Should the "Humanities" subjects exist?

[Crunchy Leaf]

Political lesbians always were and will be a radical minority (if this ever changes I think exterminatus may be the only solution). When it starts affecting larger percents of the population (females in STEM is pretty significant), you can start getting subtle, and eventually not-so-subtle, repercussions culturally and biologically. You can be in STEM and feminine, just like you can be an artist and masculine, but when you start getting emasculated men and masculinized women (of which the weird ratios of gender in college is a symptom), theres cause to worry.

The weird ratios of gender in college are because men want to do trades instead of fraffling around with the book learning--men are mostly the same level of masculine, women are just less feminine.

 

[wylfım]

The weird ratios of gender in college are because men want to do trades instead of fraffling around with the book learning--men are mostly the same level of masculine, women are just less feminine.

I disagree with that. Here's the video I was talking about, pretty decently made. And here is a link to a study that found that testosterone levels have dropped significantly even accounting for the factors we know affect it (like reduced exercise), in the past 30-40 years alone.

 

[Audit]

As someone who's in STEM, you don't get too many extremely feminine girls in the non-life science disciplines. The girls who wear heels to school and talk about twitter aren't going into physics or mechanical engineering. Maybe you'll find them in biology or med school, but topics like heat transfer through turbulent fluids really kill off those individuals academically. From my experience, the freshman and sophomore years will have a few women who don't fit in culturally with the degree but they tend to get weeded out by graduation time. Any respectable university is pretty good at eliminating soft-skinned people who can't take criticism or handle 60 hour work weeks. Some bad students always slip through to the end with C/B grades but they're in the minority. I'm not concerned with women taking over the stems. I'm only concerned with men getting looked over for funding and positions because women are being prioritized.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I disagree with that. Here's the video I was talking about, pretty decently made. And here is a link to a study that found that testosterone levels have dropped significantly even accounting for the factors we know affect it (like reduced exercise), in the past 30-40 years alone.

This is My Personal Pet Peeve, but I don't see soy boys and effeminate men as equivalent. Effeminate men have good grooming standards, often have some sort of artistic talent, and appreciate culture...soy boys have terrible beards and wear cargo shorts all the time and do nothing but play video games. They're failed straight guys, not straight guys who act gay.

As someone who's in STEM, you don't get too many extremely feminine girls in the non-life science disciplines. The girls who wear heels to school and talk about twitter aren't going into physics or mechanical engineering. Maybe you'll find them in biology or med school, but topics like heat transfer through turbulent fluids really kill off those individuals academically. From my experience, the freshman and sophomore years will have a few women who don't fit in culturally with the degree but they tend to get weeded out by graduation time. Any respectable university is pretty good at eliminating soft-skinned people who can't take criticism or handle 60 hour work weeks. Some bad students always slip through to the end with C/B grades but they're in the minority. I'm not concerned with women taking over the stems. I'm only concerned with men getting looked over for funding and positions because women are being prioritized.

And then they consider trannies as women, and everyone loses.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Yes because I don't want to starve.

Serious: Philosophy covers logical analysis/application which is important for law. You'll find that quite a few politicians and legal professionals had History as their undergrad major. History teaches you how to structure an argument as well as how to incorporate evidence into a coherent narrative on top of history being just very interesting.

The biggest problem with Humanities is that a lot of the disciplines are funneled into "teaching" majors (only careers with viable pay are related to teaching) as the world is pushing further and further into STEM.

History should be viewed as the lab of politics and economics but it's so hard to get an objective read of it.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

History should be viewed as the lab of politics and economics but it's so hard to get an objective read of it.

The way we teach history in the US is really bad, and I blame No Child Left Behind for it getting worse, since history was shoved to the side in favor of more math and ELA.

 

[Audit]

The way we teach history in the US is really bad, and I blame No Child Left Behind for it getting worse, since history was shoved to the side in favor of more math and ELA.

I completely agree with you on this. The only reason I got a good education in history was because I got taught by an old conservative professor who specialized in Western Civilization and used his course as a platform against revisionist historians and those who wanted to deemphasize academic rigour in the classroom. Imo, history is the perfect course for teaching critical thinking and writing skills so it's bewildering to see it take a backseat in our high schools.

Don't get me started on English, I never had a good English professor.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I completely agree with you on this. The only reason I got a good education in history was because I got taught by an old conservative professor who specialized in Western Civilization and used his course as a platform against revisionist historians and those who wanted to deemphasize academic rigour in the classroom. Imo, history is the perfect course for teaching critical thinking and writing skills so it's bewildering to see it take a backseat in our high schools.

Don't get me started on English, I never had a good English professor.

Well, speaking of western civilization, everyone in the US should take Latin and Greek. Good for the soul, I say!
The problem I see with English is the coupling of literature and writing, but I'm not really sure how you'd go about splitting them, or even if it would actually be a good idea to do so.

 

[Audit]

Well, speaking of western civilization, everyone in the US should take Latin and Greek. Good for the soul, I say!
The problem I see with English is the coupling of literature and writing, but I'm not really sure how you'd go about splitting them, or even if it would actually be a good idea to do so.

I only took Latin myself. Never got around to Greek.

I'd like to see more Philosophy on the high school level as well. I find that not enough people ask themselves the simple questions "Why are we doing this?" and "What should we be doing?"

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I only took Latin myself. Never got around to Greek.

I'd like to see more Philosophy on the high school level as well. I find that not enough people ask themselves the simple questions "Why are we doing this?" and "What should we be doing?"

I'm not inherently opposed to Philosophy, but if history is badly taught in the US schools, there's no way philosophy will be taught better.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

You guys are insane. "Who needs math, kids should be taught more dead languages!"

There are lots of lessons in history, but they're completely malleable. They could use the same history to teach the opposite lesson (And they have, and do). The history they teach is cherry picked and based on what some other person randomly decided to study. Which ones are important, which ones aren't?

Philosophy should NOT be taught in schools, the teachers barely have the brainpower to go through a textbook with the kids, nevermind any kind of deep consideration. Teachers need to teach things that have a right answer, otherwise they're just pushing their viewpoint down kids' throats.

Straightforward logic would be good, I think, but it's probably too offensive for most teachers now.

 

[wylfım]

You guys are insane. "Who needs math, kids should be taught more dead languages!"

There are lots of lessons in history, but they're completely malleable. They could use the same history to teach the opposite lesson (And they have, and do). The history they teach is cherry picked and based on what some other person randomly decided to study. Which ones are important, which ones aren't?

Philosophy should NOT be taught in schools, the teachers barely have the brainpower to go through a textbook with the kids, nevermind any kind of deep consideration. Teachers need to teach things that have a right answer, otherwise they're just pushing their viewpoint down kids' throats.

Straightforward logic would be good, I think, but it's probably too offensive for most teachers now.

If you learn the "dead" languages you can then go directly to source material to study history on your own, bypassing a lot of the bias.
Besides its not like current math education is worth anything. People are failing left and right and "common core" only made it infinitely worse.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

If you learn the "dead" languages you can then go directly to source material to study history on your own, bypassing a lot of the bias.
Besides its not like current math education is worth anything. People are failing left and right and "common core" only made it infinitely worse.

I mean, sure, if you intend to be a historian on a related subject it may well be a good idea to learn them. But that's like 0.01% of people at best, right? Why teach everyone that?

I don't get the common core stuff, some of it just seems like making things harder for no reason. Still, at the end of the day math is math, and there's a right answer, and anything else is wrong. That's good, even just to say "Yes, there are objectively true statement and objectively false statements. Not everything is based on feelings". That's the same reason I'd like to see logic taught in schools. Just basic propositional logic, teach the difference between "Saying a bunch of stuff" and "Making an argument". But then... a lot of their propaganda probably goes against that.

 

[cecograph]

On the other hand, I've seen a lot of comp sci people say they think the self taught software developers with lots of certs types aren't as good as people who've been to college.

While on the theme that universities are there to train professionals: what you teach at universities is theory, stuff you learn with paper and pen that you don't learn on the job. That's a metric fuck ton of case law if you're training in law, it's stuff like physiology if you're training in medicine, and it's stuff like statics if you're training in engineering. It's absolutely essential in these professions, even though it is purely theoretical. It's necessary grounding when you get out there into the messy real world. Your years as an intern in a hospital are going to be very different from your studies, but the two are complementary.

Computer science doesn't have this. The only working theory in computer science puts it as a branch of pure mathematics. It's certainly not engineering. Most computer programmers are fucking terrified by mathematics. Notable exceptions are game's engine programmers, who are all awesome.

This seems like a bad idea on the part of the companies. Of course having a factory worker in Bangladesh make a sweater is going to be worse than an American and companies still do that, but the difference I see is that consumers are willing to buy lower quality goods if it costs less, whereas large corporations buying software are more likely to be able to afford good American produced software. And the potential problems from bad code are way higher and worse than the potential problems from bad sweaters.

Nah. All software today is garbage. That's what "hacking" is. It's someone exploiting the fact that a piece of software is garbage. And when your software inevitably crashes, you shrug and say "that's what software does." And when hackers exploit some incompetent's bug in a piece of software and release millions of personal records, you shrug and say "that's hackers for you."

No litigation. Please wake me in a few hundred years when Intel faces a class action lawsuit for their recent fuckups with Spectre.

If civil engineering were software engineering, you'd see a bridge in your town collapse every other day and shrug "pfftt...that's what a light breeze does to bridges."

Incompetent Indians aren't going to make this problem much worse than it already is.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Well.... they run production lines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour when they're not running on PLCs, and you know what? For all the incompetence of software engineers, the software based PLCs are used over electro-mechanical relay banks in every production factory I've ever known of.

The private market says software is worthwhile, and not so shitty as you say, otherwise the market wouldn't depend on it.

Software engineering is just not very defined, so the quality varies extremely widely. But yeah, people know how to write reliable and dependable software when its needed. We use it to get shit where it's going in space. Hell, they use "garbage software" to engineer the goddamn bridge you're so proud of.

 

[cecograph]

Well.... they run production lines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour when they're not running on PLCs, and you know what? For all the incompetence of software engineers, the software based PLCs are used over electro-mechanical relay banks in every production factory I've ever known of.

Yeah, a lot of the embedded folk are off the hook, but a lot of them have degrees in "electrical engineering" not bullshit degrees in "software engineering." I know a bit about how the code is written in your 747's, and that stuff is rock-solid. Stuff falling out of the sky and machines in shops grinding themselves to bits costs real money and has real litigious consequence. The average website on the internet crashing and spilling your personal info, not so much, but all the money in software right now is going to webdev and so you might as well make do with a script kiddie.

 

[The Man From G.R.I.D.S.]

Something else: you should be allowed to work ahead in any level of schooling. This gets the smart people on their way, rewards motivation, and frees up resources for people that need it.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

I think most of the problems with the humanities can be related back to a larger problem of how higher education in the developed world has become so heavily politicized.

This is true not only in terms of the prevailing culture on university campuses (as evidenced by the various ideological agendas transparently championed by both the faculty and the student organizations), but it is also true, in a wider context, of the very assumptions about what the function of a degree should be in the first place.

In short, a degree has gone from merely being a certificate of higher education to being a political and economic status symbol to which everyone now feels entitled. Any suggestion that going to university is "not for everyone" has become a political (and increasingly, in this job market, an economic) taboo, so what are the people who are not cut out for the STEM fields going to do? Simple answer: get a degree in the humanities.

How long this farce can go on for I do not know, but I do know that with rising tuition costs being the way they are, something's got to give eventually.

 

[The Man From G.R.I.D.S.]

I think most of the problems with the humanities can be related back to a larger problem of how higher education in the developed world has become so heavily politicized.

This is true not only in terms of the prevailing culture on university campuses (as evidenced by the various ideological agendas transparently championed by both the faculty and the student organizations), but it is also true, in a wider context, of the very assumptions about what the function of a degree should be in the first place.

In short, a degree has gone from merely being a certificate of higher education to being a political and economic status symbol to which everyone now feels entitled. Any suggestion that going to university is "not for everyone" has become a political (and increasingly, in this job market, an economic) taboo, so what are the people who are not cut out for the STEM fields going to do? Simple answer: get a degree in the humanities.

How long this farce can go on for I do not know, but I do know that with rising tuition costs being the way they are, something's got to give eventually.

Yet this grew from the earlier era of liberal arts, a relic of the arts that a noblemans son - basically a warlord - needed to rule. We now have reams of people trained to lead, to subvert, to critique in the jewish tradition, but for what? Subversion for its own sake?

Our civilization reels under the weight of regulation, decadence, and waste. We can't sustain this level of complexity. The overhead - the resource cost to manage complexity - is too much.

Besides that, going back won't work because the systems of the past led us here. It is better to reduce the complexity of our civilization because this reduces the attack surfaces available for social parasites.

Being a leftist means giving gov't jobs to all your buddies, so they support your ambitions. Being a nationalist/populist means simplifying things so normal people can get on with their lives without losing 1/3 or more of their paychecks to a government beauracracy that loathes them.

Its actually superior to being a Nazi because the end result is the same (no social parasites), but the optics are better.

We shouldn't do the exact thing that leftists do. I don't want to create Nazi phrenology departments from the corpse of sociology departments, because that is still buying into the modernist idolatry of centralization. Instead I want to bypass their power centers altogether.

Or to put it another way - more neutral - a big complex thing is easy to game because it has many seams which you can exploit. It is fragile - in the long run it will become overburdened with parasites, lose sight of its mission, and collapse, taking part of society out with it.

Something distributed, made up of many small simple systems is robust. It doesn't matter if huge chunks of it fail beause the risks are small and distributed across the whole. Periodic failures that clean out the weakest actors make the system anti-fragile - it will grow stronger by removing them, just as a herd of deer is healthier when wolves prey on those most prone to sickness.

Our education system is a huge fucking risk because jew bankers like Goldman Sachs package student loans and sell them like they did sub-prime mortgages. For this reason we can't forgive student loans en masse without crashing our economy like in 2008. We are literally forcing kids to delay having kids so some inbred cousin of Harvey Weinstein can make money without working.

TL;DR

Cut the Gordian Knot, idealogy is a trap, deport the bankers

 

[Mrs Paul]

Considering the number stupid people there are out there now, I shudder to think of how much worse it would be if we did away with the humanities. All these ignorant SJWs would just get that much worse -- no knowledge of actual history, or philosophy, or how the world actually works.

You'd hear less "SO AND SO IS A NAZI!!!" maybe if people knew something about the Weimar Republic. Or WHY the War on Drugs is such a fucking failure (look at Prohibition). Plato's hardly the only philosopher out there.
Education isn't just about getting a job. It's also so we don't have a bunch of dumbasses running around.