/lit/ - Literature

[STEM is hell? No.11525826]

Curious as to why studying STEM has a negative connotation (ignoring the obvious bias). Any stemfags past or present able to shed light on this?

[Anonymous No.11525838]

Insect specialization.

[Anonymous No.11526984]

It's not at all a bad pursuit for study. It's the worship of anything new that gives STEMlords a bad rep.

[Anonymous No.11526997]

>>11525826
In general it makes the university more/too vocational

[Anonymous No.11527012]

>>11525826
You mean on this board? A lot of it is the typical STEM arrogance about the "worthlessness" of the humanities, accompanied by the usual sneering about being able to find good jobs. I studied STEM, and a lot of that is casually ingrained in the minds of a lot of STEM students. Combine that with the fact that humanities programs have definitely gotten less rigorous, especially in first and second year courses, and you have a prejudice that's self-reinforcing and prevents any meaningful dialogue, not that there's much to be said. STEM students don't see the value in a humanities education because of the extent to which we've debased education in general, where the only thing that matters is being able to find a job after graduation (which is getting harder and harder).

[Anonymous No.11527023]

>>11525826
In a society already very vulnerable to scientism, STEM people are the priests and priestesses being indoctrinated and ordained in this faith.

[Anonymous No.11527027]

>>11527012
You write like a woman and you hardly answered the question

[Anonymous No.11527031]

>>11527027
Well, that's one reason (studying STEM has a negative connotation because STEM people are viewed negatively).

No in the real world looks down on STEM since everyone is trying to push it all the time. This board looks down on STEM as a field because STEM tends to be quite insular and believes that it can solve everything, including its own problems. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't.

[Anonymous No.11527041]

STEMfags represent the unexamined life

[Anonymous No.11527051]

resentment

[Anonymous No.11527073]

There is something repulsive about modern universities, especially in STEM. The engineer goes to university to learn his trade, not to pursue knowledge. For many education has become just that, a trade school, a means only to employment, and to the universities education has become a mere business. There is little chasing after knowledge, only technique. Humanities are arguably in an even worse state, however.

[Anonymous No.11527089]

>>11527073
Albert Jay Nock wrote about this phenomenon back in 1935, it's only gotten worse. Education has been replaced by training.

[Anonymous No.11527091]

>>11527073
We are 50-60 years into the most recent dark age desu

[Anonymous No.11527114]

>>11527023
woah

[Anonymous No.11527123]

>>11527073
I was a literature major but also enrolled in my school's honor college which was a blend of lit, phil, his, and theo (private school). It was the latter that led me to /lit/. My lit classes, with a few exceptions, were a joke.
I wish I had gone to a top university and studied humanities.

[Anonymous No.11527129]

>>11525826
>Curious as to why studying STEM has a negative connotation
Mostly because of sour grapes, but a little bit is also how cringe some people in STEM fields are (especially compsci and engineering)

[Anonymous No.11527154]

>>11525826
If that's the Grand Chartreuse I have to rec this movie.

[Anonymous No.11527199]

>>11525826
Because of the robotic thinking many students n the STEM field seem to follow. Efficiency, usefulness, all of that, it's despicable

[Anonymous No.11527217]

>>11527129
I remember when I had to got to my school's STEM building for an exam review. I got there a couple minutes late so I thought I would look around a little. Literally every single man I saw was in some way gangly, scruffy, or otherwise distracted and odd in appearance. The women, however were all very conventionally attractive (A contrast to a lot of humanities girls). My school might just be weird though.

[Anonymous No.11527281]

>>11527199
Why is progress despicable? The pursuit of efficiency or usefulness requires tremendous creativity, as evidenced by whatever device your posting on right now. A systemic approach to problem solving is not robotic thinking

[Anonymous No.11527415]

>>11527281
the price we paid for this efficiency is that we ourselves became cogs in this marvelously efficient machine

[Anonymous No.11527445]

>>11527281
>>11527415

[Anonymous No.11527451]

>>11525826
it s both naive and hopelessley cynical and sad. Naive because you think simply going to school and studying is an open door to the Promised Land of high wages and job security and that these are somehow promised or even worth pursuing.

Its cynical and sad because these are young people who have literaly already given up on life and are happy to put away 4+ years of their finite life studying something they often have no interest in in the hope of appeasing the God of market forces.

stemlords are cowards, idiots, and are somehow both naive and cynical, but only having the worst aspects of both traits. they're basically people who vote

[Anonymous No.11527470]

>>11525826
part of it is that in this day and age STEM education is so specialized, or rather alien, from other forms of education that a) STEM folks can seem disconnected from society/art/philosophy etc in a way that didn't use to be the case, and b) non-STEM folks don't really understand the mindset of the field(s) and the beauty of them.

>>11527129
This is probably the most succinct answer though. Non-STEM folks are often a bit jealous, and engineering/comp sci folks are fucking cringey because of how rote and robotic they are as humans.

I'm a maths and statistics guy, getting my PhD in statistics. If it were up to me to invent a liberal arts curriculum, people would take some form of maths/stats/physics every single semester in addition to lit and philosophy because its absolutely foundational to the way our universe works, but unless you are forced to you won't learn it on your own. Tons of people read the Greeks or Kant or Joyce in their free time for intellectual stimulation, but hardly any non-STEM purpose would study abstracy algebra or statistical mechanics in their free time. Both domains (lit and science) are vital to having a well-rounded appreciation for our universe though...

[Anonymous No.11527493]

>>11526997
>>11527012
>>11527073
>>11527129
>>11527451
>>11527470
These are all good points. I'd like to also add from firsthand experience that some hate comes from successful STEM graduates who find themselves in mundane soulless number crunching jobs.

>t. ended up with exactly such a job

[Anonymous No.11527504]

>>11525826
>Any stemfags past or present able to shed light on this?
I get a bit of it, as a STEMfag myself I see that many students are utterly repulsive, intellectually speaking. Especially guilty are the CS people who, after having finished their Algorithms class, now act as if they own the ultimate truth of the Universe.
You can meet such people on /g/, they are incredibly obnoxious and somehow think their opinion on unrelated subjects matters in any way.

I would blame two things for that, firstly University today is about getting a job, many people don't enter because they are particularly interested or actually want to do SCIENCE, they enter to get a degree to get a Job.
Again CS people are the most guilty of that in my experience, they ask questions such as "what am I ever going to need calculus for, I should rather be coding", which is ridiculous since mathematics is a central part of computer SCIENCE and the point of a university isn't to be a coding Bootcamp, but an institution of academic investigation.
Secondly, science is getting more and more specialized and with that interdisciplinary skills are becoming irrelevant or at least not as helpful.

And as the very last thing I am gonna blame some humanities fags for not having any Interest in engaging with STEM people and constantly butchering it for their pseudo philosophical arguments, don't mention Gödel of you don't actually know some higher mathematics and actually know what he was talking about.

[Anonymous No.11527511]

guys, what shall i do, i dont want to mindlessly go into STEM field, but thats what im good at and i dont want to live minimum wage life. took a gap year to think, any niggas with similar experience

[Anonymous No.11527530]

>>11527511
Well stem is a wide range of fields, what exactly did you plan on studying?

[Anonymous No.11527539]

>>11527511
>i dont want to mindlessly go into STEM field
Then do it mindfully, if you are actually interested in what you are studying, not to get a Job but as a science and are willing to engage with people outside your field then you can do that.
Just don't expect the majority of people around you doing the same.

[Anonymous No.11527543]

>>11527511
everything requires actual work. the idea that someone is just born with an inborn talent that happens to coincide with the specialized fields the current market defines and demands is romantacist liberal nonsense. Two things

1)To find out what you enjoy will take actual work and effort. You must sit down and list the things you enjoy, have interest in, analyze them, actually think.

2) You can likely learn to enjoy anything. This is why asian parents have their kids learn instruments when they are young regardless of any interest or talent. You learn to love it once you're good at it. It always sucks at first, for everything.

That being said, It isnt that serious. I would suggest you study something you have interest in and somehow leverage that into a variety of fields. This will take work but its the only way of actually taking control of your life and worth in the market. Create yourself as a person, with a variety of skills and knowledge. Not as a tool of the current market demands, because you will be thrown away like a tool once that demand is gone.

[Anonymous No.11527546]

>>11527511
do real STEM, not engineering/comp sci. If pure physics or math is not totally for you, pick one of the more interesting applied STEM fields like computational linguistics or neuroscience. Remember also that good STEM is about thinking abstractly and innovatively, not about solving tedious math equations or being some code monkey solving software bugs.

This anon (>>11527470) makes the right point:
>Tons of people read the Greeks or Kant or Joyce in their free time for intellectual stimulation, but hardly any non-STEM purpose would study abstracy algebra or statistical mechanics in their free time.
You can always go to book clubs and lit groups on your university campus to engage with traditional humanities learning. But if you don't put in the effort to learn science and math, you never will. No one actually learns topology or quantum mechanics on their own unless theyre autistic. But if you put the work in to learn that sort of thing in the class room you should always supplement with humanities to be well rounded.

The illusion of there being some hard line between STEM and non-STEM is a cancerous part of our age. Every scientist and philosopher of note always learned all manner of fields to be well rounded and educated.

[Anonymous No.11527553]

>>11527511
Stemfag here... Math major, going to film school now for grad school... George Saunders was a physics major. Get an undergrad in stem, u could do whatever u want afterwards.

[Anonymous No.11527558]

>>11527546
>Every scientist and philosopher of note always learned all manner of fields to be well rounded and educated.
fucking this, what happened to being a polymath desu

[Anonymous No.11527565]

>>11527558
there alot of polymaths around. it just isnt that special anymore.

[Anonymous No.11527579]

[Anonymous No.11527584]

>>11527558
It was easy being a polymath when all knowledge about a field could fit in a bookshelf. These days a human can master only a tiny fraction of any field.

[Anonymous No.11527585]

>>11527546
I would say engineering is better than most, because at least it has a standard (like ABET) for most universities. CS is really bad right now, because there's almost no standards anywhere; my local uni's program doesn't even require calc for a CS bachelor's.

[Anonymous No.11527588]

>>11525826
Musil was an engineer, Goethe was a plantfucker, Bulgakov studied medicine, etc. Plebs are too dumb to be integral and think if you care about the metaphysical you give up on the material altogether.

[Anonymous No.11527596]

>>11527558
I studied neuro I just don't conceptualize myself as a STEMfag

[Anonymous No.11527597]

>>11527585
>my local uni's program doesn't even require calc for a CS bachelor's.
what the fuck?

[Digicraftmon The Crystal Gems No.11527606]

>>11525826
I posted a thread of a poem, does it count as literature in this board?

[Anonymous No.11527613]

>>11525826
Just /lit/ being butthurt that STEM people actually do something useful and therefore get paid more

[Anonymous No.11527619]

>>11527585
>my local uni's program doesn't even require calc for a CS bachelor's.
while I wouldn't recommend that, linear algebra and combinatorics are way more important for comp sci. Computers don't really do calculus fundamentally since they are numeric solvers, not analytic.

[Digicraftmon The Crystal Gems No.11527620]

>>11527606
It's called forgotten

[Anonymous No.11527626]

A lot of guys in STEM are dicks. I'm guilty of it, as are most of my friends. The entire culture is fucked up beyond belief, and most of the people fucking it up are only marginally successful / happy in their fields.

It doesn't help that some of the people in STEM, especially engineering students, always insist that a STEM degree is the only reason anyone should go to university. Once upon a time, people went to college to gain new perspectives, and to get a digest of world culture - that's still a perfectly acceptable and valid reason to go to school, even in a world driven by the market.

Having an "in-demand" skill set does not make you a superior intellectual - it makes you in-demand. That's all. STEM is a utility field, not a magical cure for lameness or a guarantee of your value as a person.

[Anonymous No.11527627]

>>11527558
Retard, we've come so far that if you wanna be on the forefront of a certain field you have to use your whole life studying a very small portion of that field, you CANNOT be a polymath.

[Anonymous No.11527634]

>>11527023
holy...i want more

[Anonymous No.11527645]

>>11527634
Coders are neo-blue-collar workers.

[Anonymous No.11527650]

>>11527634

[Anonymous No.11527658]

>>11527645
!!!

[Anonymous No.11527669]

A part of me automatically associates them with the really ignorant "scientism" atheists who pretend to believe science is the only way to gain true knowledge but only when it's convenient for them to hold that position.

[Anonymous No.11527878]

>>11527073
Mybe this is a reflection of our consumerist society, of course most people will avoid academia in hopes of finding a lucrative career elsewhere

[Anonymous No.11528076]

I'm a STEMfag (computer engineering) and I can tell you the hate against us is very justified. Like >>11527626 said it's literally ingrained in the STEM culture to look down on anyone and anything that exists outside of it. All my friends are always mocking the humanities students for being fags, and making the same tired "working at Starbucks" jokes we've all heard a million times now. I engage in the banter as well, because it is very easy to pick on them but I know what I'm doing just makes everyone hate STEM. We're so indoctrinated in this idea that creating physical things is the only meaningful thing one can do.

To all STEMfags:
Engineers make cool cars and rockets and super small electronic devices, while humanities majors sip lattes and write essays about nothing. This is the view that almost all STEM students have. Maybe it's their way of justifying their field of study, maybe they're stupid enough to believe it, but that autistic need to remind everyone that you're in STEM and therefore you deserve to have your dick sucked is just obnoxious. When people make fun of STEM students, we in turn smugly call them jealous. What's there to be jealous of? The only reason we're in school is to get a piece of paper so we can get a good job, that's it. Whether you think that's noble or not is up to you, but don't believe for one second that you are worthy of praise.

That being said, humanities students need to stop being full of themselves as well. I know you guys get clowned a lot by STEM autists, but understand that they're just that: autists. They have a very narrow worldview and they aren't aware of the value of your field. Try and see things from their perspective.

[Anonymous No.11528118]

Everyone decries the decline of education but what can actually be done to improve it?

[Anonymous No.11528161]

>>11527023
>>11527634

[Anonymous No.11528183]

>>11528076

I found that this was only true of STEMfags who want a sweet computer job making 6 figgies — which is most of them, unfortunately.

Those actually interested in the scientific and theoretical foundations of their field were very open to the arts and humanities.

[Anonymous No.11528194]

>>11528118
Emphasis on literacy and access to literature. If you know how to read well and have a decent library, you are set.

[Anonymous No.11528254]

>>11527493
Don't use t. if you won't use it properly.

[Anonymous No.11528344]

>>11528076
I did engineering, but also took a few 3rd year English courses, and some other entry level humanities stuff. Engineering was hard because math is hard, and the midterms and exams were often unreasonably difficult. If I worked harder I would have done better, but anyway a decent effort was rewarded with a low mark. My humanities courses, on the other hand, were either designed to suck in students from other disciplines in order to justify their funding by pointing at bloated entry-level classes, or, even in the more rigorous ones, ridiculously easy and basically a few steps above a solid highschool course.

Humanities courses are easy, especially when compared to STEM courses. There's no way around it right now. The amount of knowledge that an average first year humanities student has coming into university is so small that it seems the next four years are basically playing catch-up. Every humanities professor I've spoken to about this says the same thing: students aren't prepared enough in high school, so they have to dumb down their content. I wish humanities courses were harder, but they aren't, and only expose their students to justified ridicule by snobby, ignorant STEM students with no imagination.

[Anonymous No.11528360]

>>11528344
Exactly. STEM students are assholes that rag on the humanities too much, but like you said there is a reason for that. The stereotype of humanities being piss easy is unfortunately true in many colleges and universities. It's not just a problem with the students and the culture, the way the whole system works is flawed.

[Anonymous No.11528395]

>>11528076
>The only reason we're in school is to get a piece of paper so we can get a good job, that's it.
Speak for yourself. In my experience, any STEM major worth their salt went to school because they were genuinely curious about a specific discipline. At university they follow that passion. They use their time in university to get involved with research, find mentors and figure out what they want to dedicate the rest of their life working on.

[Anonymous No.11528468]

>>11525826
because it's shit

[Anonymous No.11528553]

>>11528183
I hope I am one of the latter STEMfags. I am in a Ph. D. program, and I would like to stay in academia, but I don't know if I will be able to.

[Anonymous No.11528584]

they only have negative connotation on the chans and I'd wager not even on most boards

[Anonymous No.11528661]

like others have said, STEM likes to make fun of the humanities. the STEM classes are indeed harder. for the most part though, STEM are unkept, greasy nerds. it's just the first time in their lives they can actually shit on something and be right.

[Anonymous No.11528693]

>>11528661
>STEM are unkept, greasy nerds
when will this meme die. only compsci faggots are unhygenic. I just finished my chemeng undergrad at a large tech school. less than 1% of my graduating class fit this profile. there were actually more student athletes than neckbeards. we all went to the gym together, partied after exams and fucked like rabbits

[Anonymous No.11528728]

>>11527451
Yes, of course, everyone that ever enrolled into STEM did it so that they could get a job. God forbid that anyone is interested in the actual subject.

BRAVO!

[Anonymous No.11528739]

>>11528693
My ChemE friends in college were like this.

[Anonymous No.11528764]

>>11528693
some engineering is more chad but anything computer related fits the bill. its not a meme

[Anonymous No.11528824]

>>11528739
This attitude is why no one wants humanities friends.

[Anonymous No.11528856]

>>11528693
damn man where did you go to school? i went to a top 20 and I'm begging for interesting friends. In a master program at another top 20 and just don't get it. then again i go through the cute people in like the first couple months and there's so few of us that it's just over after that, and then come the plebs.

[Anonymous No.11528859]

>>11527012
Tits or GTFO

[Anonymous No.11529963]

>>11528859
dick or gtfo

[Anonymous No.11529968]

>>11525826
Literary types are insecure over being less intelligent than STEM types. Plus, the humanities are in a sad state nowadays and have mostly been reduced to courses in Progressive/Communist activism.

[Anonymous No.11529976]

>>11527012
I the superior attitude is legitimate though. /lit is not full of your typical humanities student, it's moreso hyper-priviledged anglo-saxon kids of very wealthy parents who have successfully used their free time to enrich themselves with actual knowledge. Your average middle class libarts major is about two standard deviations away from that. Middle class STEM majors are certainly smarter on average in my experience, although you are very correct that many of them are soulless automatons who only seek money. Just glad I managed to get through STEM as a poorfag, find a job that allows me free time, and got out with my soul intact.

[Anonymous No.11529986]

>>11529976
>/lit is not full of your typical humanities student, it's moreso hyper-priviledged anglo-saxon kids of very wealthy parents who have successfully used their free time to enrich themselves with actual knowledge.
Non-privileged people shouldn't major in humanities at all. It should only be done as a second major or at an elite school where the brand name is what counts, or if you're a trust fund kid who never needs to worry about paying the bills.

[Anonymous No.11529989]

>humanities degrees bashing on stem for being "soulless"
don't you have specific opinions on various literary works to memorize so you can seem smart?

[Anonymous No.11529992]

>>11529976
There is no way most of /lit/ comes from the upper financial classes.

[Anonymous No.11529993]

>>11528739
fuck chemE. 50% of my classmates are now consultants or general cogs. Chad in college becomes Exxon gasoline pricing analyst who enjoys seeing his wife fucked by big black men. Once I get my PhD (different field of STEM) I'm burning my diploma.

[Anonymous No.11530004]

>>11525826
bugmen don't have souls. STEM is a factory for bugmen. they don't know themselves and don't have the tools for it, and will inevitably be in need of spiritual and psychological help later in life. that is why STEM sucks.

[Anonymous No.11530010]

>>11529992
I'm a 100% sure the majority of non-shitposters here are comfortably upper middle class with college educated parents.

[Anonymous No.11530012]

>>11527023
How do you come to this conclusion when the prevailing ideology of the day relies on censorship in science to prevent it from collapsing in on itself? If anything, the new Priesthood is made up of economists, sociologists, journalists, lawyers, etc.

[Anonymous No.11530015]

>>11530012
There's science and there's SCIENCE!(tm). Just like the birth of the anglican church. goddamn heretics

[Anonymous No.11530017]

>>11530015
shit meant church of England, not Anglican

[Anonymous No.11530027]

>>11530015
But the secular priesthood are literally not scientists. It's not even SCIENCE(tm), it's social """science""" run amok. Most social science is of course garbage, which makes rule by social scientists awful.

[Anonymous No.11530089]

>>11527585
>my local uni's program doesn't even require calc for a CS bachelor's.
post it so i can meme on /sci/.

[Anonymous No.11530146]

>>11527650
Dawkins, Nye and Tyson have no profound ideas of their own. I assume they've been so popular in the last couple decades because the masses want individuals who can "simplify" anything.

[Anonymous No.11530295]

In short, they lack "soul". The only people I respect in STEM are scientists because at least those are doing what they love. Doctors, engineers and computer science graduates are just doing it for the money (although some doctors really love to help people). I can't blame them though because in a capitalist society, there's not much you can do to improve your financial life unless you are a genius investor/businessman.

[Anonymous No.11530305]

STEM is basically pre-job, humanities are pre-reschooling.

[Anonymous No.11530591]

>they lack "soul"
what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.11530610]

>>11530591
STEMlords are now concerned with only the material and lack any sense of anything which transcends or is other to that
it's not hard to grasp autist

[Anonymous No.11530627]

>>11530610
but everything is material is it not?
all this meta crap you imagine existing is eventually based in your brain, neurons, atoms, and so on
how do you know STEM lacks "any sense of anything" which transcends the physical? systems theory and graph theory are about people and entire societies and you can model the behavior of very large groups of people, same as Jung thought of the collective unconscious
mathematics is at the core of life itself, how much more can you transcend than that? there's literally nothing more abstract, infinity and counting infinities twists your brain more than anything

whenever people throw shit at other fields it's only out of ignorance, whatever field you're throwing shit at and whatever field you're throwing shit from
you judge based on a handful of fags you saw in the 2 years of uni you dropped out of and somehow assume they represent an entire field

[Anonymous No.11530677]

>>11530627
I'll preface this with the fact that I've never graduated a higher education program.
We can obviously only perceive physical reality through human, imperfect viewpoints. Science is concerned with the observation and explanation of physical reality, technology and engineering the manipulation of it. It's the purely exploitative and manipulatory aspect of STEM I imagine people have a problem with. Unless science progresses to a point at which every action can be preconceived, and fate is known, a mysticism will still fundamentally remain over the unknown. Doesn't current physical theory suppose a quantum theory behind these myriad unknown reactions? Then even within that, it's as though there is something other than physical present, because we can neither observe, predict or manipulate it. It at least lends some magic.
The arrogant economic and material fixations of faggot STEM students, graduates and employees is what pisses me off. I wonder what reasons they give for themselves to stay alive. Ideation is not material. Integrity is not economic. Without these things a man can take on a very ugly hue.

[Anonymous No.11531475]

>>11530677
>The arrogant economic and material fixations of faggot STEM students, graduates and employees is what pisses me off. I wonder what reasons they give for themselves to stay alive. Ideation is not material. Integrity is not economic. Without these things a man can take on a very ugly hue.
You sound pretty bitter desu. Material wealth is what allows ideals and integrity. most of the great philosophers were rich NEETs living cushy lives on their families wealth. For the same reason poor people generally aren't involved in politics.

Overall in my experience atleast in engineering 90% are normies (outside of compSci and engineering physics where the autists congregate)

[Anonymous No.11531612]

They are only hated on this board by the enlightened non-robots who were handed a reading list every semester and discussed a set of pre-defined talking points. Ya know, the real seekers of knowledge.

[Anonymous No.11531711]

Pure classicism for the most part. STEM students, especially in engineering, commonly have a working class background and nothing enrages a bourgeois liberal arts student more than a prole that pursues education for social mobility instead of vanity.

[Anonymous No.11531723]

>>11531711
Jesus...

[Anonymous No.11531744]

>>11531723
I hope you didn't spill your champagne.

[Anonymous No.11531755]

>>11527504
Funny enough that the same could be said for computer science. Very little software engineering makes its way into the curriculum since most professors have never had a corporate job, and assignments are only graded based on whether the code as expected on a few sample cases.

In my own experience, STEMlords think that humanities are beneath them because 90% of liberal arts courses are objectively easier due to rampant grade inflation.

[Anonymous No.11531769]

>>11531711
holy...i want more...
>>11531755
i had the opposite experience, after the easy undergrad CS classes the test average was somewhere in the 40s. everyone passed.

[Anonymous No.11531777]

As others have said, this board likes knowledge for knoweldge's sake, and STEMfags, except for those in pure math and physics don't: and even if they do, the way in which they do is similar to one who memorizes interesting trivia rather than an attempt to find meaning.

It's obviously an oversimplification but that's the gist of it.

[Anonymous No.11531782]

>>11525826
>studying STEM has a negative connotation

On this board? Why?

>Insect specialization.

As opposed to humanities students who become so broadly skilled and capable of crossing multiple disciplines with ease?

As a STEM student it is far more worthy from an academic and life point of view as not only do you pick up valued technical skills which otherwise are not attainable elsewhere you can also exercise studying humanities related subjects in your own time. A humanities student can not do the reverse.

[Anonymous No.11531786]

>>11531755
>rampant grade inflation
In my view it's not so much deliberate grade inflation as it is the need to teach students things which, thirty or forty years ago, would have been taught in properly-equipped high schools. Most students go into university having read so little of the western canon (whether liberal or conservative) that the first two to three years are basically just playing catchup.

[Anonymous No.11531797]

This is why they're hated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sbOA9usp9U

[Anonymous No.11531806]

>>11530027
>you study social science? lol can i get extra cream in my frapuchino thank you
>social scientists are the new elite
can you stemfags make up your minds already?

[Anonymous No.11531810]

>>11527539
This
In stem, you’ll find a large amount of students enthralled by pop-science who can’t stay away from conversations about Elon Musk and what they want to research and ultimately it comes down to scientific illiteracy and ignorance. Once you hit some of the more intense classes you see smaller and smaller class sizes because they’re filled with people who focus on the material at hand and not people who selected a scientific discipline because they thought it’d get them a job.

[Anonymous No.11531813]

>>11531786
>but muh multiculturism

[Anonymous No.11531815]

>>11531769
I'm just a math major with a comp sci minor, but I tutored a guy in one of the intro level CS classes and jesus christ his code was an unreadable one-method mega block. Guy got an F but was somehow allowed to keep taking upper level courses and eventually graduated with a degree. Meanwhile in the math department they tell people to take Real Analysis I in fall so that they can try again in spring.

[Anonymous No.11531819]

>>11526997
>>11527073
I understand the need to preserve academic culture but at this point in time don't you think vocational/trade-oriented education is exactly what we need? Universities don't offer any sort of classical education anymore and our economy can't sustain a bunch of free-floating intellectuals. Higher education needs less openness and more conscientiousness.

[Anonymous No.11531830]

>>11531813
It's not even multiculturalism. They're just not teaching enough. I mean, I could respect a full-on SJW diet of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou and all the rest as long as they properly contextualised it with stuff like Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft and whatever else is in the feminist canon. Instead the curricula tend to be anemic, and students are left confused because of the lack of a coherent, well-founded narrative.

[Anonymous No.11531845]

>>11531830
Yet students of multiculturalism aren’t educated properly on first principles because preachers of newer schools of thought tend to either outright bash the canon or neglect it to a high degree

[Anonymous No.11531857]

>>11531819
Education in general needs less students. The only reason classical education is so diminished and devalued is because it is flooded with undesirables. Abolish compulsory education. Make entry harder and cease all attempts at transforming universities into public property. If industry demands such hordes of STEM slaves then send Pajeet and his million cousins to engineering apprenticeships and trade schools.

[Anonymous No.11531865]

>>11531777
>even if they do, the way in which they do is similar to one who memorizes interesting trivia
haven’t taken a science class since high school huh

[Anonymous No.11531879]

>>11531769
>holy...i want more...
Standing at his ivory balcony built on the hollow foundation of fraud and nepotism that is the contemporary humanities, the pseudo-aristocratic liberal arts student sneers at any form of meritocracy that endangers his privileged position.

[Anonymous No.11531891]

>>11531857
Found the faggot

[Anonymous No.11531905]

>>11531879
>unironically using the term ''meritocracy''
the eternal hallmark of a brainlet

[Anonymous No.11531939]

These threads are always funny because of how outrageously elitist you come of while whining about how STEM majors look down on you.

[Anonymous No.11531990]

>>11527073
>>11527089
Here’s the thing though. Even STEM provides no vocational training. I interview these kids out of some of the top engineering programs in the US and they still don’t know the basics I need from them.
It’s like you hired someone to drive a truck, they have their commercial license so they should be ok right? Then you walk out to the truck for the first time and not only can’t they start the engine, they can’t even find the door.

[Anonymous No.11532080]

>>11531990
Nor is it supposed to really. It's supposed to provide the theoretical knowledge that's needed to learn the skill.
And even if that was the case combining both would be tricky, much of the cutting edge stuff is based on some pretty advanced theory and forgoing that would be devastating since it's usually much easier to learn the tools than to understand the theory behind it.

[Anonymous No.11532123]

>>11532080
>supposed to provide the theoretical knowledge
That's a huge problem with STEM. Take chemical engineering for example. There are three possible career paths for an undergraduate chemical engineering student: he can be a design engineer, which requires a very broad knowledge, he can become an academic researcher, which theoretically requires broad knowledge but in practice he'll end up specialising pretty quickly, and he can become an ordinary engineer that does not require much knowledge and, like the researcher, is apt to specialise pretty quickly.

Universities train engineering students to become design engineers or researchers, but in reality most students go in to get an ordinary engineering job that guarantees a middle-class paycheck. They aren't interested in the subtleties or nuances of scientific theory, they just want a piece of paper at the end of their four years that will allow them to get jobs. I remember a professor once complaining to me about the low reviews he got from students, because in class he wanted to teach abstract thermodynamics while the students only really cared about passing exams.

[Anonymous No.11532237]

>>11532123
>I remember a professor once complaining to me about the low reviews he got from students, because in class he wanted to teach abstract thermodynamics while the students only really cared about passing exams.

Many professors kinda shoot themselves in the foot by cramming all the theory into the introductory course making it "that course where you have to memorize 50 equations" Then they have an advanced course which applies and builds on this that no one picks since the introductory course scared many students away including some with an actual interest in the subject.
In my experience i have found the advanced courses to be much easier since they are more specialized and less overwhelming. There's also been cases where i didn't actually "get it" until after an advanced course.


>>11532123
>and he can become an ordinary engineer that does not require much knowledge and, like the researcher, is apt to specialise pretty quickly.
The mass of different very specialized specializations make it both hard and sometimes pointless to train specialists though.
I don't really disagree with you, at the same time im personally at the stage where i just want to get my degree and start working. At the same time i recognize that teaching general skill is the only reasonable way to go about it since there's a myriad of specializations and the industry changes faster than academia.

[Anonymous No.11532328]

>>11530677
>the purely exploitative and manipulatory aspect of STEM
what?
>neither observe, predict or manipulate
but we can observe and predict most of it, and manipulating quantum effects isn't scifi anymore?
for example quantum tunneling is a very well understood effect with a lot of uses
sure we'll never be able to predict everything 100% of time, by definition, but we'll have fairly reliable statistics and models to give a good enough indication of what's going on at the smallest scale
and sure, as the saying goes, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and magic has been used since ever to "explain away" things we didn't understand or didn't want to deal with: witches, lightning, earthquakes, diseases, heck even the sun and fire and so on
>arrogant economic and material fixations of faggot STEM students
but you never studied alongside them to know, you even said so yourself, what are you basing all this hatred on?
>Ideation is not material. Integrity is not economic. Without these things a man can take on a very ugly hue
...do you really not see the irony?

>>11531475
desu maths and physics people are quite quirky but indeed in much cuter ways than compsci and engineering peeps who usually lack social/communication skills
working with them can really be challenging at times and unfortunately managers are still trying to understand how to deal with those people, but they can be very productive if steered correctly

>>11531939
people on the chans define themselves by what they hate, almost never by what they like, so to belong to a group you have to inherit all the bile they've accumulated and help spread it around

I just hope I get a "dumb frog poster" reply

[Anonymous No.11532420]

>>11530677
>Doesn't current physical theory suppose a quantum theory behind these myriad unknown reactions? Then even within that, it's as though there is something other than physical present, because we can neither observe, predict or manipulate it.

Tunnel diodes were invented in 1957. Please stop misusing scientific terminology to push for your agenda, pseud.

[Anonymous No.11532442]

>>11527281
Whether progress is happening is an open question. Part of the issue is that viewing the world through only or primarily the lenses of usefulness and efficiency can be awfully limiting, both with respect to the work of science (are things only true if they work?) And with respect to politics (See James Scott's Seeing Like a State for an account of how the application of scientific principles to political communities can fuck things up badly).

[Anonymous No.11532776]

>>11525826
I started at STEM, then went for a lit degree. Some people on the sciences are ok, very open minded intellectually and certainly interested in other areas of study. Engineering students are chasing money, mostly. Some of them are your classic normalfags, then there are the autists (doing what they love, so good for them), but a tiny amount of CS, EE or whatever actually have a soul and seem kind of aware they are doing something terrible. They are the worst of the bunch to me. I don't hate them, but I would prefer if they didn't go everywhere justifying themselves for choosing monetary security instead of self-development, gets annoying at this point.

[Anonymous No.11532802]

>>11532776
>started at STEM, then went for a lit degree
how so?

[Anonymous No.11533189]

>>11532802
Why do most people switch? Why are there so many sour grapes itt?

[Anonymous No.11533194]

>>11533189
wut?
if you're the anon I was asking, I was just curious why you switched
it was the simplest question possible, I don't know how else it could've been asked to not trigger you