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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."
"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."
So the solution to the tiny bit of right leaning information left on the web (aka badthink) is to hire more leftists. K.
Hire people with people skills, not autistic virgins
What the world needs is more "Humanities" flunkies who can't pay for their basket weaving and feminist studies degrees running shit. If I had my way I'd cave all of their skulls in with a hammer and the world would be a better place. Take all of the following majors: Sociology, Psychology, Management, HR, Political Science, Law, Philosophy, History (all the majors who can't actually contribute anything of value to society, but, instead leech off the work of others and spend their time manipulating people to try to justify their existence), put them in a hole, put a bullet in the back of their brain-pan, dump some lye over them, and cover them over. Problems Solved!
STEM actually produces something. Garbage men, toilet cleaners, etc.. are orders of magnitude more valuable than any of the goddamn "Humanities" fucking worthless pieces of shit.
Professionals at "running their mouths" and getting people to listen to them for their own benefit. Don't fall for it. They're worthless!
After Pocket, these guys lost the moral high ground.
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
can afford this silliness. My company can't, so, you go first.
Just remember, you could have had a tech guy leading Mozilla. But you (in this case, I mean the web developer community at large, not Slashdot in particular) drummed him out by blocking Firefox because they chose him. Because he wasn't politically correct enough. Because he had opinions that went against the Great Leftist Group Think that has infected the web developer community. Because he cared more about merit than how much of an SJW someone was.
Since then, Firefox has dwindled to a mere fraction of the user base it used to have and now the new head is doing crap like this.
You could have had someone who cared more about ability that virtue signaling. But no. Web developers just couldn't accept that.
... 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.
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.
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
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?
Yeah, that's what I thought, bitch!
Spare me the bullshit.
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.
"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.
had a gender transition?
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!!!
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.
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.
Cue /. To fall all over itself to prove their point for them.
Mozilla suffers from a lack of leadership, says EVERYONE ELSE.
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.
Interesting summary you got there...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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.
halt. even Emacs developers
You can't have everything. But you can certainly complain about not having everything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
It's so critical we have to say it twice.
Go well
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wut. The basis for ux is understanding human behavior. There is literally already a field for this.
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."
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/
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
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.
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.
... but her poems in the lunchroom are wonderful.
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.]
Mozilla is working really hard for that Soros money.
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/
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.
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!
Every person studying "psychology" that I've ever met in a video game is the most toxic asshole you have ever met without fail.
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.
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
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.
"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."
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just what tech needs, more people suited for the HR division.
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.
Does your company have a bunch of MBAs near the top? Do you think that's a STEM degree?
They're like moths to a bug-light. They're so predictable. So easy to manipulate and trigger. I'm laughing my ass off!
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.
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.
> 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!
> Engineering and science problems are a small (but important) subset of the universe of problems.
Prove it!
Society suffer from a lack of logic and reasoning.
> 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!
More precisely: Humanities suffers from a lack of Diversity of thought and its dislike of empiricism, repeatability and all things STEM.
is a metaphor for all the "Humanties" and "Liberal Arts" losers mobbing the producers of the world and sucking them dry.
Can I just say, "Smack-Down"! Say his name BITCHES!
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.
I also think that people not like me should not be competing for my job.
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.
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.
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,
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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.
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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...
The sooner people like that are pushed out of the tech industry, the better.
The Tech Industry is run by sociopaths.
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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/
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.
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
And damnit, where are all of the quadraplegic trapeze artists.
You jest, but look up aerialist Jen Bricker.
The moderation on Slashdot has become such a sick joke that they might as well turn it off.
Well, we aren't communists here, you are free to leave
> It puts off 'finding something to do' for four years.
Wiser words have never been uttered!
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.
Tough talk for someone using a fake name. Fetch me my slippers butthurt butler.
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.
The bozo creep has reached the top.
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.
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.
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*
...in finding people from philosophy and psychology that would like to work with "tech".
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.
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.