellow humans were brutalized by the political indoctrination that runs rampant in sociology departments. It's their way or the highway (eg james damore, brendan eich).

      it's easy to get upvotes if you are strident enough.

      Except that it's usually the liberal arts and business majors who virtue signal in this manner. If you see it in tech, it's usually the zuckerberg and gates sorts who ended up gravitating there. Tech people are usually too busy working to argue politics at work, or they avoid it because they already know they fundamentally disagree. Unfortunately, the ones doing the preaching are also fundamentally ignorant of the technology they hired techs to manage. Many times, they're not only arguing against their tech people's advice, they're arguing against reality in some form as well. No amount of soft skills is going to get the hapless 'undereducated' tech out from under that.

      If you think it is *impossible* to deal with people who believe in, say, "microagressions", than I'm talking about you.

      Such people are a perfect example of the above and are likely beyond help. No matter how conciliatory you are, they will NOT listen to reason if what needs doing grinds against their beliefs. If the organization is run by such types, it's doomed. Time to find a new job anyway.

      You can fixate on one thing, but this stuff is like a hydra; you can't escape dealing with people who think differently than you just by cutting off the gender studies head.

      Such people's beliefs are fundamentally opposed to reality. This is not simply a matter of having different approaches and coming to an understanding of each others' positions. While it can be a tech's job to reconcile non-technicals' expectations with reality, it is NOT his job to reconcile philosophical insanity with reality.

      This is why engineering schools require distribution courses in the humanities; it's really about learning to work constructively with people who you'll never agree with.

      Yes, but this goes both ways. I see very little conciliatory attitude coming from those in sociology and political departments. They're too busy assuming things about individuals based on the very attributes they'll tell you shouldn't be used. They're the most blatant hypocrites of a generation.

      Because you as an engineering student will take relatively few humanities courses, they need to be as challenging as possible.

      Try 'challenging' a 'gender studies' professor without getting thrown out of class for 'microaggression' or 'sexism.' The problem with these people is that the word 'conversation' means she talks and you listen. There is no getting along with them. Even those who capitulate are eventually branded and cast out.

      If anything gender studies makes your job easier by codifying what you have to deal with.

      There might be a limited utility in this, but it is hampered by their unwillingness to tolerate debate. Usually 'advanced' philosophy courses involve a lot of discussion. Good luck.

    24. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Certainly there's a place for humanities students in the tech industry. Somebody has to wash the floors.

    25. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >The very last thing Tech needs more of are gender studies majors.

      No shit. Anything to add regarding fixing the problem of out of touch white dudes running the tech industry?

    26. Re:NO WE DO NOT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gender studies majors typically make over $250k a year, and save lives on a daily basis. Sounds like you're jealous that you're just a code monkey and nobody appreciates your shitty jokes.

  20. Re:Riiiight. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many of those fields are critical. Psychology for one is HUGE.

    In college, psychology is a dumping ground for people that can't figure out what else to major in. The most common job for psychology majors a year after graduation is "Uber driver". I don't think these people should be our guiding lights.

    The premise of TFA is silly:
    1. STEM degrees require a lot of humanities courses.
    2. There is no objective evidence that STEM people are less ethical or empathic than humanities majors.
    3. Many of the decisions TFA talks about aren't made by the engineering department.

    That the leader of Mozilla is focusing on crap like this explains much about the state of their software.

  21. Re:Riiiight. by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's quite clear that your AC parent has The Patience of Job compared to Gerald Butler (the OP) who called for mass genocide of people who major in "Sociology, Psychology, Management, HR, Political Science, Law, Philosophy, [and] History."

    Of the two of them, you tell me who deserves to be voted off the island.

    [Disclosure: I'm a STEM major. PhD in physics.]

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  22. Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humanities is just a scam in college to keep billing you despite failing to give you the basic job skills you needed to get hired. Does Mozilla want to be a browser company or the next OCCUPY STUPID CRAP movement. I guess their employees don't know what their job is anymore. That explains why Firefox is constantly failing to keep up with Chrome.

  23. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    No, I'm self-taught. I pay more in taxes than 98% of most humanities majors make in 5 years. While they're bitching about student loans and trying to shift their financial failure on to hard-working, useful people, I was building shit that people needed and wanted through hard-work, applying myself, and not listening to their bullshit.

  24. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What the world needs is more "Humanities" flunkies who can't pay for their basket weaving and feminist studies degrees

    People who graduate with a 4-year humanities degree are basically just as employable and just as happy with their jobs as those with STEM degrees.

    The other thing about getting yourself a humanities degree is that you aren't as easily socially engineered as someone who spends all his time with technical stuff and doesn't learn anything about people. The biggest suckers are those who are arrogant in their ignorance. I'm looking at you Gerald.

  25. Diversity by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The head of theÂMozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, is warning that companies need to diversify

    And that's where I stop reading. How about we just hire qualified people for a job and leave it at that? While I despise racists, mysoginists, etc. I've gotten to the point that any time I hear "diversity" I tune out because it's going to be bullshit. I also will not work for any company that has anyone with that word in their title. If that position is needed, then there's already something really wrong. Yes, there are some assholes in the world, but why would you want to force them to hire someone they are going to not want. I've had friends who were hired because of this kind of crap. And even though they were qualified, they were miserable. I know that Billy Bob Joe Jim's Klan Sheet company would lynch me on sight if they could, so I sure as hell don't want to work for him because he was forced to hire me. Do you think most white tech geeks would feel comfortable being hired to work in the ghetto because we need more white folks there? We need more fat old white men working as servers at Hooters too. There also aren't enough Asian rappers. And damnit, where are all of the quadraplegic trapeze artists.

    1. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know you hate the word "diverse" but what you are railing against is not what the summary was saying:

      "It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life"

      Personally, I think the legal systems of the world could do with more of the above things than tech. Baker just happens to work for a tech company so is trying to apply it to that.

    2. Re: Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I read it. OP was correct to stop there. Hiring all intersectional trans lgbbqwtf non whites is exactly what he meant hidden in the bullshit lies of `stem students are all white male unethical racist woman hating aspie freaks.

      What schools do not require a ton of non-stem classes to graduate? Pure bullshit. As if the assholes over in polisci are learning to be ethical.

      Mozilla run by dumbass.

    3. Re: Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahem, *she*.

    4. Re:Diversity by Kagetsuki · · Score: 3, Informative

      She wasn't even supposed to have the job. She literally chased out the chosen next-in-line CEO Brendan Eich (creator of JavaScript) by getting a bunch of her SJW staff to physically keep him out of the building and threaten him. Look it up *and note how a lot of news didn't cover it at all*. There's a personal account from him floating around too.

      Here's hoping Brave development progresses to the point we can all just forget about FireFox and Mozilla at some point in the near future.

    5. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That explains why you're an ignorant dud and will stay so forever. "Diversify" doesn't necessarily mean people who identify by some weird alphabet soup, as the rest of the blurb actually specifically mentioned, people who have expertise in other areas outside STEM, like psychology, philosophy and history.

      I think she has a point, STEM people are pretty good at developing new technology, but von Braun isn't the only one arguing about his only responsibility being that the rockets go up.

      That said, I think the argument is still naive and wrong, because she's misidentifying the cause of the problem; the problem isn't the STEM people who are the real problem, but the fucking beancounters. STEM people tend to look at the world like a puzzle or an equation to solve, to beancounters it's a bloody spreadsheet that has to provide as much profit as possible - no matter what the costs outside the spreadsheet are.

      Wernher von Braun was a STEM person, Otto Ohlendorf was an economist. I'll leave it to the reader to decide who made the most damage.

    6. Re:Diversity by hackertourist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And that's where I stop reading.

      And you're the poorer for it, because you've missed Baker's entire point. A company that limits its talent pool to one type of person suffers from not just blind spots, but tunnel vision. Such a company tries to solve a problem that requires a full toolbox just by using a hammer.

    7. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We aren't building that though. Many STEM graduates are well-versed in aspects of the humanities, and many have a strong commitment to core principles rather than incessant shocks towards an intersectional dystopia.

      There is no evidence that humanities graduates are in any way more ethical than the general population, or the specific population, and there are observations to the contrary - they are trend-followers and easily-led.

    8. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't possibly equate diversifying investment portfolio to giving money to beggars on the streets, only to get tagged for a robbery?

    9. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And you fell for the bullshit. Wanting *humanities* in STEM is simply a cover for turning STEM into a haven for SWJ hires for the purpose of control.

    10. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She literally chased out the chosen next-in-line CEO Brendan Eich (creator of JavaScript) by getting a bunch of her SJW staff to physically keep him out of the building and threaten him. Look it up *and note how a lot of news didn't cover it at all*.

      I did spend some time trying to look it up and I can confirm that a lot of news didn't cover it at all --- so much that I didn't find a single reference to it.

    11. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A company that limits its talent poor to excellence is .... wait for it Trotsky bitch ...

    12. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you don't get it! She's talking about *diversity*! She must be one of those crackpot SJWs I keep hearing about on sites like Slashdot! She must be trying to take away our would-be meritocracy, replacing it with some sort of free-for-all where one doesn't need any skill, people like me are forced out of their rightful positions, and nobody can express or assert themselves if they aren't an oppressed minority! Only old white men are qualified for the kind of job she's talking about! Also she's the one directly responsible for some kind of heresy against our lord and savior, Brendan Eich!

    13. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nice analogy that you have there, because I would like to point out that a mechanics toolbox is much different from a carpenters toolbox as well. Which is to say that while it is useful to have more than one tool in your box, having all of the tools can be pretty useless (pun intended). Therefore it could be argued that having some diversity is useful while ensuring that you have one of everything is a waste of time and money.

      On the other hand, the idea that having a humanities major on staff to combat "fake news" is laughable at best and completely absurd! There is no way that ANY platform would be able to control misinformation in any sense of the word because when those platforms give their users the ability to post they give their users the ability to misinform others. The idea that this could be sorted out through algorithms is science fiction because as we have seen algorithms will inherit the bias that they are trained with. The only way to solve misinformation is through a better education of the general public in the areas such as critical thinking skills, research, and ethics.

      The humanities do not teach you to be ethical, if anything they teach you how to word your arguments so that you can be unethical and sow misinformation to fit your narrative. It is incredibly shortsighted to say that hiring someone from the humanities will help a company fight misinformation, instead it is more likely to help a company spread its own narrative.

      The ethics of a company always has and always will come from its executive suite and their ethics, everyone else below them is just a projection of that. By definition that is what we call a company culture and very rarely do you see the employees setting any direction for the company. Instead the executives direct the direction of the company based on what makes them the most profits (just take a look at google and their china search engine, the executives are still chasing that lead).

      In conclusion, if you want to focus on anything that this Mozilla said that they want to focus on then the best strategy is to look at the C-suite people and create some real world consequences for their actions. Diversity of the employees wont do anything if the leadership is already crooked.

    14. Re:Diversity by bluegutang · · Score: 2

      Humanities in recent decades *is* about tunnel vision. Everything has to serve a single political position. Any idea that could possibly serve an alternative political position is vilified, and anything that simply non-political is seen as a waste of time.

      Bring more humanities majors into tech will give it more tunnel vision, not less.

    15. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's hoping Brave development progresses to the point we can all just forget about FireFox and Mozilla at some point in the near future.

      Mostly, it has. I'm using it now. It may want for a couple of features, but it's now very stable.

    16. Re:Diversity by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      That changes my whole opinion about Eich.

      Somehow, I never knew he created Javascript...

      Now: 'He's nothing but a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worm! Hanging's too good for him. Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!'

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    17. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That changes my whole opinion about Eich.

      Somehow, I never knew he created Javascript...

      Now: 'He's nothing but a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worm! Hanging's too good for him. Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!'

      To be fair he also donated some personal funds against Proposition 8, so he is not a compete monster.

    18. Re:Diversity by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      It's a tell for the SJW left. They're not about diversity: the important kind, viewpoint diversity. You don't want to hire grievance studies majors for your business. They're nothing but trouble. Once they get in, they'll ensure that your employees are afraid to speak their minds.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    19. Re: Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does he have a dick? He does? Cut off or not? Doesn't matter

      If you have a penis at birth === male.

      This isn't hard.

      You may WANT to be a female, but what you want doesn't matter. I want a million bucks for doing nothing.

    20. Re: Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course. Now go be useful.

    21. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know that didn't happen, but you'll trot out the tired, disproven lie everytime won't you? You're only making yourself look more stupid though.

    22. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you so adamant about Nazis being able to genocide non-white people at the workplace? That is your entire argument, because nobody in reality wants to slience typical conservative viewpoints. Laugh at their idiocy maybe, but most adults grow out of those silly notions at some point in their lives. The only ones that anyone is trying to silence are the literal nazis that literally call for genociding non-white people.

    23. Re:Diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why does a web browser need to consider the ethics of what it's showing me?

  26. Techies lack humanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Cue /. To fall all over itself to prove their point for them.

  27. Meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mozilla suffers from a lack of leadership, says EVERYONE ELSE.

  28. Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by cullenfluffyjennings · · Score: 5, Informative

    Speaking of false news, could we at least get a few details correct. More about Mitchell at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    I expect Cowboy Neil to keep everything on Slashdot 100% true news you can use.

    1. Re:Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jon Don Baker's Mitchell was still better.

    2. Re:Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10 beers.

    3. Re:Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You got some low standards there. It'd take an economically unsound amount of hard alcohol and drugs for me.

    4. Re:Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Isn't it fascinating how the comments on this story don't make reference to her gender, but on similar stories where the message is known to be from a woman... Somehow it's worth mentioning.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by malkavian · · Score: 2

      Because when you bring gender into a debate, it becomes an asserted frame of reference. If it was important enough in the original assertion, it is therefore a valid frame of reference to bring up in a counterpoint.

    6. Re: Mitchell is "her" not a "him" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it isn't fascinating.

      She's done more bad for Mozilla than good. Take your diversity and shove it up your ass ami.

  29. Sounds so nice we'll say it twice by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Interesting summary you got there...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  30. Re:Riiiight. by ArchieBunker · · Score: 0

    You might just be a closet faggot.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  31. It explains what's wrong with Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Mozilla wants to remove RSS support because testing it is consuming a lot of time and money... i.e. their management doesn't know how regression testing works, they see a number on an hours spreadsheet, "regression testing Live Bookmarks", and think, if they remove "live bookmarks" then they save all that money.

    So they remove live bookmarks, and another typical common function is used instead of regression testing, e.g. "find on page". So then "find on page" will appear in their spreadsheet, and they'll think they can save the hours if they remove "find on page".

    i.e. they're a bunch of ARTS and HUMANITIES people with few ENGINEERS and PROGRAMMERS.

    1. Re: It explains what's wrong with Mozilla by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      I don't need the live bookmarks, but the search function is needed often.

      I'd prefer if they remove the built in pdf reader instead and just stick with an external.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re: It explains what's wrong with Mozilla by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Next you'll want nethack removed from emacs.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re: It explains what's wrong with Mozilla by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Why would I care? - I use Vim!

      But don't dare removing regexp from Vim.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  32. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I have a stem degree (chemistry) and am currently a PharmD making six figures. My wife has a humanities degree (DFA), and makes nearly twice what I make as a classical musician.

  33. Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by blarkon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While Popper's Falsification rubric for determining what is scientific isn't particularly sophisticated, the idea that there can be a hypothetical experimental result that would disprove a hypothesis is at the core of STEM fields.

    The problem in the recent humanities fields is that the core tenants of most disciplines are constructed in such a way as to be undisprovable. The moment you're learning things where it is impossible to construct a research project to disprove those things, you've moved into the realm of ideology.

    While there's probably reasons why certain companies want their workers to unquestioningly accept whatever set of assumptions about the universe that the company wants to promote, the businesses that are ultimately successful are the ones that have workers that have functional bullshit detectors. And while science is far from perfect, the epistemological basis of science involves the eventual excision of bullshit hypotheses.

    1. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The problem in the recent humanities fields is that the core tenants of most disciplines are constructed in such a way as to be undisprovable."

      So, we need better Humanities?

      "The moment you're learning things where it is impossible to construct a research project to disprove those things, you've moved into the realm of ideology."

      Let's try a different look. You are looking at humanities and judging them with scientific and engineering values. Some of the humanities, like psychology, have aspects such as effectiveness that scientific analysis may be appropriate. But for a lot of the humanities, art, literature, music, etc. it's pretty irrelevant.
      Here is bad analogy: STEM is necessary in order to build a working computer, audio video, movie system. But the some STEMers jump to the illogical step, that STEMers are all you need to make movies, music etc. that appear on the platforms. Wrong.

    2. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mod up.

      Most of ICT's decline is actually from financial engineering and cost cutting, adding KPI's,
      outsourcing, Agile, fixed price service contracts and buzzwords after another rant about culture and leadership.

      Yeah, Bullshit aware people will prevent lots. But do exclude toadys and butt lickers as well.

    3. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 1

      The problem in the recent humanities fields is that the core tenants of most disciplines are constructed in such a way as to be undisprovable. The moment you're learning things where it is impossible to construct a research project to disprove those things, you've moved into the realm of ideology.

      This also applies to any argument for the status quo, and yet people like you still make it. So why do you get to break your own rules?

      --
      Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
    4. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If that's true then the critical theorist inclusivity/diversity cultists have already infiltrated STEM-fields and companies like google and mozilla, meaning that there is no rational point of wanting even more of the same. IOW, then the status quo is already as wished.

      So what is your point, other than a veiled ad-hominem attack? While at it, what's the colour of your hair?

    5. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C-C-C-Carnap!

    6. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      You are assuming that the only way to prove something is through "hard science methods" like reproduction and strictly controlled testing.

      However, look at things like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Impossible to prove through reproduction because you can't reset someone's mind, yet it helps millions of people and is proven to work beyond any doubt. A lot of psychology is like that, proven to be effective or predictive on a large scale.

      And it's a good thing too, because dismissing it as bunk would leave many millions of people suffering from mental health problems that are treatable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Proven to work" is a tough claim for CBT, I've read its efficacy rates are closer to 50%. It really depends on the person. I know people for whom CBT has worked wonders, but I also know people who have gone six or seven times to CBT classes and got nothing out of it. Finally, I know a few guys who got confused about what sort of CBT they were getting into and walked out with a very, very sore crotch.

    8. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While there's probably reasons why certain companies want their workers to unquestioningly accept whatever set of assumptions about the universe that the company wants to promote, the businesses that are ultimately successful are the ones that have workers that have functional bullshit detectors. And while science is far from perfect, the epistemological basis of science involves the eventual excision of bullshit hypotheses.

      Wait, are you proposing that companies shouldn't be aware of the behaviour and ideological tendencies of their relevant groups such as the customers, employees, governments and societies? That's like selling pork in Mecca.

    9. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by malkavian · · Score: 3, Informative

      Things like CBT, you don't evaluate as a single sample. You look at statistical bodies and meta studies of those "hard science" studies (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/).
      It's efficacy is shown to have significance. In other words, it's not a sure fire cure, or working in even a majority of cases, but has an effect well above a lack of intervention of simple conversation.
      So, it comes down to "It'll help some people in some circumstances". Which is fine. It's one tool in an arsenal of tools that should be tried, and discarded if it doesn't work in that case.
      Where did you get your concept of it not working by reproducing, and that it's not able to be examined or evaluated by "hard science"? Because whatever source you got it from is provably wrong.

    10. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem in the recent humanities fields is that the core tenants of most disciplines are constructed in such a way as to be undisprovable

      Even when they're not constructed as such, try getting approved to make any attempt to perform hypothesis testing. For example, we all know that performance on intelligence tests varies. We all know that the distribution of scores is roughly a normal distribution. Try asking the question, "is the mean, standard deviation, or other descriptive statistic correlated in some way with race/ethnicity after correcting for socioeconomic and cultural factors?" You try to run that research without getting thrown out of your university by throngs of screeching fascists demanding your head. Ironically, they prevent real research into knowledge that could help address racial achievement gaps and give society the opportunity to develop solutions that actually work. Instead, we're not allowed to research and are forced to shovel billions of dollars into programs that have done very little to address the gap even after decades.

      "It might make some Nazi happy," is not a valid reason to prohibit research. Objective facts are what they are. So what if it turns out that some racial group performs more poorly on intelligence tests. If that was established as an incontrovertible fact, and that "fit" with a Nazi's theories on race, that doesn't mean we have to adopt their "solution" to the problem. We could just as easily focus research on the causes of the gap and target focused education to close it.

    11. Re:Moving towards post-truth paradigms in hiring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see where you're confused. You are having trouble differentiating between something that's "undisproveable" as in it can't be tested, and something that "can be easily tested, and so far is reproducible 100% of the time".

  34. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I came here to make point 3.
    It's not the tech people that are the problem. It's the fuckwit sociopaths in management that have forced thing to be the way they are.

  35. First world problems by Kohath · · Score: 1

    You can't have everything. But you can certainly complain about not having everything.

  36. Absolutely fucking not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sick and tired of these art majors opinions and humanities idiots opinions. It's the absolute fucking lack of critical thinking that has resulted in people being too stupid to intelligently distinguish facts from reality. The absolute and utter sleaze balls that come out of "business" programs, "psychology" programs, "political science" programs are the problem with the world.

    Stop empowering these stupid idiots; they think they are equal contributors when all they do is literally cry snowflake at every fucking chance they get. I'm for equal rights, but stay the fuck out of my face about it; and I dont want to hear about it at work because I dont give a shit at work. I'm at work to engineer and solve problems, not coddle with fellow colleagues on how the local tranny got hang drawn and quartered for walking down a dark alley.

    If you want people to not slop up every fucking bit of garbage news they get, then encourage the same idiots to get off social media; or at the very fucking least learn how to face check; and not use some random fucking website that keyword stuffed itself to google's first page.

    Fun fact, Idiocracy the movie comes closer and closer to being an accurate documentary of the United States. Stupid people reproduce at will, then; are so phenomenally stupid that because they were dumb enough to reproduce without having a career that it's some MEXICANS who live thousands of miles away are the problem; even worse its the KIDS of the illegal mexicans who live thousands of miles away problem. More over, you can fix this problem by building a wall.

    As an American, this country is stupid as shit; and frankly, I embrace the utter demise of this country. The sooner it happens the better. Let STEM runt he govt; get rid of these two bit hacks in business and "humanities"; these are the real blight on the world; stupid people who cannot understand real problems, so they are tasked with implementing a solution to them; or in our case just abandoning the problems are some Chinese hoax.

    1. Re:Absolutely fucking not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then go back to India. You are not welcome here any longer.

    2. Re:Absolutely fucking not by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      I embrace the utter demise of this country. The sooner it happens the better.

      So the single unhappy little truth buried in all that nonsense is that you are a traitor to your country. Thanks for making that clear.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    3. Re:Absolutely fucking not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe they're a true patriot who wants an end to the suffering of the country that has strayed so far from what it was intended to become.

      captcha: results

    4. Re:Absolutely fucking not by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"? Really? That's all you can come up with?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    5. Re: Absolutely fucking not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't know one would be considered a traitor for voicing their opinion. I thought we still had that right or has the patriot act dismantled that too? Get the fuck out of here with your attempt to strawman.

    6. Re: Absolutely fucking not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

  37. The problems are structural by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back when schools were taught in a single church classroom, the older children would tutor the younger, and the children who happened to win the genetic or family lottery had to learn leadership skills and how to work with, and help, the other kids. We just accepted people were different, and learned to value others for those differences. When you began to form business relationships, you'd seek to understand those differences. For a new aristocracy it is vital to understand how to work with other human beings.

    When they became adults, it was natural when starting a business, or arguing politics, to negotiate reasonably and dicuss ideas gracefully because everyone understood eachothers position. All of those lessons were learned we would call "Tact" today.

    Todays schools? Kids break into groups of like-minded people, form their echo chambers, decide everyone else is too scary or socially dangerous to be around, and then they go into adult-hood with those social expectations. We let industrialists build our schools, and they don't train children in vital yet basic skills like news literacy, or socialization, or leadership, or how people are different and why that's good or bad. That has a tremendous impact.

    So when the geeky kids get out of college and into a CS career, and begin building apps; and this was a real issue before smarphones came out by the way because computers were not cheap enough or approachable for most people; they have no conception of how other kinds of people interact with what they are building, and they have no compassion or empathy for them either. Literally, the world becomes world of warcraft for them and their bank accounts are the score.

  38. Tech progress BECAUSE of the lack of humanities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If tech had to deal with the diversity bullshit in its early days, it wouldn’t have succeeded at all.

    The way how Mozilla Foundation wastes money and driven Firefox to the ground is testament to how humanities screw up tech.

  39. Businesses don't want to pay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... want to tackle the problem of misinformation online ...

    Gee, then re-instate studies of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, like everybody had to do before they went to university. That's a wealth of lessons about civics, philosophy and politics that modern businesses don't want to pay for. Businesses do want to pay for fake news so that voters are scared of big government and socialism: Guess who's left to lead the way?

    All those lessons about civics and philosophy will reduce the power of the frenzied crowd. Politicians don't want self-reliant voters, negative adverts are easier than policies; corporations don't want society holding them accountable, that reduces profits.

    ... relationship of STEM to society or humans or life.

    We need education to be faster, more efficient: Young people have to spend 10 years in institutionalized education to become an adult and that doesn't cover social skills, fucking, or managing money. Then they need to learn a trade or profession, which takes 3 years minimum. Then there's learning how to be a trades-person or professional. There's no time to teach leadership or holistic paradigms anymore.

  40. Diversify to what? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    The product produced has to be released to a standard that works and users have confidence in.
    That needs vert smart people who can code to a really great standard.
    Better than their global competition so their US brand can get the best reviews.

    How is stopping work to look for people who want to work with something to do with arts going to ensure long term competitiveness?

    Smart nations with the best science, technology, engineering and maths are not slowing down to think about adding some arts and ethics.
    They are starting their own brands, working for their nations best brands and adding all the best science, technology, engineering and maths they can.

    Every day lost to talking about arts and ethics in the US allows a brand to slide more to becoming a sheltered workshop for arts graduates.
    The competition is adding more smart people. Why should US brands go slower and take time out to restart complex projects with more humanities?

    People want software that is ready to use with less errors to report. A guide on how to understand the ethics of new software will just enable competitors who have software that is ready.

    Let people find great US created software and use it as they want.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  41. Re:Translation by SirSlud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The translation is there's a balance - you don't want your engineers to be incapable of empathy or ignorant of history, in the sense of not caring about hurting people.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  42. Re:Riiiight. by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not the tech people that are the problem. It's the fuckwit sociopaths in management that have forced thing to be the way they are.

    Hate to break this to you, but some of those "fuckwit sociopaths" have STEM degrees.

    You need technical skills to develop technology. And you need human skills to convey what you have developed to other humans. Including management.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  43. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Define "left"? All my humanities professors loved Bush; who is not left. He is left of Trump; sure, but the guy is still a RWNJ. Also, would love to see the data on this; or are you just an example of the idiot who regurgitates some talking point he heard on Fox News or from that stupid cuck Ben Shapiro?

  44. twice by bigtreeman · · Score: 1

    It's so critical we have to say it twice.

    --
    Go well
  45. Re:Translation by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1

    Keep going, you're almost there. You want people whose natural talent and proficiency at learned skills is tempered by humility, empathy, and a respect for their users as partners and brothers together on the road of life, not toothless lusers who are too dumb to not be outsourced or replaced by the nice man who doesn't speak a word of English after 20 years here, but sure does mow my lawn real nice.

  46. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm largely self-taught too. Based on your comments, I think you're lacking anything brilliant to say, so you're just here trying to dazzle us with your own brand of bullshit. Prove yourself right, or keep it to yourself, please. FWIW, from my own experience, I've seen an overwhelming amount of degree holders use their degree(s) as an excuse to put down others while outputting the bare minimum, but I'm not going to ask anyone to prove me wrong--I know my opinions are anecdotal in nature.

  47. Re:Riiiight. by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

    Widespread ignorance of and defiance of historical knowledge explains why so much of the world is messed up. If historians weren't just as frequently cranks as everyone else, the avoidance of modern-day disasters like Venezuela would be much more likely.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  48. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Excellent, I want you to build a contraption to kill yourself with, since you are obviously mentally unstable or homicidal.

  49. I disagree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Tech needs executives who have a set of morals, and who listen to and trust their STEM people when they wave a red flag, rather than a bunch of sales guys who'd sell their grandmother for a quick buck.

    Seen it too many times to count. "Just get it shipped" trumps all other concerns.

  50. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You quoted me twice. Triggered?

  51. Dangerous and Stupid by RobinBermanseder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have degrees in both camps, Science (Physics, Computing) and Humanities (Public Policy).
    I have seen and been involved in the thought processes and the implicit value hierarchies that underlie both types of thinking.

    The utterances of Ms Baker need to be exposed and refuted immediately. They are dangerous and sociopathic.
    The attack on science by the current marxist inspired SJWs threatens us with a return to the dark ages.
    Read some history.
    Read "A Canticle for Liebowitz"
    For the love of science and our civilization, resist this.

    1. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      That's all well and good, except the attacks on science and reason mostly come from the right.

    2. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This just flat-out is not true.

      The attacks on science from the right tend to be fairly specific on perceptions of falsity (IOW a failure of science to make itself credible, and as such a valid attack on science for a failing of science itself) where the attacks on science and reason from the left have come within and are pervasive and ideological, and so are much less visible. Thus the right actually have more right and better moral standing to question (perceived leftist) "science", even if they lack the wherewithal to do it on content (since that may or may not have been replaced with leftist ideology).

      The rot set in from the left, and it started decades ago. Blaming the right for doing collateral damage to parts of science that're still good is a little unfair since the left set out taking the tools away to see the difference.

      Which is not to say that I agree or support any of this. I'm sitting here fuming at everybody involved insisting on being so fucking stupid. Including you.

      So no, the only thing factual about your comment is that it shows your loyalties, whether you mean to or not.

    3. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was true during the '90s and maybe a bit of the early '00s. Times have changed. While some members of the right still reject some science that they are unfortunately still very tribalistic about (climate change, evolution), the left has been tossing entire libraries of scientific knowledge into the proverbial fire lately due to perceived X-isms. It's happening at a rate that's surpassing the right. Lately I've seen the right be more objective than ever in the face of the postmodernist left.

      It's very weird for me, considering I grew up during the '90s and constantly had to deal with hearing the right being incredibly anti-gay at the time -- which was the time I myself was discovering I'm not a heterosexual. At the time, naturally I hated the right. They were my political enemy and wanted nothing more than to see my life ruined because of something about me that was never my choice.

      However, now the right has heavily toned down their anti-gay rhetoric, while the left has gone fucking NUCLEAR with their anti-white, anti-male rhetoric. Well, guess what? I'm not just a homo, I'm a white male homo! So the left is currently hating me on TWO fronts, whereas the right has backed down from the one front the used to hate me on.

      Now I'm in a situation where despite still being a proud liberal douchebag, I'm constantly being confused for a "Nazi" just because I have a few opinions that differ from the absolute insanity of the far-left. I'm not seeing any moderate lefties speaking out against this shit, either. They're either too scared to talk or too fed-up to even count themselves among the left anymore.

      Sorry to digress there, I guess my point is that politics and positions are never all that static, they can change drastically even over the course of a decade. What was once right is left, what is left is right, what's up is down and what's down is up. And it could go back at any time, too. So be aware, stay away from "base politics" mentality and make sure you vote based what's happening in the here and now, not based on the perceived ideologies that your political leaning is "supposed to" support or reject.

    4. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What you call "our society" is what the people you think are racists and Nazis call cultural Marxism. The fact is ideas such as equality of outcome and grievance politics based upon oppressor/oppressed classes of people have become mainstream. It is sort of silly to argue that cultural marxism is just a conspiracy theory after cultural marxism has already won the culture war. You are like a fish that doesn't realize water is wet.

    5. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 1

      Agreed, basically, the way they would have it, 2+2=5 would be true, under relativist perspective, if you think it is. There is no more objective reality with these people. They are going after empericism and mathematics and so on as being tools of oppression and being racist!

    6. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your making a logically fallacious argument here by assuming that most religious people are against empiricism, you are using the views of a few and extrapolating it on a broad generalization on everyone who is religious. The fact is large numbers of religious people are scientific and empirical, many do not believe in young earth creationism and conclude that the best explanation is evolution of life and so on. However evolution of life does not preclude the existence of god, they are comparable, since science cannot prove or disprove god.

      Also, SJWs seem to be attacking the very idea of empiricism itself. Thats unlike say a global warming skeptic who is questioning it within the empirical method. its also unlike religious people who have beliefs outside of the realm of empiricism completely since they deal with things like god which are not disprovable. Its possible to believe in God and accept evidence for the this world things we can see, touch, hear, smell, taste. etc. Many religious people do believe in an objective truth in this world, SJW postmodernists don't, really.

    7. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Goddamn the autism in this thread is staggering.

    8. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Drink! AmiMojo jumping into defense when anything remotely negative is said about Marx/Marxism!

      Take a second drink if you think AmiMojo is strawmanning the OP by railing about cultural Marxism when the OP didn't talk about it (I mean, he could have just misread, be easy on him and your bladder)

      But do get ready for a third drink in case AmiMojo whines about a conspiracy of people downvoting his trolling flamebaity posts as troll and flamebait.

    9. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Drink! AmiMojo jumping into defense when anything remotely negative is said about Marx/Marxism!

      I'm not actually defending Marx/Marxism Mr. Anon, I'm pointing out that believing in a Nazi conspiracy theory about Jews trying to destroy western culture somewhat discredits you.

      It also makes me wonder if you are just ignorant or are knowingly repeating Nazi propaganda that was used to demonize Jews.

      Do you have to drink for this one too? Maybe the mistaken drink you just had can cancel this one out, although it's the weekend so knock yourself out. Glad to be of service in fact, although I can think of better ways to spend my evenings...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not actually defending Marx/Marxism Mr. Anon, I'm pointing out that believing in a Nazi conspiracy theory about Jews trying to destroy western culture somewhat discredits you.

      Drink! AmiMojo doesn't consider his own posts to be supportive of Marxist agenda as long as he isn't fully cheerleading for it...

      It also makes me wonder if you are just ignorant or are knowingly repeating Nazi propaganda that was used to demonize Jews.

      ...but wouldn't give other people the same leniency, dreaming up conspiracy theories that anything that doesn't explicitly bash Nazis must be somehow them supporting or helping the Nazi cause!

      Typical AmiMojo "it's only ok when I do it"

    11. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by nateman1352 · · Score: 1

      Under the leadership of this nutjob the Mozilla Foundation's administrative expenses increased 20% to $60 million as of 2016 their most recent tax filing. I've always wondered how the Mozilla Foundation has been blowing $360 million a year, given how terrible Firefox has gotten.

    12. Re:Dangerous and Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny, you say "Read some history", which seems to be exactly the point of getting more humanities background among tech people. So it sounds like you basically agree.

  52. Re:Riiiight. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    Thanks for making it abundantly clear that you're a loud-mouthed fascist piece of shit.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  53. Well versed in STEM & humanities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a double BS in CS/Anthropology with an MS CS and enough MS level course work in Anthropology to have doubled the MS if I had taken a foreign language. Of all the courses, the STEM courses were the easiest. That includes the six courses of calculus based physics, same of calculus, chemistry, and the multitude of CS and EEE courses. STEM is easy, you can do most of it without knowing how to figure out the why. Concentrating only on STEM is thinking inside the box, you need the humanities to get out of the box.

  54. Didn't you USED to make a browser Mozilla? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about....and this is just a thought, just spitballing here, instead of taking donations from people that actually want you to make a DECENT BROWSER and spending it on virtue signaling how woke you are, how about using it to....oh I don't know...making an actual browser people want to use instead of a really cheap shitty Chrome ripoff?

    But hey keep on blowing money to show how virtuous you are, cuz "get woke go broke" isn't a thing, that's fine because this user that actually used to hand out your browser waaay back when it was a Suite, moved on to PaleMoon. Oh and hey, my browser extensions actually work there, giving me an actual reason to use it over Chrome! Huh wadda ya know, a browser that actually has real reasons to use it over the big two instead of just being a piss poor copy of the other guy...wow, maybe you should think about that, maybe when you aren't giving money to Antifa?

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    1. Re:Didn't you USED to make a browser Mozilla? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, grow the fuck up already with this nonsensical "Chrome clone" bullshit. You idiots make regular conspiracy theorists sound reasonable with your "Chrome clone" and "Antifa" and "Pale Moon" and "you don't even make a decent browser anymore" horseshit. You're desperately doing your best to smear a company for not making their product exactly the way you want it, and daring to not keep quiet about anything not directly agreeing with your personal opinions. Then you act like Pale Moon isn't almost wholly reliant on this "non-decent" browser made by Mozilla. It's positively disgusting behavior. Can't you even complain like decent human beings?

    2. Re:Didn't you USED to make a browser Mozilla? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So long as they have the ability in the user.js file to deactivate everything creepy and tracking-based, and simultaneously keep the codebase secure from exploits, I'll have to stick with them.

      The moment they stop this basic philosophy, I'm going to drop them like a sack of hot lead. Problem is that most browsers are shit, Firefox is just less shitty atm.

    3. Re:Didn't you USED to make a browser Mozilla? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The SJW stuff is nonsense and pointless distraction based on falsehoods and actually SJWs racist ideologies that an entire racial group are oppressors and need to be exterminated to finally bring about Utopia. Firefox should focus instead on producing a good secure browser rather than all of this social crap.

      I looked at Palemoon, the big problem I see with it is technical in that it lacks a sandbox yet also inherits Mozillas old codebase which is full of bugs and kind of a crapfest of C++ code written by people who dont know whats going on, leaving the user vulnerable without a sandbox. Bugs will always creep in so a sandbox is a must. I never thought highly of XUL plugins either, its sort of a wild west of bad extensions and very poor security containment for these extensions. Its always a good idea to give extensions a sandbox and to notify the user of what kinds of permissions they will be granted.

  55. Hrmm? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Wut. The basis for ux is understanding human behavior. There is literally already a field for this.

  56. tech suffers by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Tech suffers from a lack of tech skill. The security problems in Firefox are a prime example.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  57. The humanities isn't just gender studies by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    that's a very small part. History and Literature are the vast majority. We could do with people that knew history better, given what's happened in the last few elections or the pointless wars we keep getting dragged into for no good reason...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re: The humanities isn't just gender studies by Evtim · · Score: 0

      What history? The one that excludes the Gulags?
      No thanks.

    2. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have enough people who knows history. Everyone is studying history in college. Knowing history does not prevent us from repeating it over and over.

    3. Re: The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What history department excludes the gulags? How do you know about them, if history excludes them?

    4. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "We could do with people that knew history better"

      You won't find those graduating with Humanities in college. Just look at the textbooks and see what they've **left out** of American history and ESPECIALLY literature - all in the name of eliminating "microagressions".

    5. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll only accept this if the "history" relates to the field of study.

      Computer programmers learning the history of insecure voting machines, Therac-25, the Equifax breach and the Halloween Documents? Excellent choice of course material.

      Computer programmers learning the "history" of internalized subconscious systemic microaggressions committed against womxn of colxr with a side helping of rape culture theory? Fuck off with that shit.

    6. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We could do with people that knew history better, given what's happened in the last few elections or the pointless wars we keep getting dragged into for no good reason...

      Absolutely! Clearly: designing browsers, coding, and the like are the very best way they can use that knowledge.

    7. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by ScentCone · · Score: 0

      that's a very small part. History and Literature are the vast majority. We could do with people that knew history better, given what's happened in the last few elections or the pointless wars we keep getting dragged into for no good reason...

      The problem is that even if a student DOES elect (or is forced to) take more than just a casual program of history at that level, they are exposed - through contemporary collegiate liberal arts political monoculture - to a thoroughly left-spun re-imagining or filtering of events deprived of almost all meaning. It's precisely BECAUSE of contemporary liberal arts education that we have lots of young people screaming in the streets and demanding that the US be turned into some disastrous spawn of China and Venezuela.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    8. Re: The humanities isn't just gender studies by Chas · · Score: 1

      London's Goldsmith's University has a group of LGBTQ students who essentially claimed that gualgs were a "compassionate", non-violent course of action.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...

      Maybe compared to putting them up against a wall and SHOOTING them. Sure.
      But on the compassion scale with 0 being "shoot them", a gulag was maybe a 0.001.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    9. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Chas · · Score: 1

      But it does help cut down on that sort of thing.

      It'll never eliminated it. But that's because the power of stupidity for large numbers of people is nigh-infinite.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    10. Re: The humanities isn't just gender studies by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      I believe most history departments call such classes 'social studies.'

    11. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Required college history surveys are just a final repeat of the 'comic book history' we are all indoctrinated with in lower grades.

      Every nation has a different one, it's interesting comparing our 'mythical history' with various fuzzy foreigner's versions.

      Beware Ruskys, they like to fight. Don't bring up the 'Allied Expeditionary Force' that bounced around Russia (not helping, until Pershing pulled the plug), during the revolution.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    12. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      we have lots of young people screaming in the streets and demanding that the US be turned into some disastrous spawn of China and Venezuela.

      Or even worse, Norway and Sweden!

    13. Re:The humanities isn't just gender studies by ScentCone · · Score: 1

      Or even worse, Norway and Sweden!

      No, the natives of Norway and Sweden have, baked into their culture, a work ethic that would be intolerable to a typical US liberal arts graduate. "Socialism" in those Scandinavian countries has worked because they've still had a productive market-based economy under the hood generating the actual prosperity that is taxed so heavily to pay for it all. Norway and Sweden are traditional capitalist economies with socialist millstones around their necks. And now that they've got huge influxes of unskilled, non-assimilating, non-local-language-speaking people slurping up the stuff everyone else is getting taxed to provide, the energetic market-driven businesses in those countries are going to fail to bear the burden for all of that government generosity. Their rules will have to change, or it will all collapse. Productive people and businesses will flee those countries in the same way they're fleeing California.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  58. blind spots by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here is an incomplete list of study fields with obvious blind spots:

    Psychology - around half their studies do not replicate, still cannot explain basic phenomena of daily life, increasingly infused with politics, hindered by ethics (not a bad thing, but a fact) to conduct important research

    Economics - reductionist approach to humans, has no concept of basic facts of human life (e.g. altruism), in the real world economists are as often wrong as they are right, mass blindness to black swans, has led us into the financial crisis

    Gender studies and its relatives - has taken its own subject and turned it into a mixture of politics, bullshit bingo and sanctuary for rejects. Fundamentally flawed and unscientific to the core.

    No, thanks. We don't need any of these people anywhere. Most of them are already doing enough damage as they are. "Diversity" is a bullshit term when it is enforced, because it is becoming the exact thing that it pretends to combat - exclusion. "sorry, we already have three black people, we need an asian person now". And the rallying cry of "needs more diversity" has become a synonym for "we are jealous that something in the real world actually works without us being involved".

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    1. Re:blind spots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's nothing wrong with Diversity. The real problem is when the reasonable idea of diversity is corrupted into a monster: Diversity of skin colour or family background or self identity. That's the bullshit.

    2. Re:blind spots by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Software engineers are hardly free from the "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" fallacy. I've seen a lot of attempts to fix flawed thinking and flawed processes through software fail miserably because it ignored the non-technological aspects or got lost trying to solve a technical problem that was rather irrelevant to the business problem.

      There's lots of real psychology like confirmation bias, sunken cost fallacy etc. but they're easy to poke fun at, ask a psychologist what the time is and he'll ask you what time you'd like it to be. What motivates people? What makes people work together as a group? How do you direct a bunch of people towards a common goal? Why create self-inflicted problems like OCD? It's hard because you can't set up a formula like a high school chemistry experiment and say if I put this in I always get this out. But it's still fascinating and worth studying.

      There's vast branches of economics that is rather mundane, it's everything to do with accounting and microeconomics like what are our margins on this product mix and what's the return on investment. Investment theory is speculation, for everyone who lost money you can be sure somebody made money. Don't think the financial crisis was a crisis for everyone, some made billions and managed to ditch the bill on everyone else. If you want to study how and stop them from doing it again, that's economics. And yeah, they're still waiting on a model from psychology on how humans perceive value.

      I'd actually like to defend gender studies as a subset of psychology too, why do we have gender roles and where do they come from is a reasonable topic to study. The problem is when you're starting to uncritically add people to workplaces and projects as a means to improve productivity. I mean, I'm part of a development team and we have a team dynamic and every one of the team members has their own perception of working there. You could do a descriptive study of that, but productivity wouldn't go up unless you actually could change something for the better. And maybe we'd do better with an expert who isn't a great fit than a mediocre team player.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:blind spots by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      why do we have gender roles and where do they come from is a reasonable topic to study

      On the surface, I'd agree with you. However, that isn't what "gender studies" does in practice. It burrows down into a "gender role" until it finds how that role is imstigated with malace aforethought by the "white patriarchy" to "prove" that that particular gender role is wrong .

      And maybe we'd do better with an expert who isn't a great fit than a mediocre team player.

      Or maybe, as has been found by others, you will inject someone with a vendetta who will tear your team completely apart.

      It is anything but a neutral field. So I, for one, will not defend gender studies.

    4. Re:blind spots by Tom · · Score: 1

      Nobody said that engineers are perfect. But at least they have a clear definition of what works and what doesn't.

      There's lots of real psychology like confirmation bias, sunken cost fallacy etc.

      Yes, there is. There is also all the intro-level psychology about perception and cognition. Very interesting stuff.

      If you want to study how and stop them from doing it again, that's economics.

      No, that is politics. You don't need economics to understand that the financial crisis was a giant theft / scam. And you don't stop it with economics. You prevent a repetition with politics, police and prison.

      I'd actually like to defend gender studies as a subset of psychology too,

      You are thinking of a different thing than what is done under this header these days.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    5. Re:blind spots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I taught statistics to social science majors when I was in grad school.
      I was always amazed at the number of students that could not perform basic computations correctly, much less properly design and analyze an experiment. For those that could do the math, the standard behavior went like this:
      1) Choose what you want to prove.
      2) Find a data set that seems to show it.
      3) Perform whatever tests you can think of until one of them supports your idea.
      4a) Turn in the paper, and complain bitterly when you get marked down for having done the wrong tests and produced the wrong conclusion - OR
      4b) Publish and be praised for your amazing insight.

      And those problems don't even get into the low quality of the data... push surveys, badly designed interviews, 'filtered' samples...

      My fellow grad students and I used to say that "Anecdotes are not data - except in sociology and psychology, and psychology doesn't require the plural."

    6. Re:blind spots by HornWumpus · · Score: 0

      'Women's studies' should be: cooking, cleaning and baby raising.

      And blowjobs.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  59. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Self-taught" = "Failed out of college".

    Pretty easy to figure that out by checking the timeline on your Google+, idiot.

  60. Re:Riiiight. by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

    Oh the humanities!

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  61. Or just hire moral people and give them time... by OneOfMany07 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My experience in the tech field is that companies constantly pressure their employees for more productivity, and that everyone can be moral. You don't need a degree in philosophy or psychology to be caring and aware of what is right/good...just as you don't need a computer science degree to program.

    Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to punish people who are immoral. Just like it would help to do the same in politics.

    1. Re:Or just hire moral people and give them time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Leftist drones have to be programmed. After successful programming they desire to force everyone to undergo the same programming.

  62. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The most common job for psychology majors a year after graduation is "Uber driver".

    In fact, people with psych degrees are among the most employable.

    Its so revealing that you just randomly shit on people you don't like in order to make yourself feel superior. Not only that, but you have to lie about it. Despite all your ugly elitism you are too incompetent to even spend 30 seconds with google before opening your mouth and making a fool of yourself. God you must be insufferable in person.

  63. Make tech desirable for psych majors then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Psych major in tech. Used to work in mental health, and it was great, working in my field. Moved to tech for the pay, but after a while, it just isn't worth it. People pursue psych because they're interested in mental health related stuff and want to help others, and most of what I get utilized for ends up just being esoteric customer escalations, no real interesting or meaningful work, and any semblance of mental health stuff or giving programs promoted by HR is a joke. Create interesting human problems and a meaningful culture of philanthropy if you want to attract psych majors. I left a job working with kids where I got stuff thrown at me and attacked on occasion, but was making meaningful connections and really helping people. Tech is just boring as hell in comparison.

    But then again, pay was what moved me out of it, so there's always that, too. But we'll always feel like we're selling our soul and could be helping the kids.

  64. Yes, her code has horrible security problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... but her poems in the lunchroom are wonderful.

  65. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think maybe you could benefit from a therapist.

    Just sayin...

  66. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When it's typical that classical musicians earn six figures, we'll talk.

  67. Re:Riiiight. by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Psychologists can actually help people, though I suspect it's the thin end of the bell curve of that crowd. And killing all the lawyers never solves anything - not saying don't do it, just that we'll inevitably need a new crop of them.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  68. Re:Riiiight. by lgw · · Score: 2

    Hey, now, we don't need genocide. We just need an arc ...

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  69. non-scientific facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here is a Humanities subject that is non-scientific, and yet factual: history. I'm pretty sure Abraham Lincoln existed, but I can't figure out a double-blind study to prove it, or how to falsify it. I'm less sure about the existence of Jesus Christ; more sure about Alexander the Great. Determining facts in history involves evidence, judging and weighing evidence. The quantity, quality, consistency multiple sources of original information of historical evidence are good foundations to start with. There is little or no evidence for the existence of Christ other than Biblical writings (I'm not a historian, but I'm pretty sure that is correct. For example, no Roman documents regarding Jesus have been found, have they?). More evidence from many original sources for the existence of Alexander the Great, and heck of a lot more for of Lincoln. The same concepts apply to Historical events. My assertion is that History includes knowledge of facts. It also includes knowledge of possible occurrences, such as societies becoming cruel, or peace breaking out between former enemies. Think of black swans. Unlike science, History cannot give anything like a precise prediction, and we can't set up controlled studies of historical events or people. But, by informing us of prior events, it gives people a chance to avoid 'bad' events and foster 'good' events. History doesn't do to good on the stock market. You can't buy shares in history. But, I think a society that 'invests' in history may just be better off than one that doesn't.
    [This is a Toynbee free post. I suggest R.G. Collingwood as an interesting read.]

  70. Re:Riiiight. by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem for those guys isn't the STEM degree - they were probably OK people when they were younger. Then they got MBAs.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  71. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hate to break this to you, but some of those "fuckwit sociopaths" have STEM degrees.

    And some don't. Thanks for your stunning insights.

  72. Re: Translation by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    After which you get a new set of problems instead. A lot of people from the 'humanities' sector takes pride in not understanding technical issues and look down on tech knowing people. Especially if they are artistic designers.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  73. Re: Riiiight. by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Like making sure that Trump was elected.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  74. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Psychologists can. The current wave of "social workers" pretending to practice psychology, and spending their time addicting their clients to self-destructive self-pity and turning them into "what they identify as" instead of what they actually do or they actually are, are what we get for letting this fool who claimns that witch doctors casting lightning curses must replace physics ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) or this fool claiming there is no such thing as biological sex because he/she/they have studied the history of science ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) And do not get me *going* on the "Center for Self-Leadership", a bunch of "psychothereapists" who believe that training mans nothing, even though they charge $13000/weekend for seminars which provide no certification, are never graded, and serve to make completely untrained bozos pretend they've mastered something with no one involved ever having actually learned anything.

  75. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not often at the VP level or higher. The MBA's and lawyers take over pretty fast.

  76. Lake suffers from the lack of desert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mozilla is working really hard for that Soros money.

    1. Re:Lake suffers from the lack of desert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Mozilla is working really hard for that evil, traitor's Soros money.". Fixed that for you.

  77. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't tell me. Tell that to Gerald Butler.

  78. Re:Remember, you could have had a tech guy leading by Kagetsuki · · Score: 0

    I came to the comments for this. So many people don't know the real story behind what happened. Unfortunately most of the press didn't even cover it, so here's one of the few articles that did: https://www.breitbart.com/tech...

    Brave is "ok". I've been alternating between brave and FF but haven't found Brave mature in development enough to make the switch completely.

  79. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's projection. It's you motherfuckers have no commitment to principles or fair-dealing, you have the ability to smile while plunging the knife in time and time again.

  80. You're thinking teachers by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Psychology majors often find employment in marketing, social engineering/networking, project management, politics, lobbying and other jobs were spending 4-8 years learning how to push somebody's buttons pays off. Many of them do a find job of manipulating techies into working long hours for low pay.

    Mozilla is hurting because browsers are incredibly complex beasts and they don't have nearly as much money as they used to. As a techy you'd think you'd know this.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:You're thinking teachers by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1, Troll

      Mozilla is hurting because browsers are incredibly complex beasts and they don't have nearly as much money as they used to.

      They have less money because they have less market share. They have less market share because they have an inferior product. They have an inferior product because they spent too much effort on virtue-signalling.

      Mozilla hurting is a result of their self-politicising, them virtue-signalling is not a result of their low market share, it's a cause of their low market-share.

      They're still doubling down on the madness with their Rust language. Companies (like Mozilla, and others) will probably learn only very late in the game that technical-minded people don't like extremist politics injected into their products.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    2. Re:You're thinking teachers by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      learning how to push somebody's buttons

      Back in the day, psychologists were involved in UI design. That was when you could tell by looking which button to push.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  81. In other news... by An+Ominous+Cow+Erred · · Score: 3, Funny

    Cupcake bakeries need to hire more employees with degrees in astrophysics, bringing their much-needed understanding of electron degeneracy pressure in white dwarfs and pair-instability supernovae to the cupcake industry.

    Afternoon child daycare centers need to hire more trained welding technicians, who understand when to use arc or gas welders depending on the material used and the appropriate flux needed for strong joints in compressive or tensile loads in bridges, skyscrapers and submarines. This is vital for the children's well-being.

    Most importantly, symphony orchestras (whether public or privately-managed) need to get on the bandwagon (as it were) and hire more software engineers adept in low-level microcontroller coding in assembly language, supplemented with theory-oriented CS graduates who can develop better sorting algorithms for the violin section.

    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only experienced programmers can play the violin in C!

    2. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good ones.

      Except the orchestra might actually find a microcontroller guy useful, in that he'd be able to repair & maintain electronic musical instruments. Sometimes you want a synth or effect box, even in an orchestra :-)

  82. Re:Riiiight. by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 1

    What the world needs is more "Humanities" flunkies who can't pay for their basket weaving and feminist studies degrees running shit.

    The fact that people can't be mature about this shows there definitely is a problem. If your education and experience can't save you from making really stupid strawmen (just to get mod points), then you just proved them right.

    --
    Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
  83. The Humanities are not taught anymore. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humanities would be a good thing, if it existed. It would help STEM people become well rounded individuals with an understanding of their culture and how to write persuasively.

    Unfortunately, such a thing does not exit any more. All the courses listed as Humanities are really political indoctrination courses intended to turn a person into a doctrinaire NPC!

  84. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you mad that you have an abnormally small dick?

  85. Re:Riiiight. by Rockoon · · Score: 1

    It seems to me also that there is what people do and then there is what people say. All the talking is about getting people doing the doing. Maybe its time to make the people doing the talking to do some of the doing.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  86. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 0

    "Is there in truth no beauty?"

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  87. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem is not the techies. The problem is the legal and economic system that rewards treating people as people less than treating them as products.

    Every grindy part of a game that can be skipped by a microtransacation every autoplaying, volume spiking ad that blares, and every illegal "warranty void if opened" sticker is an example of your trust being abused by those with more power and less respect for you as a human.

  88. Re:Riiiight. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    ... I advocate violence against the worthless leeches of the world! It's the right thing to do!

    Yeah, you and Pol Pot. Kill everyone who wears glasses!

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  89. Re:Remember, you could have had a tech guy leading by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    You do realise that citing Breitbart automatically loses the argument, don't you?

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  90. Re:Remember, you could have had a tech guy leading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was covered on Slashdot too if you want me to go hunting for it. But why would citing Breitbart "automatically lose the argument?" It's a better news source than Vox or Vice or many of the other websites that get used around here all the time. Just because you don't like the person it's named for doesn't make it an accurate news source.

  91. Yeah, no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every person studying "psychology" that I've ever met in a video game is the most toxic asshole you have ever met without fail.

  92. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Pseudonym · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The humanities are overwhelmingly liberal, as they should be. Free speech, free inquiry, and opposition to the supposed divine right of kings and popes is anathema.

    "Liberal" is only the same as "left" if you're in the Estates General. Similarly, "libertarian" is not "conservative" is not "fascist".

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  93. Market Share by Stonefish · · Score: 1

    Under Mitchell Baker's expert direction Mozilla share of the Market has gone from around 30% to around 5%. When considering her advice I would assess it against this historical backdrop. This is not a track record of success.
    Of course she could simply be blowing her own trumpet, as her qualifications would appear to be very light on "STEM" and of course you need more non-technical people.

  94. Re:Remember, you could have had a tech guy leading by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    Nice strawman. I never knew the guy and he's dead now.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  95. Lots of straw man arguments here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems like there are a lot of people here assuming the call for more humanities educated people is one asking for those educated in gender studies, feminist studies, etc. which would largely be irrelevant. There are some very relevant fields to technology, such as the psychology based field of Human Factors and Ergonomics

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors_and_ergonomics

    The adoption of technology, especially the choice between competing products (i.e. internet browsers), is largely influenced by the usability of those products. The usability of products is largely determined by user testing and analysis of said testing sessions, not antiquated psychological theories. There is definitely a need for certain fields of the humanities in the world of technology, which is being advanced by STEM professionals who can often be out of touch with the actual users of their products / designs

  96. The history classes were very useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a STEM degree. I took French, some geography, English, education, and some advanced history classes. Only the history classes proved remotely interesting or useful. So I can see what you mean about that.

    Now I know that Socialists, especially National Socialists, usually turn on each other for wrongthink when consolidating power. That they, along with Communists, have killed more than any other ideology in far less time. And that they keep managing to whitewash their racist past and history of violence & oppression with propaganda.

    This informs me that the current trend where they argue that they should be less civil, double down on propaganda and censorship, and how they use deflection to excuse all their own evils mean that they must never be trusted with power again.

  97. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Troll

    Erh... out of curiosity, because in this administration it's hard to see, but which of the four (dignity, justice, beauty or truth) can be gotten from the right again?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  98. Re: Translation by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    You mean those unicorn riding ivory tower dwellers?

    That disdain is mutual, ya know...

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  99. Re:Riiiight. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    (spoken in a dramatic voice) Oh, the humanities!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  100. More from the report: by Megol · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

    "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

    "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

    "Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical," Baker told the Guardian. "Every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases. "But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallized for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

  101. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > You lot may be intellectually gifted, but from a human perspective, you are abominations who cause sorrow, pain, suffering and bloodshed wherever you go.

    I guarantee I've done more things for more people than you'll ever do.

    Yeah, right. You say so, but what have you got to show? So far you only have shown that you are a bragging loudmouth with violent sociopathic tendencies. Not a very good record.

    And I didn't go around asking for Kudos for it. I worked, HARD! And help those who need and deserve it.

    No, you don't ask for kudos, but you are bragging about it. Isn't that kind of the same thing?

    Meanwhile, I advocate violence against the worthless leeches of the world! It's the right thing to do!

    Let me get this right, you are essentially saying that unless you are working in STEM you are a worthless leech of the world and should be killed?

    Gerald, get some help. Real help. You need to get one of those nice white coats with long sleeves and buttons in the back. And a shitload of pills to eat. And probably quote a few doses that comes with syringes while you rest in a padded room. You will feel a lot better, and the rest of the world too.

    I rather have lots of those "leeches" around me and my STEM buddies than violent crazies like you.

  102. RESIST!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IMHO:
    If IT people do not strongly resist/respond to this kind of criticism,
    first large IT companies would start hiring humanities people and make them managers/team leaders (to appeal criticising people),
    next all IT companies would start doing it,
    next it would be made LAW everywhere!!!

  103. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, I'm self-taught.

    Thanks, that explains you lack of knowledge. No further comment needed.

  104. Re:Translation by ewanm89 · · Score: 0

    It is not the Autistic people that are causing the issue. Autistic people lack social skills and tend to be looked upon as lacking empathy, this is not true but it appears that way. What they are good at is working with objective systems on objective data.

    Technology as they are referring to is all computer based, computers are Mathematics engines, Mathematics engines are purely objective working on purely objective principles. Yet feminist humanities crowd keep trying to push subjective principle into STEM all of it, said principles are incompatible, or irrelevant by definition yet these idiots have been at it for years.

    Here is a good video going through the core of it:
    The New Lysenkoists

  105. Re:Riiiight. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That list reads like a catalogue of personal failings

    "I have no social skills so can't see the value of even thinking about social issues.

    I have no no management skills so can't understand the need to manage projects and enterprises.

    I'm post-truth so think all politics are a waste of time."

    Of course history isn't worth studying, there is nothing we can learn from the past, right?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  106. Mitchell Baker trained as a lawyer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think that explains it all right there.

    Obviously she's a diversity hire or she'd be working as one, or at least as a CEO of somewhere less pathetic than Mozilla. Can anyone remember the last time one of their social initiatives actually went anywhere? They piss away more money on pointless crap than a drunk guy pisses beer on the sidewalk.

  107. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by thesupraman · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You havnt been looking around you at the current youth who call themselves 'Liberals' have you.

    You know, the ones violently 'opposing' other views, screaming down anyone not in their groupthink, and accusing anyone not virtue signaling strongly enough of being racist, sexist, and any other ist they can think up today - while trying to 'save' the smallest and loudest minority they can find, thinking that increases their personal worth.

    I think you will find its THOSE kinds of 'liberals' who are causing others to have such an issue with the word.
    Which is a great pity, speaking as an actual liberal, as they are almost exactly the opposite of what I believe in.

    It appears that the young Neo-liberal believes in THEIR personal freedom, and perhaps their small group of besties - but no one elses.

  108. Re:Riiiight. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 0

    I guarantee I've done more things for more people than you'll ever do.

    And I *personally* guarantee I have a bigger willy than you.

    Out of interest how much credibility do you think either of our claims has?

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  109. BS by thesupraman · · Score: 1

    Most of them have business degrees, with a smattering of STEM exposure.

    VERY few of them are actually particularly technical.
    They wave that flag around a lot, but no, they are almost always business/management majors.

  110. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is actually a valid argument, but not sure who you are projecting unto here. Shit tends to rain down from above, and might not be much better for unproven middle managers and upwards.

    The way to go about it is positioning yourself in a role where you are most effective, even in times unprotected by a manager. They come and go, so you need to find ways to be self-reliant. This is part of growing up, growing a spine and standing up for yourself.

    And knowing that shitstorms stain everybody.

  111. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    History is a bit silly.

    An individual without history, doesn't know that fire = hot, and keeps burning his hand. And history is a primer for how society, and individuals, were burned in the past.

    Put another way? If you're in STEM, you often don't think about people using "stuff you do" to overthrow democratic governments, to oppress people, to manipulate world governments, to allow the authorities to track, monitor, and use that info to suppress, oppress, and just outright torture and kill you.

    But history gives context. Shows what we, as a race and as individuals have done in the past. That's critical, vital, and important -- and hardly a leech like activity.

    Law is vital, in that it is a codex of "how people can resolve issues without bashing the skulls with a hammer". The problem today, is that there are *too many laws*, and they are *too complex*. You want law that allows humans to understand them, without lawyers. So that everyone understands "how the game works".

    I surely see why you dislike law, because lawyers are an outcome of that. Not sure on the history side.

    But "Management" makes sense, only in that we know of no other way to manage projects without managing them. And therefore, someone must play that role.

    Of course, due to your language it's clear that you're thowing a bit of a flamebait/troll post... but still ... I actually agree with much of what you're saying.

    This might better be summed up by "We make the weapons, we cloth and feed you, create everything you live in, everything you eat flows from our minds. Shut the fuck up, and serve US!"

  112. Re:Riiiight. by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

    I love how the people arguing against this are demonstrating the exact problem in their posts...

  113. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Pseudonym · · Score: 2

    There are a lot of people who call themselves "liberal" and "conservative" who aren't.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  114. hot air by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The better way to phrase this is 'purpose driven tech has significant faults'. This is garbage click-bait. If you're reading this then you've gone too far.

  115. So you pushed out your CEO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Practice what you preach Mozilla. You pushed out Brendan Eich because some didn't like his personal contributions. The ruler runs both ways in humanity. Diversity shouldn't be something forced upon any company, hire people that are skilled for the job. Mozilla probably focuses too much on diversity hiring and not enough on the skills side of things.

  116. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In fact, it's because of the "humanities people" that we are getting lootboxes and all these crap in videogames, lately.

  117. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fire = Hot is thermodynamics, so STEM.

  118. Re:Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humanities doesn't teach empathy, if the child doesn't have empathy by the time it reaches elementary it is already too late.

    Also, the whole "we need engineers to study humanities so they don't become monsters" is a whole buttload of projections.
    If you go down the list of people committing atrocities through the ages you'll find that very few went close to anything resembling STEM.
    Stalin: Joined party at early age, took to crime rather than studies.
    Hitler: Rejected from art studies, unable to get into architecture due to unfinished education.
    Zedong: Dropped out of most studies, including police school, law and economics.
    Pot: Studied carpentry.
    Guevara: Medical student.

    Engineers seldom end up in a position of power where lack of empathy is a problem.
    What you need is to make sure that politicians get a psychological evaluation to weed out psychopaths.
    At the age where career choices happen it is already too late to correct them, you can only make sure they don't end up in leading positions.

  119. Absolutely agree by Sqreater · · Score: 1

    They lack context for what they do. They aspire to become inhuman "stembots," cranking out code or devices - mere cogs in the machinery of tech production and maintenance. But then, higher education has changed into a vocational school environment that is milking generations for future earnings and no longer cares about educating young people for a higher purpose in life.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
    1. Re:Absolutely agree by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      The glasses you use when viewing historic academia are very rosy.

    2. Re:Absolutely agree by malkavian · · Score: 1

      Interesting. What statistical study are you basing this assertion on? I'll openly admit my experiences have been anecdotal (going through that exact path myself, and working in the field for over 30 years), but my sample has evidenced that your assertion seems to be a boundary case, rather than statistical body.

    3. Re:Absolutely agree by Sqreater · · Score: 1

      The glasses you use when viewing historic academia are very rosy.

      Perhaps so, but in recent years they seem to have completely shed any pretense of broadly educating young people to be good citizens able to evaluate the broad range of problems facing the country and the world today in favor of training them for a specific, probably disappearing, job - and while lining their own pockets to an unprecedented degree. 100,000+ dollars in student debt? Trillions of dollars of aggregated student debt? Completely unacceptable if this country is to survive. Somehow the academic leeches have to be controlled. And money is no solution. The more money you toss at them, the more money they want. That is my take on it following the course of events over the years.

      --
      E Proelio Veritas.
  120. amen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a degree in foreign languages and literature and I am a programmer, have been for over 20 years. I've schooled many who have degrees in CS related areas.

    The most functional organization I ever worked in, out of the 100 technical employees, only around 10 had degrees in CS related areas. The rest were all over the place including more than a few with no degree at all.

  121. Re:Remember, you could have had a tech guy leading by Cederic · · Score: 1

    You do realise that you can do your own research, right?

    E.g. some other resources that discussed the topic:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/q...
    https://www.wired.com/2014/04/...
    https://brendaneich.com/2014/0...

    But there wasn't an argument to lose, merely an insight into a potential factor behind Mozilla's reduction in relevance.

  122. Humanities suffers MORE for lack of Tech Understan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humanities suffers MORE for lack of Tech understanding.
    Just look at all the PhDs serving coffee for lack of actual skills.

    Tech workers don't have that issue.

    In college, I took World Literature, Psychology, and Philosophy because 3 useless classes were required for my engineering degree.

    World Literature taught me that other countries have blowhard writers too.

    Psychology taught me that psychologists can't do math and are the most screwed up people in the head. Psychologists trying to use statistics is usually funny. Also, because we were required to volunteer for 20 hrs of psychology dept studies, I learned that most of those studies are just stupid, poorly run and full of flaws. I learned at the end of the semester that babies "like" my face. That's not exactly useful. My face is probably still in their DB 25 yrs after I left college.

    Philosophy taught me the dangers of "thought experiments" in tricking smart people into making crap up that seems reasonable, but is totally wrong. I still don't know if I exist and I have no way to prove that anyone else does, but without those two givens, absolutely NOTHING else matters, so I've decided that I must exist. You on the other hand, perhaps not.

    Post-college, I learned that archeologists are full of crap. They make up stories to explain things found and claim their story is true when there are 50+ other possible explanations. Sciences provide facts. If those facts have to be interpreted for others in the field to reach the same conclusions, then it isn't science.

  123. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

    There are a lot of people who call other people 'liberal' or 'conservative' who don't have a fucking clue.

  124. Re:Riiiight. by Daralantan · · Score: 1

    In college, psychology is a dumping ground for people that can't figure out what else to major in.

    This just reminds me of the joke (I think someone even made a shirt of it?) from the engineering department when I went to college... An equation that said as the gpa approaches zero the major becomes business.

  125. Re:Riiiight. by Daralantan · · Score: 2

    Gerald Butler (the OP) who called for mass genocide of people who major in "Sociology, Psychology, Management, HR, Political Science, Law, Philosophy, [and] History

    They'll just be killed off by the crushing weight of their student loans (I'm looking at psychology, philosophy, and history here specifically). Those majors should at least somehow require people to learn how to spend their money better. One of the RAs from the dorms I was in was a history major and she's always talking about how she's going to be paying her loans for the next 30-40 years. She also only pays the minimum amount, even though she can afford more. And then she decided to go back to further her education in history....

    The psychology one just reminds me of my first roommate. He came for mechanical engineering, but was not very smart. He was also a borderline alcoholic with huge anger issues. When he failed every class his first semester... he switched to psychology. I always envisioned him eventually trying to act as a therapist, but ending up erupting into screaming fits at his patients. (psychology didn't work out for him)

  126. more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just what tech needs, more people suited for the HR division.

  127. Re:Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "...if the child doesn't have empathy by the time it reaches elementary..."

    "It" ?

    What was that about empathy??

  128. Re:Riiiight. by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

    They got degrees in applied Taylorism.

    It isn't difficult to figure out the term for the 'evil' essence of an MBA degree, but few people use it to describe them.

  129. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    It's funny how all of the objections to what I said assume the superiority of the "Humanities" without a single piece of evidence or argument to show that that is the case. All of the things I named are bullshit because they always argue from the perspective that they are needed without demonstrating their need. The only thing they are needed for is giving people who can't actually produce anything something to do and run their mouths about while they leech off the farmers, and makers, and creators of the world. Again, prove me wrong!

  130. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    The feeling is mutual.

  131. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Yep, instead of licking the ass of other people, running up student loans I can't pay, then bitching about how I'm being abused and the gov't should make everyone else pay for my stupid worthless "studies", I went out and did stuff. No further comment needed.

  132. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Aha, if some truth makes you uncomfortable that makes it wrong. I can't possibly be that the bullshit you've been brainwashed into believing is wrong. Nope, those who have a different view have to be mentally unstable. That is a weak intellectual argument. If the idea doesn't fit your world-view, just declare it insane. Once again proving how full of shit "Humanities/Psychology" is.

  133. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    God you must be insufferable in person. And on Slashdot too. Yes, you are quite insufferable.

  134. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by TheTekton · · Score: 1

    This only makes sense (to me) if you thought the statement was anything more than airing a general dissatisfaction with our collective contradictions (conservatively and/or liberally). Justice can retain dignity and there can be beauty in truth, but I fail to find a tendency in either camp where either are inclusive. My version, in context, is undefined.

  135. Re: Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Bhaw-Ha-Ha! You are so completely off-the-mark!

  136. Yeah, hire more leftists, that's the ticket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Universities are full of brain-dead, brain-washed leftists these days, especially in the humanities.
    How about promoting people who show that they have a brain and can think independently?
    A young conservative, especially in a demonrat state is a brave and independent thinker.
    Think about it!

    Morons. They're everywhere, even Mozilla.

  137. MBAs by Goldsmith · · Score: 1

    Does your company have a bunch of MBAs near the top? Do you think that's a STEM degree?

  138. Yes! I knew they'd fall for it. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    They're like moths to a bug-light. They're so predictable. So easy to manipulate and trigger. I'm laughing my ass off!

  139. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by TheTekton · · Score: 1

    "Who says that fictions only and false hair Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty? Is all good structure in a winding stair? May no lines pass, except they do their duty Not to a true, but painted chair? Is it no verse, except enchanted groves And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines? Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves? Must all be veil'd, while he that reads, divines, Catching the sense at two removes? Shepherds are honest people; let them sing; Riddle who list, for me, and pull for prime; I envy no man's nightingale or spring; Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme, Who plainly say, my God, my King."

  140. Re:Relative ethics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I majored in philosophy (alongside math), and did an MA in philosophy as well.

    Yes, I learned and later taught that relativism is a possible ethical position. But, it is not the only ethical position, and was never presented as such.

    Yes, when approaching ethics we're faced with a number of frameworks for thinking about right (and wrong) action. But this doesn't mean that all or none of them are equally correct.

    By studying ethics properly you learn to appreciate a number of approaches to an action problem, and each of these approaches illuminates different corners: the consequences, your priorities, social context, norms, etc.. That skill is transferable, it lets me look at other kinds of problems from different perspectives.

    Engineering and science problems are a small (but important) subset of the universe of problems. To put the problem the article presents in terms /.'s might understand: Fortran is great, but the world needs lisp too.

  141. I am lauging my ass off! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    You "Humanities" junkies are so predictable. So easily manipulated and triggered. You have a complete inability to recognize hyperbole. Your educate is worthless. Your reactions prove it.

    1. Re:I am lauging my ass off! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Your educate"

      Maybe you should have spent more time English class.

    2. Re:I am lauging my ass off! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      Maybe you shouldn't be such a dumb-ass and realize that you can't fix typos on Slashdot. Some of us type fast. You think that means I don't know how to spell show you to be fucking moronic loser.

  142. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What gender-neutral singular pronoun in the english language would you like the op to have used instead? People trying to twist a statement by picking on pronoun choice, like you, are part of the problem.

  143. Re:Riiiight. by turbidostato · · Score: 2

    "Psychologists can actually help people, though I suspect it's the thin end of the bell curve of that crowd."

    There's probably a problem in the capitalist way future graduates are allowed to sign in instead of their intellectual requirements: you are too idiot for an engineering? you still can enroll on Psychology or History, so no wonder the average Psychologist or Historian ends up being too stupid... for anything of real value.

  144. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There you go with that fag talk again.

  145. Yes, you probably could make that guarantee. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > And I *personally* guarantee I have a bigger willy than you.

    I've told you repeatedly to stop sneaking into my bedroom while I'm sleeping to suck my dick and lick my shit. Just stop it! Rapist!

    1. Re:Yes, you probably could make that guarantee. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      It seems you are intent on demonstrating my point that wild claims on the internet have absolutely zero credibility. What I don't really get is how you don' seem to realise that this doesn't reflect very well on your original claim that you've done so much for random unspecified people.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Yes, you probably could make that guarantee. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      > What I don't really get is how you don' seem to realise that this doesn't reflect very well on your original claim that you've done so much for random unspecified people.

      Why? Because I won't cotton to your worthless, pseudo-intellectual bull-shit? That means I don't help and care for people who deserve it? Logic fail much?

      Your worthless degree shows itself again in your inability to form logical and consistent conclusions. Instead, you base things on your stupid, religious nonsense that you've constructed in your head.

    3. Re:Yes, you probably could make that guarantee. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 0

      Well that was a nonsensical response.

      On the plus side with your new round of non-sequiteurs you've at least stopped telling me (and the whole of slashdot) abot your weird sex fantasies about me.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  146. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it's not an abnormally small dick. You just have an abnormally big mouth so it seem small while you're sucking on it. Stop sneaking in while I'm sleeping to suck my dick. Rapist! #metood

  147. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0

    Say my name bitch! GERALD EDWARD BUTLER! i don'T hide like a coward behind anonymity. I stand up for my beliefs. You are a coward.

  148. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Avoid the pronoun entirely, "it" is not a word that tends to go over well when referring to people.

    "Humanities doesn't teach empathy, if the child doesn't have empathy at elementary school age it is already too late."

    As much as you might cringe over it, many people accept "they" in that role of gender neutral singular pronoun. "They" has been used in this manner back to the time of Chaucer. It wasn't until the 19th century that language prescriptions decide that "he" as a gender neutral form was the correct way.

    In short, never use the word "it" to refer to people in the third person, most people would consider that offensive and generally showing a lack of empathy. Maybe you would have learned that if you took one of those humanities classes...

  149. Re:Riiiight. by Notabadguy · · Score: 2

    Psychologists can actually help people, though I suspect it's the thin end of the bell curve of that crowd. And killing all the lawyers never solves anything - not saying don't do it, just that we'll inevitably need a new crop of them.

    That's where corporate America took a hard turn. When insurance companies decided to stop paying for mental health visits, or revising co-pays to make using insurance for psychology services expensive, an entire industry got turned on its head and psychologists were out of work. They turned their target on corporate America and made a compelling case for why their behavioral analysis abilities would be a force multiplier to increasing the success rate of successful hiring, and boom - HR departments became...well, look at what they have evolved into today.

    Like attracts like, and like promotes like. Adding a wave of soft science and psychologists didn't fix that - it just changed the paradigm of what was liked.

    Tech doesn't need more humanities majors. Tech needs more well rounded people.

  150. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are pretty much the most insufferable person here on /. I can't even imagine what a cunt you are in person.

    It's not even your words that make you insufferable, it's that your an irritating twat about it.

  151. Re:Riiiight. by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

    Re your last para: If I'm making the weapons (defending you), clothing and feeding you, creating everything you live in and everything you eat flows from my hands, then yes, shut the fuck up about what I'm doing. Serve me? Not really, just don't be in the way.

  152. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is "left" or "right" of whom is purely a matter of opinion and speculation. The original terms were used to describe very specific parties (groups of people) and are really only relevant in the land of thesbians, where all things must be dramatized and ambiguously gay, aka Europe.

  153. Re:Relative ethics by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > Engineering and science problems are a small (but important) subset of the universe of problems.

    Prove it!

  154. Re: Riiiight. by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

    Apples/oranges. Your degree/talent/field is middling in nature, hers is rarefied, AND your comparison is individual. Bluntly put, you're not worth as much as your wife.

    Now let's compare all STEM chemistry grads against all humanities musical grads. The stats don't look nearly as sweet for your point.

  155. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by aliquis · · Score: 1

    I would like your broken mind to try to set up and show the logical evidence for that.

  156. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

    All of them. Now how about a comment with more depth than a political snipe which is so broad it can be countered with examples from every side of the political spectrum.

  157. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    God you must be insufferable in person. And on Slashdot too. Yes, you are quite insufferable.

    LOL, did you just try to pull an "I know you are but what am I?" What are you, a pre-teen girl?

    Are you so angry that the facts don't care about your feelings that you just had to vent your impotent rage, but you are so dumb that was the best you could come up with? I mean, what kind of sad loser randomly insults an AC who wasn't even talking to you in the first place?

  158. Society suffer from a lack of logic and reasoning by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Society suffer from a lack of logic and reasoning.

  159. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Anonymous Cowards are just cowards.

  160. > It seems to me also that there is what people do and then there is what people say. All the talking is about getting people doing the doing. Maybe its time to make the people doing the talking to do some of the doing.

    Yessiree! You get it! Talk is cheep. So cheep, the people doing the talking can't pay their student loans from when they spent 4 to 8 years fucking around navel gazing whilst others defended the nation and worked their ass off to feed, clothe, and house other people. Put 'em in hole. Dump lye on 'em. Solve the exponential population growth that is depleting the earth's resources whilst getting rid of the pseudo-intellectual bullshitters! Win-Win!

    1. Re: Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you and hitler would be great friends.

      Lots of things in common.

    2. Re: Yay! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      Yes.

  161. Humanities suffers from a lack of Humanities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More precisely: Humanities suffers from a lack of Diversity of thought and its dislike of empiricism, repeatability and all things STEM.

  162. The Walking Dead by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    is a metaphor for all the "Humanties" and "Liberal Arts" losers mobbing the producers of the world and sucking them dry.

    1. Re:The Walking Dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, you sure are sucking your thumb hard with that. Triggered much?

    2. Re:The Walking Dead by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0

      You're sucking the shit out of your retarded mother's ass while lacking the courage of conviction to ascribe your name to your words. You are irrellevant.

    3. Re:The Walking Dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So irrelevant that you couldn't stop yourself from responding. Could you be any more pathetic? I have a feeling you are going show us!

  163. Here Here! My Friend! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Can I just say, "Smack-Down"! Say his name BITCHES!

  164. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Your pseudo-intellectual "Humanities" makes you an "Irritating Twat" to me. Who's right? Me. Anonymous Coward who can't even be held responsible for its own words!

  165. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > Are you so angry

    Yes, I'm angry. Like a lot of people. Keep it up. We'll soon do something about it. It's coming!

  166. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > The Patience of Job

    Job is not a bastion of something to be emulated. He was a follower who took orders to the detriment of his own children. A prick and a pseudo-intellectual, religious, humanities nut-job! The fact that so man think the "Job" story is something good is telling.

  167. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Holy shit, how many crybaby posts are you gonna make? I mean, seriously, I haven't seen anyone that triggered since taylor swift told a bunch of fans to register to vote. I bet that triggered the hell of you too, you've got some serious incel vibes going on.

  168. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real reason to hire humanities specialists is due to the fact that we are gradually eliminating all need for work entirely - this purely a desperation move to prop up the system. The âoeservice sectorâ is the last haven and even that is struggling now.

    Some very intelligent civil servants are going to have to work on a clear plan to engineer the public away from full time work and bring costs down so that an individual person can live on 2-3 days per week work on a âoenormalâ working class level of pay, or the system might fail entirely...

  169. Re:Riiiight. by valnar · · Score: 1

    Well, I for one agree that Psychology majors in college tend to...not do that professionally. I personally know two friends who turned out to be a general contractor and insurance salesman.

  170. Says the Child Molestor! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Yep, you might be a Child Molestor. I think someone somewhere may have said that at some time about you, but, I can't be sure. That being said, I wouldn't doubt that you are child molestor.

    1. Re: Says the Child Molestor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Confirmed. Gerald proves Op is a child molester

      Chester Chester child molester detected.

  171. Lawyer says STEM overrated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I also think that people not like me should not be competing for my job.

  172. Re:Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess it's the word "humanities" that confuses people. It's not what it sounds like. And why is everyone falling for the assumption that there's some sort of correlation beteen majoring in a non-tech field and being a people person?

  173. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Your words are meaningless. You lack the courage of conviction to ascribe your name to them.

  174. depends by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 0

    If you mean more people should read Lord of the Flies - and see themselves in the kids - sure. Let me know when you get started on that.

    If you mean we need more intersectional gender race studies with a side of kangaroo courts, um, no.

  175. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And no sources were given that day, as expected.

  176. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anecdotes are not a trend.

  177. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please don't use "Off-Topic" in place of "I don't get it", because some of us DO get it. Thanks!

  178. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah but this article's implying that things such as empathy are the same as left leaning ideology.. the give away is the mention of 'misinformation online,' which the left has been triggered about since the net helped them lose the 2016 election.

  179. Re: Translation by SirSlud · · Score: 1

    You should look into the engineers that enabled them.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  180. Re: Translation by SirSlud · · Score: 1

    People worked for those people dumbass.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  181. The point of a humanities education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ethics will continue to be a problem in a culture where right and wrong continue to be treated as relative. I've taken numerous ethics courses. None of them would admit the existence of the concept of 'wrong' behavior or explain why, other than going to jail or getting sued one should not engage in it. As long as that paradigm exists ethics will be a problem.

    Those particular courses may have sucked or may not have, but telling you right and wrong for certain isn't the point or goal of education past a fairly amateurish level. The goal is to help you learn how to learn and give you tools and frameworks to think about and evaluate particular problems.

    Think about it like engineering. You don't want a computer engineering education that only tells you how to use Angular and build websites. You want one with strong fundamentals that leaves you able to adapt and more quickly learn new technologies.

  182. Re: Translation by Type44Q · · Score: 1

    And why is everyone falling for the assumption that there's some sort of correlation beteen majoring in a non-tech field and being a people person?

    It's what people with poor analytical skills tell themselves so they won't have to face the fact that they're actually just rather stupid.

  183. Leftist tyranny rears its ugly head by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the big problems here is that ethics and humanities is not what you may think it is. Many people were brought up in Western traditions of the age of enlightenment and traditional judeo-christian values where paramount was individual liberty and opportunity, individual merit and achievement and freedom from overly oppressive government, natural rights, family values, private charity, church, faith, filial responsibilities, honor of ones parents, traditional marriage, loyalty to ones countrymen, virtue, honor, and raising large families. The Postmodern ideology of most leftists and SWJs is based on punishing, and even destroying certain groups in order to award others, based on past grievances which no one today are even responsible for as a means for unlimited power for a few. As Ben Carson said, no one today is a slave or owns slaves, yet we are still acting like its happening today and this mentality of "group" punishment. Liberals are the actual ones punishing people because of their race, just because you are of a certain racial group you are a perpetrator or a victim, should be punished or compensated appropriately, ignoring the fact that few people today are victims or are perpetuating any kind of systemic oppression. Just by being of a certain ethnic group you are being punished for things you did not do, on really false and outrageous pretenses and prejudices.

    Most of what we call "education" today is not that, it is leftist, liberal misinformation, propaganda, inaccuracy, lies and oversimplifications, and misrepresentations and miscontextualizations.

    The facts are if you look at the world 500, 1000, 5000 years ago, Slavery was a common practice most everywhere the farther back you go. The Chinese had slaves in abundance, it was common in Africa, in the Islamic world, in Native American cultures, in the Roman Empire, most anywhere you look. In fact, slavery is still a commonplace and de facto accepted practice in some areas of Africa. It was the ideas of the enlightenment upon which the US Constitution is based that anti-slavery mentalities are based,

    The Republican party was formed to abolish slavery and still today is a party that is for individual liberty and equality of opportunity for every citizen. The problem the SJWs and liberals have with the Republican party is the Liberal left now has become a party of reparations, punishment, penalization, through group punishment, of punishing people they think are responsible for some past wrong, based on their ethnicity or their genology, and conservatives have not gone along with their schemes because it is against that on which conservatism is based, the constitutional values based on the enlightenment, family values, faith, individual and family values, marriage, raising large families, filial responsibility, not using government to punish some and reward others.

    This is despite the fact that few people of such ethnicity are responsible for whatever they are being accused of. Few people alive today are a slave owner or a slave. Also, only approximately 5% of White Americans today are descended from anyone who ever owned a slave in the antebellum south. The fact is the founders of the United States were also strongly against slavery, despite some of them inheriting slaves, they wanted the practice phased out after independence and hoped the south would eventually come around to ending the practice. Even if a person is descended from a slaveholder, you cannot punish people for things their ancestors did, but people who are SJWs and liberals think you can. Even if you are descended from a Union soldier who nearly died in a Confederate concentration camp, the SJWs still think you should be punished, that should be disadvantaged or subject to harsh discriminatory practices, even ruined or destroyed.

    It is interesting that the ideologies on which modern leftists run, were based on those approved by the monarchies in opposition to republican philosophies which were the result of long series of writings and debate from Aristotle,

  184. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the point, a psych major prepares you for a broad range of work. Its like the swiss army knife of college educations.

  185. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Big talk for someone using the fake name "gerald butler." I cant blame you though, who would want to tell the rest of the world he's a fat basement dwelling incel?

  186. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Psychology is mostly unreproducible BS, anything true in psychology has been known since ancient times

  187. Phillosophy is the foundation by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    Philosophy covers all. logic, critical thinking are part of it's domain. It also covers science in more depth then science ever does; that is, science education has surprisingly little self reflection on how it actually works. Math has more than any other. There is a whole college course you can take on the philosophy of science.

  188. idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mitchell Baker is an idiot. What tech needs is fewer people who are concerned with "the humanities," which to them actually means a social justice war to impose their own opinions on everyone, authoritarian style.

  189. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I's not the STEM people.
    The corporate sociopaths who are in charge of the money (VCs, bankers) demand that once a company reaches a 'certain size' real management must be brought in. That's when these companies go to shit.

  190. mod parent up by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    She may make or allude to points needing to be made; however, in her case she runs a heavily STEM organization which has been failing to serve humanity as well as it used to; therefore, losing market-share.

  191. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The humanities are overwhelmingly liberal, as they should be. Free speech, free inquiry, and opposition to the supposed divine right of kings and popes is anathema.

    Bullshit. Try to say something opposed to the leftist orthodoxy in a humanities class and watch what happens. How about something like, "intelligence varies among the population in a way that correlates with race." The only difference between today and the divine right of kings is that today the "kings" think it's ok because their beliefs are actually correct.

  192. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by magzteel · · Score: 1

    Not condoning angry leftie behavior, but I'll take a screaming lefty over the guy with the swastika tattoo that runs his car into a group of protesters. Any day. All day. This is the kind of right-wing affiliated group that Trump defended as "decent people" and the rest of the GOP fell in behind with. I'm not a fan of angry lefties, but they're more "annoying loud" a lot less "we murder people we don't like".

    People keep repeating that crap.

    This was a demonstration about keeping historical statues. Some people who want them gone showed up to protest against the people who wanted them to stay. There are "decent people" on both sides of that debate.

    If some wackos on either side showed up they are not representative of the group, even if it is convenient for you to pretend otherwise.

  193. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    How 'bout _neither_.

    If someone constructs a false dichotomy between Stalin and Hitler, just kick HIM in the balls.

    The real problem is 'Stalin' isn't as socially unacceptable as 'Hitler'. He should be. Young Communists _should_ be treated just like young Nazis. WTF is wrong in that family to start.

    Finally the comparison should be between the crazed, bad shot, Bernie bro with an rifle at a softball game vs. the Nazi 'playing death race'. Your comparison is fairly called cherry picking.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  194. mozilla, eh? by doom · · Score: 0

    Mozilla can talk to me about the world's intellectual problems when they learn to spell backwards compatibility.

    This is an unusually fluffy and content-free article... something about "what happened in 2018" (as though it's been some sort of pivotal year... compared to 2016?)... something about sexism encoded in an adaptive algorithm and if only we had a humanities person on staff that woulda been better, maybe...

    It's the thing about the current style of Big Data trained-up AI, by the way, is that you don't actually know much about what's going on inside it...

  195. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    He's using an obsolete definition of liberal.

    Translating for him, to modern parlance: 'The humanities are overwhelmingly libertarian, as they should be. Free speech, free inquiry, and opposition to the supposed divine right of kings and popes is anathema.'

    But that's just obviously false.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  196. Re:Translation by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Geopolitics is a psychopathic 'game'.

    If your leader isn't one, (s)he will lose and you will be fucked. Machiavelli said it well.

    There are no 'virgins' in congress, the White house or the UN. They have no business there.

    This is an ugly truth, no beauty in this one.

    Best you can do is severely limit the scope of their operation by keeping government split up, small and as broke as possible. You need a psychopath, to deal with all the others, but you don't want him running the police.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  197. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 2

    Free speech which does not allow hate speech is not free speech, freedom of association which does not allow discrimination is not freedom of association.

    Language evolves, to use liberal without a modern or classical qualifier in this day and age is obtuse or naive. The educators in the humanities are overwhelmingly modern liberals.

  198. Re:Riiiight. by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

    Dunno about psychologists, but psychiatrists got half the US hooked on psychotropics with a net negative result.

  199. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ever had a hummer from someone that plays a reeded wind instrument?

    That's a 2x on value, right there.

  200. Re:Riiiight. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Generally, Engineers run successful tech companies until their product is commoditized.

    Sure they have MBAs, but they're not in charge.

    VCs will fuck young companies (14 different ways), but their intent was never to grow, it was always to sell. Read the contracts, if they get to sell before anyone else (standard term), they are _planning_ on it (and fuck you, you'll like being part of EDS...er HP consulting).

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  201. Re:Riiiight. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    It's a 4 year 'certificate of attendance' for crazy people.

    They think it will help them figure out why they are so broken.

    It puts off 'finding something to do' for four years.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  202. Tech suffers from Mitchell Baker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The sooner people like that are pushed out of the tech industry, the better.

  203. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by hdyoung · · Score: 0

    Who do you think is defending those old slave-era statues? You pretty much repeated Trump's defense of the neo-nazi wing of the GOP. "Some good people there". It would be a joke if it wasn't so serious. Those are really, really bad apples. They've been vocally defended by the guy in the Oval office, by most of the GOP, and now by you. You degrade yourself defending those people.

    Far leftists are a bit of a problem for the Dems, but not nearly as bad a problem as the insane right wingers in the GOP. At least I recognize it and avoid supporting the more extreme candidates. Bernie Sanders was a card-carrying socialist for most of his adult life. I recognized it and didn't vote for him. He got more traction than he should have, but at least in the end the Dems dumped him for Clinton. She's flawed but was the right choice between the two. On the other side, the GOP is COMPLETELY failing to deal with its demons.

  204. The Tech Industry is run by sociopaths. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Tech Industry is run by sociopaths.

  205. Most STEM degrees are fine by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    A typical STEM degree has other topics required for a "well rounded education." They are fine. If you are concerned about a progression towards tech school that ONLY focuses narrowly on 1 topic then you have something to argue. The traditional liberal arts education ("well rounded") is always under attack but I see no signs yet it is under any new threat gaining ground. Other than the increased politicization of the culture is harming everything.

    Do we need more STEM? no. the jobs are not there. simply pumping out extra doesn't create the jobs either. Go look it up, IEEE had a great long article on STEM that debunked everything.

    Now, do I think we need more STEM education? YES, everybody needs a little bit more. Most topics we could all use more education...

    Force feeding P.C. education classes only creates resentment and hardly converts anybody for the better. There has to be some studies out there besides the few showing sexual harassment trainings make things worse. ETHICS should take over for those classes as well as CIVICS because both are dead today and the damaging results are ongoing.

  206. WRONG JOB by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    These stuff keeps coming out from Mozilla management. It is as if we have a bunch of non-STEM nontechnical majors feeling out of place working in a technology company..

    A typical college degree is already balanced. Management may not PERCEIVE that because they are not STEM majors and are just as biased as everybody they complain about; EXCEPT they are the fish out of water complaining everybody else needs to have gills like them!

  207. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > What are you, a pre-teen girl?

    Twinkle twinkle little star what you say is what you are.

  208. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like the cut of your jib.

  209. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd rather she stick the clarinet up my ass and toot.

    Toooooot toooooot.

  210. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And yet it results in them being 2x as likely to get a job as the average college graduate.
    But fuck facts, go with your feels dood!

  211. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even the scientific method was created via philosophy.

    "Science" doesn't exist without philosophy. Government and law doesn't exist without it. Philosophy is the number one pre-JD field of study.

    Sociology is needed to formalize ways of studying societal development and change.

    The rest also have their uses and reasons but I think I have replied to enough trolling and baiting just in this reply.

  212. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Getting a job at McDonald's doesn't countZ neither does Uber driving.

    Are these psychologists graduating then working in their field? Or do they go into another field? That's the million dollar question.

  213. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What have the Roman's ever done for us?

  214. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like false allegations and suspension of the 1st and 2nd amendments, rabbi?

  215. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Informative

    Johnathan Haidt talks about this. Conservatives have a 5 spectrum axis of values. Leftists have only 2, and of the 2 one will always will over the other: harm reduction. The Left literally sees the world in black and white. While conservatives see the world in full color.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  216. You can thank CSS for that by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    that's why everything has that "flat" design. It's easy to do in CSS, which saves on bandwidth. Small sites don't care about an extra .5k of bandwidth, but they follow in the footsteps of bigger sites, so the trend spread.

    So no, it wasn't psychologist that gave you buttons you can't tell are buttons. You can thank your friendly neighborhood bean counter for that.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:You can thank CSS for that by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      So no, it wasn't psychologist that gave you buttons you can't tell are buttons.

      I never said they did. Quite the opposite, in fact.

      Learn to read.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  217. It's the moderation that was funny, not the reply by shanen · · Score: 1

    Starting Score: 1 point
    Moderation 0
        50% Funny
        50% Overrated
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier +1 (Edit)
    Karma-Bonus Modifier +4 (Edit)
    Total Score: 5

    That's what the details currently show. I think that means 4 moderation points, two funny and two overrated, and the result is that the comment showed up as moderated to be funny. On that basis, I looked at at the comment and searched for the humor.

    The comment consisted of a long sentence repeated four times. Not funny.

    Funny is the moderation and offensive is the waste of my time seeking humor on Slashdot. The moderation on Slashdot has become such a sick joke that they might as well turn it off.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  218. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by shanen · · Score: 1

    I suppose if I ever saw a mod point to give I'd give this one a meta-interesting point. Not even a visible comment, but I found it by searching for the AC origin of the diversion of this discussion into stupidville.

    So the burning question of the day is "Why are you playing with AC trolls?"

    But the mod point would be for the interesting user number. What are the odds of getting 7 identical digits in a row?

    Actually I should be interested in the 6-digit IDs, where the odds are 9 (excluding 0s) out of 999,999 = 0.000009 (but Slashdot has no overbar to be more precise).

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  219. Re:Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    You really are a fucking loser retart aren't you? Just fucking kill yourself you worhtless, spinelss, piece of shit! Your mama should've aborted you rather than have the baby after she was gang raped by a group of teenage boys who were huffing paint.

  220. Yes very common by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Really, forced to do humanities units? Is that common in the US?

    In just about any college I know of in the U.S. there are required courses in other fields you have to take to graduate... I think where I went to school there were also a handful of technical courses students had to pass to graduate. Also one foreign language class, though I'm not sure that is common.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  221. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While conservatives see the world in full color.

    Yeah but, pastel?

  222. Jen Bricker by tepples · · Score: 1

    And damnit, where are all of the quadraplegic trapeze artists.

    You jest, but look up aerialist Jen Bricker.

  223. Re:Riiiight. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Assuming your the same AC. Your own cite says 'slightly better'.

    '2x as likely to get a job as the average college graduate'...that implies (to even be possible) the average college graduate is less than 50% likely to find a job.

    Again from your own cite...8.9% of all grads are 'out of work'.

    You must be a psych major...clearly failed math.

    If it wasn't clear up to now, I call 'Bullshit on you'. Like you say, 'fuck facts'...How was it? Facts are kind of dry IMHO, not good for fucking.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  224. Re:It's the moderation that was funny, not the rep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The moderation on Slashdot has become such a sick joke that they might as well turn it off.

    :-) Yeah really, man. If it were working properly you would have been at -1 Troll by now.

    Well, we aren't communists here, you are free to leave

  225. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have no fucking idea of what you're talking about, and given your improper use of literally, you don't have a fucking clue, either.

  226. Re: Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > "Science" doesn't exist without philosophy.

    Categorically False! Science existed in practice long before it existed in name and long before Philosophy existed. Science is observing something about the world, remembering it, drawing conclusions about what else that might mean about the world and predicting what might keep you alive as a result. Humankind (and even every other living thing) have been doing that longer than Philosophy existed. Philosophy, like these other endeavors I mentioned, tries to set itself at the top without proving it. It attempts to claim that it is superior to all else when it is clearly inferior. It's practitioners are not needed. Nobody will starve to death if all the philosophers, clerics, managers, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, journalists, etc. are wiped off the earth. In fact, most people will be better off as a result. FACT!

  227. Nailed it! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    > It puts off 'finding something to do' for four years.

    Wiser words have never been uttered!

    1. Re:Nailed it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have never nailed a woman in your life, basement incel.

    2. Re:Nailed it! by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

      You need to stop molesting children. It's bad! M'Kay?

    3. Re:Nailed it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know, I couldn't decide if you were mentally retarded or just a 7 year old boy who stole the password to his mommy's laptop. Thanks for clearing that up.

  228. STEM isn't the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My engineering class was 35% female and 10% minorities. There are lots of well grounded, reasonable technical people. However the managers of technical talent often, very often, create an environment that is biased and hostile. Like the guy who openly talks about extreme right wing politics in an office full of Muslim H1B workers. Or the guy who talks so misogynistically that no women will work for him and all the married guys hate him. This isn't a STEM problem - it's a management problem by a long shot.

  229. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're right. Its 2x better than compsci grads. What a fucking blow to the stemfars like you.

  230. The Butthurt Butler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tough talk for someone using a fake name. Fetch me my slippers butthurt butler.

  231. Re: Translation by yuriklastalov · · Score: 1

    In short, never use the word "it" to refer to people in the third person, most people would consider that offensive and generally showing a lack of empathy. Maybe you would have learned that if you took one of those humanities classes...

    People think all kinds of stupid shit. Why should I care about this particularly foolish bit of inane, ideological horseshit? OMG someone said "it" to refer to a REAL HUMAN BEAN!! They'll be throwing people in ovens any second!! THE NAZI'S ARE COMING! THE NAZI'S ARE COMING! MUH EMPATHY!! REEEEE

  232. Re:Riiiight. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Double down on wrong.

    IT grads in your cite had 15%. 2x is still not possible. Are 170% of psych majors finding jobs? Math isn't your strong subject, is it?

    Also 'IT programs', basically the last program you can fall to and still be computer/STEM. Fail out of EE, Comp Sci. Fail out of Comp Sci, business. Fail out of business, IT (two year program is typical).

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  233. Re:Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    2x 8% is 16% which is close enough.

    Now if you want to argue about the language I used have at it stemfart because as we all know nitpicking minor details is how you prove your superiority.

  234. Attitudes and educational paradigm by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 1

    Tech Suffers From Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head

    Can someone tell the head of Mozilla to talk to all the STEM majors, (dropouts, active students, and graduates alike,) about their propensity to think humanities don't matter, and the people who study them and work in those fields aren't doing so simply because they're not good enough or smart enough to work in STEM? Because it could well be that the lack of humanities that said head is complaining about, could be exacerbated by the attitudes of people IN STEM, who like to say things like, "What did the Humanities Major say to the STEM Major? Would you like fries with that? LOLOL..."

    I'm not saying or even meaning to imply that jokes are what keeps them out and away, I'm saying the whole attitude towards that helped to lead to this landscape we have today.

    Also, another thing you MIGHT want to consider is this: as time goes by, each subfield in STEM is going to get more complex, and in order to be an expert, or indeed, even proficient, it will take more time, more schooling, etc., and while some STEM degrees are already really FIVE year degrees, (or four if you're HARD CORE, and/or don't mind the occasional summer class,) it tends to present to some students who might make perfectly fine and dandy STEM people, barriers to entry that simply cannot be surmounted.

    I am not suggesting lowering the standards, to be clear, or letting more people in who aren't prepared... but maybe the time has come for, in SOME of these fields, doing away with the current educational paradigm in these areas, and adopting the model of the legal and medical professions. Perhaps it would benefit all concerned to have would-be scientists, physicists, engineers, etc., get a liberal arts or general science bachelor's degree FIRST, THEN go to a school that specializes in whatever specifically they want to do; as these disciplines suffer from lack of humanities, because of increasing emphasis on the core requirements for the specific field, such students end up having narrower and narrower foci, and as a result they are, ironically, less well educated... by which I mean, less BROADLY or ROUNDLY educated. PLUS, it seems increasingly like MORE, rather than LESS, academic hours SHOULD be devoted to certain subjects. History, Economics, and Political Science, for example, are things that the "one-and-done" approach they use in college should be reconsidered, and perhaps scrapped altogether. Too many people seem to either skip these classes entirely, opting to take something else that HAPPENS to satisfy the requirement, or take them, manage to pass, and promptly forget what they learned, since once you leave that course, it's not like you ever have to take a class or pass a test on it again. How much value is there in insisting people take a college class that covers things they'll never need to know again, if you don't make continuing to know it down the line a REQUIREMENT. It may sound like I'm advocating for a COLLEGIATE final exam, that covers every class you took, and... I know speaking for myself that would SUCK, but maybe if we revamped the system so that a good and conscientious student COULD pass such a test, and required them to take one to graduate, might not be such a bad idea. Schools allow latitude on some of these things, and the advisors offices I've seen, (and I've spoken with a few in my day, at different schools and different states,) seem to have a "just check the box" attitude when it comes to things outside the major, as if they'd be as happy or happier if those requirements just went away.

    Also, (here's another thought I know I'm going to be positively crucified for suggesting,) maybe it might not be a bad idea to require students who want to use credit towards a certificate, graduation, etc., have to pass a test showing they still know what they learned in a course that's more than a few years old? If you passed a US History course, for example, 15 or 20 years ago, and you're coming back to col

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  235. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by magzteel · · Score: 2

    Who do you think is defending those old slave-era statues? You pretty much repeated Trump's defense of the neo-nazi wing of the GOP. "Some good people there". It would be a joke if it wasn't so serious. Those are really, really bad apples. They've been vocally defended by the guy in the Oval office, by most of the GOP, and now by you. You degrade yourself defending those people.

    Proceed to tear down any statue that offends you or anyone else.
    Then burn history books, works of art, buildings, bridges, and anything else that you think must be purged.
    Just remember, it always ends badly.

  236. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by remoteshell · · Score: 1

    I must agree, and I'm a lefty with humanities and STEM background. This isn't a good situation ... I hate to say this to the commentor but the diversity is deprecated. That is, we need more diversity in disagreement.

    --
    Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
  237. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by hdyoung · · Score: 1

    Who said I want to destroy them? There's a difference between tearing statues down and denying them a place of honor. Germany got it right after WW2 - they didn't bulldoze the concentration camps. They turned them into museums that were clearly designed to avoid a repeat of past atrocities. They get a lot of credit in my book for facing their demons directly. The confederate statue-defenders want no such thing. They don't want to face the truth - they want to blindly honor their view of history. Sorry. No. That place and time simply doesn't deserve the honor.

    They shouldn't be melted down either. They should be put in museums that have the express purpose of studying the history that led up to the US Civil war. And, sorry bud, I've studied American history. While reality is always a complex shades-of-gray thing, the confederacy was NOT a noble cause to be venerated. Those statues don't deserve a place of honor. More and more people in the south are slowly realizing it themselves.

  238. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    He's using an obsolete definition of liberal.

    While we still use the term "liberal arts", it's not obsolete. It's just not the definition that the current political establishment uses.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  239. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This was a demonstration about keeping historical statues.

    Like the statues themselves, this is a bizarre piece of revisionism. The demonstration was not called "Preserve History", it was called "Unite the Right".

  240. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by magzteel · · Score: 1

    Who said I want to destroy them? There's a difference between tearing statues down and denying them a place of honor. Germany got it right after WW2 - they didn't bulldoze the concentration camps. They turned them into museums that were clearly designed to avoid a repeat of past atrocities. They get a lot of credit in my book for facing their demons directly. The confederate statue-defenders want no such thing. They don't want to face the truth - they want to blindly honor their view of history. Sorry. No. That place and time simply doesn't deserve the honor.

    You don't speak for the people who DO want them destroyed, and you also don't speak for the people who feel strongly about preserving their history.

    What's your position on this one? Lots of people find it offensive.
    https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/...

    How about the protests to remove Thomas Jefferson statues?

    Trust me, this will just continue. Eventually they will get to something you care about.

  241. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Hey guys! We don't need the scientific method anymore... that's right, G. Butler has kindly defined 'science' for us as 'trial and error'!"

    "Take that, Popper!"

  242. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If someone constructs a false dichotomy between Stalin and Hitler, just kick HIM in the balls.

    Did you just assume their gender?

    Women can have testicles too, you bigot.

  243. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sociology - this one would be useful if the education system wasnâ(TM)t so completely broken. Unfortunately the only successful sociologists are black hats who use their knowledge to socially engineer systems for personal gain.

    Psychology - very important. Analyses/explains/evaluates patterns of thinking. Again like sociology, only the black hats are really winning in this field. Thereâ(TM)s very little money in fixing people, but loads of money in breaking people (thatâ(TM)s what marketing does right?)

    Management, HR, Political Science - Agreed, throw these out. All of these are the application of skills which are acquired through the other majors listed, while the majors for these are useless themselves. This is why few major politicians have political science majors and why no-one knows what the point of HR personnel is.

    Law - a model by which problems caused by human behaviour can be arbitrated. Without this, the system would collapse and specialisation such as the lifelong pursuit of scientific endeavours would be impossible.

    Philosophy - analyses/explains/evaluates models of thinking. You wouldnâ(TM)t have any PhDs without this. When scientists get their PhDs they are doctors of philosophy. Why would that be?

    History - incredibly important. History is actually required for scientific context in many cases. Climate change data can be reconciled with history to work out what is actually being observed, for example.

  244. Looks like Mozilla is F'd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The bozo creep has reached the top.

  245. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So says Hornwumpus, the COMMUNAZI, abomination of abominations!

  246. Re: The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well Becky, that's because to the rest of humanity you are both right wing political inbreds that merely argue semantics.

    Conservatives argue that it's ok for a few rich old white men to own everything, Liberals argue that some of the rich men should be purple polkadotted lesbians, and you both wonder why nobody gives a fuck about voting anymore and are staring at the lot of you like prime rib.

    Can you hear the knives being sharpened?

  247. Humanities in Medicine is desirable. by Sattwic · · Score: 1

    Humanities in Medicine has now become a necessity.
    A defining feature of Doctors is to be empathetic and professional.
    Professionalism is particularly hard to teach or train and even measure.
    A bit of humanities in the curriculum can definitely help.

  248. Re: Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    Anonymous Coward who won't even have the backbone to represent his own words is a meaningless piece of shit. Read what I said again. Reading comprehension fucker. If your degree was worth more than campsite toilet paper maybe you'd be able to comprehend a little better.

  249. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The butthurt butler is still fighting with ACs because he got his ass handed to him on the playground real life. Fetch me my slippers, butler!

  250. obligatory STEM, voluntary humanities by mapkinase · · Score: 0

    Every single teenager should study STEM (every single letter of it), while humanities should be optional.

    Period.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  251. Re:The Humanities are OVERWHELMINGLY left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  252. Re:It's the moderation that was funny, not the rep by Megol · · Score: 1

    My reply was of course an art-piece/collage about the quality of editing on /., if that (indirectly and not by my hand) inconvenience you I have done my job.
    *Tips Beret*

  253. Re:Riiiight. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Clearly failed math, reduced to: 'I'm completely wrong, but that's a nit'

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  254. Good Luck... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...in finding people from philosophy and psychology that would like to work with "tech".

  255. Re:It's the moderation that was funny, not the rep by shanen · · Score: 1

    In moderated terms: You must be overpaid, not overrated.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  256. PROVEN BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WATCH THIS: VIDEO: https://youtu.be/kVk9a5Jcd1k

    "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship" - https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

    3 researchers published fictitious deliberately unscholarly papers to leading humanities journals.

    Helen Pluckrose,
    James A. Lindsay - PhD in Math, background in physics
    Peter Boghossian - Professor of philosophy - 25+ years and 30,000+ students

    The video & article are WORTH THE TIME. Maybe NSFW depending where you work.

    If you still believe the current Mozilla CEO after the above, then we are in REAL trouble.

  257. Re: Riiiight. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 0

    Come on over to the playground ANONYMOUS COWARD and we'll see who gets their ass handed to them. You are a worthless piece of shit. Do everyone a favor: 1) Buy a gun, 2) Buy ammunition, 3) Load the Gun, 4) Put barrel in your mouth, 5) Pull the trigger, 6) Profit (for everyone else)!

  258. Re: Riiiight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Come on over to the playground ANONYMOUS COWARD

    Says the coward using a fake name. Scan your ID or shut the fuck up pedo butler.