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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."
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.
Thanks for proving my point.
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
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
It's pretty funky when you're reading Greek and it looks like a math equation
I tend to rant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can't have everything. But you can certainly complain about not having everything.
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"
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"
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.
It's so critical we have to say it twice.
Go well
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.
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.
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
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.
Thanks for making it abundantly clear that you're a loud-mouthed fascist piece of shit.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
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.
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
Oh the humanities!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
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.
Hey, now, we don't need genocide. We just need an arc ...
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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.
Like making sure that Trump was elected.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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.
... 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.
You do realise that citing Breitbart automatically loses the argument, don't you?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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".
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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.
Nice strawman. I never knew the guy and he's dead now.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
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.
(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.
"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."
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
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.
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.
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!"
I love how the people arguing against this are demonstrating the exact problem in their posts...
There are a lot of people who call themselves "liberal" and "conservative" who aren't.
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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.
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.
There are a lot of people who call other people 'liberal' or 'conservative' who don't have a fucking clue.
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.
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)
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.
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!
The feeling is mutual.
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.
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.
God you must be insufferable in person. And on Slashdot too. Yes, you are quite insufferable.
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.
Bhaw-Ha-Ha! You are so completely off-the-mark!
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!
"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."
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.
"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.
> 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!
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
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.
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.
> Engineering and science problems are a small (but important) subset of the universe of problems.
Prove it!
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.
I would like your broken mind to try to set up and show the logical evidence for that.
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.
Society suffer from a lack of logic and reasoning.
Anonymous Cowards are just cowards.
> 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!
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!
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!
> 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!
> 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.
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.
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.
Your words are meaningless. You lack the courage of conviction to ascribe your name to them.
You should look into the engineers that enabled them.
"Old man yells at systemd"
People worked for those people dumbass.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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'
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'
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'
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.
Dunno about psychologists, but psychiatrists got half the US hooked on psychotropics with a net negative result.
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'
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'
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'
> "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!
> It puts off 'finding something to do' for four years.
Wiser words have never been uttered!
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
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'
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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*
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'
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.