War Room Lounge V43: STEM is Overrated

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Higus said:
That's sort of cherry picking, isn't it?

EDIT: I mean, theoretical physicists is not a typical example of a STEM major, and the reason you see more knowledge displayed on humanities topics on forums is because they are more likely to generate a discussion because of the subjective nature of the topics compared to the objective nature of science/math questions. You can find plenty of people who have advanced knowledge of a scientific topic around here, but the questions you ask them aren't going to go for 10+ pages once the answer is shown.
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I can find major scientific discovery in any field that can came from critical and free thinking. Its really not hard at all to come up with examples. You think landing a rover on mars, developing robotic surgery devices, nano tech, drug discoveries are all straight formulaic matters?
 
Limbo Pete said:
The experience of being taught can't be imagined into fruition. It just can't. Living in a world of theory inside your own head is fine, but to practice history requires training, full stop. I literally could not do what I do without having been taught it by a professional public historian. I meet people that try, and have to fix their work.
I suspect that part of the problem is the extreme emphasis on wrote memorization that occurs from grade school and well into early college.
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I think people get being a historian confused with studying history.
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
Yeah, thats mostly bunk. Rules and structure as a required base are needed for both. A HASS student still needs to learn to correctly use language to write, and thats very cut and dry same with style and citation method -- however, higher levels of STEM require the same amount of free thinking and collaboration to go from conceptualization to proof. You think the process that lead from the theory of gravitational waves, to the process of developing the math to prove it, to decades later creating the experiment to testing to actualization of said theory didn't involve abstract /free / creative thinking? Collaboration? Contemplation? Feed back? I think having to go through a plethora of failed tests to finally finding a correct method to prove a theory provides a much better pathway to maturity.

Theres not a scientific breakthrough or accomplishment that didnt require all of that.

By the same regards, a HASS teacher can be replaced by a forum - i have seen far more people advance their knowledge of political science, law and history on this site than people have with math or science
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Do you think people who want to study history, politics and antropology should just lurk the war room instead of going to university? Asking for my mother
 
Fawlty said:
Has anybody ever considered that a boat resembles both a penis and a vagina? I don't know if that's deep or shallow. But it's weird.
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Have you considered that both sexes could technically fuck a Pringles can, though neither could do it very well?
 
@Limbo Pete hey nerd you need to accept historians are going the way of the dinosaurs. How ironic. You become the thing you love to study.
 
Tycho Brah said:
Have you considered that both sexes could technically fuck a Pringles can, though neither could do it very well?
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I bet I could google ‘pringles can up me bum’ and find some film on this
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
Yeah, thats mostly bunk. Rules and structure as a required base are needed for both. A HASS student still needs to learn to correctly use language to write, and thats very cut and dry same with style and citation method -- however, higher levels of STEM require the same amount of free thinking and collaboration to go from conceptualization to proof. You think the process that lead from the theory of gravitational waves, to the process of developing the math to prove it, to decades later creating the experiment to testing to actualization of said theory didn't involve abstract /free / creative thinking? Collaboration? Contemplation? Feed back? I think having to go through a plethora of failed tests to finally finding a correct method to prove a theory provides a much better pathway to maturity.

Theres not a scientific breakthrough or accomplishment that didnt require all of that.

By the same regards, a HASS teacher can be replaced by a forum - i have seen far more people advance their knowledge of political science, law and history on this site than people have with math or science
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We're very much talking past each other.
 
Fawlty said:
But maybe the most obvious is to think back to school and wonder how many of those people in your class would have any business being scientists, technologists, engineers, or mathematicians. Are these people trying to fucking kill us?
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I am amazed at how many of my highschool classmates that were complete and utter dumbasses have very successful careers now.

Our goalie who missed half his senior year due to academic probation, is now a pharmacologigist. The super weird kid who literally ate crayons repeatedly (not just for attention) through all of his highschool career owns a business that provides radio wave type internet to rural communities. Basically all of the jock bullies, male and females, are nurses at the Mayo Clinic it appears.

I mean, we still definitely have people that never left the small town and I awkwardly see them working the register at the gas station, but it's pretty surprising seeing some of these people. Like, "my last memory of you was you calling me to bail you out of jail for stealing a grandma's garden gnomes because you didn't want your parents to find out" and my dad sends me a picture of the front page of our small town newspaper that this guy is working research for his PhD at university of Minnesota on cancer research they just got a huge multi million dollar grant for.

It's so weird sometimes who really makes it from people you knew as highschoolers
 
Fawlty said:
It works the opposite way in reality. Most STEM students are self-taught to a pretty large degree. (this is taking into account computer science, which is what "STEM" actually means in America - another problem w/the use of the term btw)
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Computer science can and probably should be mostly self taught but it is kind of an exception among STEM degrees. Honestly even compared to HASS, which I am arguing can be self taught at least in theory, it seems much easier to self teach. I still maintain that you can write a history book from scratch without a history degree(Tom Holland is a popular historian who doesn't have a history degree for instance) but I would concede its likely far, far harder than it would be to make an indie video game or series of apps which, if decent enough, could be enough of a resume to get you hired for a CS position.
Trotsky said:
Meh, I kind of agree, at least relative to STEM. For much of STEM, you literally just don't have and cannot gain access to the necessary tools to self-learn, particularly for things like biochemistry that require powerful microscopes and computer programs, chemicals and cultures unavailable to civilians, and other lab equipment like super-freezers. Even with less equipment-dependent things like calculus, it seems to me that persons that can self-teach without some sort of institutional support are quite limited. Meanwhile, for things like the law, sociology (my two disciplines), or history, if you can procure the primary and secondary materials (which, for law and sociology at least, you can) you can learn the material.
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Yeah and that's not a denigration of the field or the effort to get a degree in it. If you want to work in the field its probably a good idea to get the degree because the only other proof of your expertise would be a publication and to go from high school graduate levels of knowledge of history to being able to publish a worthwhile academic history book is quite a feat. I just don't think its theoretically impossible the way it is for certain hard sciences where you need access to the equipment only a Uni can provide.
Limbo Pete said:
See, that's the thing. "Learning the material" requires instruction, collaboration and feedback. For history, there's an actual process to be refined, and it involves tons and tons of writing. Additionally, just knowing the material isn't really the point. I'm trained to interpret the past. People have this weird idea that we basically just sit around memorizing Snapple facts all day. I do hands on work as well, and quite a lot of it.
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What's to stop me from emailing a historian? Chomsky is known for responding to student emails but I doubt he is the only such academic, just likely the most well known one. You're a historian, if an amateur historian emailed you to ask you about a topic that was within your area of expertise would you ignore it? Maybe but would everyone of your colleagues ignore such an email? What if this hypothetical amateur historian attended a history conference? Would he be ignored by every historian in attendance for having the gall to try and teach himself or might they humor his questions? And might one such interaction lead to a longer relationship? Its especially easy for me to imagine if this hypothetical amateur historian is a Uni student but just in a different field.
Limbo Pete said:
The experience of being taught can't be imagined into fruition. It just can't. Living in a world of theory inside your own head is fine, but to practice history requires training, full stop. I literally could not do what I do without having been taught it by a professional public historian. I meet people that try, and have to fix their work.
I suspect that part of the problem is the extreme emphasis on wrote memorization that occurs from grade school and well into early college.
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I am not talking about memorizing facts though. If I want to learn about the American Civil War I am not going to just memorize the dates and names and locations of battles, I can read about different schools of thought and their debates or different approaches to historical research on it or try and find relevant archives.
 
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tonni said:
Do you think people who want to study history, politics and antropology should just lurk the war room instead of going to university? Asking for my mother
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I mean the war room could probably teach you to actually spell anthropology correctly
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
I can find major scientific discovery in any field that can came from critical and free thinking. Its really not hard at all to come up with examples. You think landing a rover on mars, developing robotic surgery devices, nano tech, drug discoveries are all straight formulaic matters?
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FWIW, I'm an engineer and from the ground level, the day to day activities around project planning and execution, product design and development, and research and development are extremely formulaic.
That's not to say that they don't require creativity or free thinking, it's just that the creativity is done in the context of objectivity. A question with an objective answer is going to have less discussion than a subjective question. A subjective question can have an unlimited number of "correct" solutions.
 
I'm with Trots and Judo on the arts learning.

Grad-level English and Philosophy do require *some* quality that most people don't have, but I suspect those who do need very little actual guidance to be on their way (guidance through the distorted rungs of academia doesn't count).

With some exceptions (software), you can't really sit at home and pick up STEM through exposure and repetition.
 
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