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Not really. His views on gay marriage and affirmative action don’t pertain to this, and allowing them to influence your perspective in reading his posts on this subject just helps to foster an illogical “us against them” attitude across all subjects, similar to the most polarized members of today’s political parities.</p>
<p>The thing that gets me heated is when liberal arts majors say garbage like “unlike engineering, a liberal arts degree teaches you how to think”. I can assure that I am learning how to think just as hard, if not harder, in my engineering courses.</p>
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And yet you do it, too.</p>
<p>You know, it’s funny, I’ve never heard this argument come up anywhere besides on CC, where different iterations of it flare up just about every week. I’m convinced that CC is where civility, tolerance and respect go to die.</p>
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<p>It’s about the way you think, not the intensity with which you think.</p>
<p>Yeah that’s ********… because we are better at math, science, etc. There must be a tradeoff somewhere. So i guess we LA people “think” better</p>
<p>Hahahaha ok…</p>
<p>Also, argue as much as you want but when someone disses the liberal arts they mean everything BUT the important stuff (STEM, Econ, etc). Argue and yell " BUT MATH IS LIBERAL ARTS" all you want… that’s not the point we’re trying to make.</p>
<p>And use a different major to validate liberal arts. Try a humanities or something.</p>
<p>But, most importantly, to each their own. I don’t think liberal arts are worth the cost in college but I’m not gonna try to get them banned. If that is what you want to do be my guest.</p>
<p>And props to Billy for squashing the off topic attacks on antipacifist about his other views</p>
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You noticed that post, but not the one in which I use majors like history and philosophy to “validate” something that in no way needs your approval?</p>
<p>Nope… these post aren’t THAT interesting.</p>
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<p>Why would you use a specific major to validate a group of majors? That would be blatantly invalid logic.</p>
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<p>If I wanted to point out how fluent in Spanish most Mexicans are, I wouldn’t say “North Americans are good at speaking Spanish.” If you can’t get clear what group you’re criticizing, it’s hard to take the criticisms seriously. Besides, separating out Math, Basic Science and Econ from the Liberal Arts doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering how limited they are from a practical standpoint.</p>
<p>Well the real issue for people like Woody is the idea that quantitative skills are somehow more valuable than skills in writing, analysis, and argumentation. Wrapped up in this is their apparent need to justify themselves as intellectually superior to students in other subjects.</p>
<p>Why this is so important to them I don’t really know. The absurd sense of false superiority evident in a comment like “they mean everything BUT the important stuff” really just makes them look narrow-minded and insecure. </p>
<p>The truth is that the skills provided by a rigorous education in the humanities are difficult to define and difficult to assess. Many students in these subjects, at least outside the top universities, are not very bright. Mediocrity in something like history or english is easy to achieve. Excellence is rare. Those capable of such excellence are, however, very much the match of top-notch engineering or natural science students; their skills are certainly different, but verbal intelligence is every bit as uncommon and every bit as important as mathematical intelligence.</p>
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Are you implying that STEM majors lack in writing, analysis and argumentation skills? I beg to differ. STEM majors may not express themselves as eloquently as humanities majors because they are taught to get to the point quickly and use plain language whenever possible; but the argumentation skills of my science friends in aggregate seem to exceed the argumentation skills of my non-science friends. Many social science and humanities majors seem to struggle with the concept of rigorous reasoning.</p>
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<p>I’ve never heard of a non-creative writing class that taught people not to use clear language whenever possible.</p>
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<p>Is that because the humanities curriculum is poor or because the humanities majors are less intelligent?</p>
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Funny, the argumentation skills of my humanities friends in aggregate seem to exceed the argumentation skills of my science friends. Many science majors seem to struggle with the concept of rigorous reasoning.</p>
<p>[/anecdote]</p>
<p>Guys, there are stupid people in every field. I just happen to be the smartest person in the world and a STEM major. Coincidence, I assure you.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people think STEM majors can’t reason, can’t solve problems, can’t write, etc.</p>
<p>Engineering is problem solving, working with other people, persuading the higher ups, etc…</p>
<p>edit: and there definitely are dumb people everywhere… ain’t it a shame</p>
<p>Seriously, good God. I realize I’m indirectly contributing to prolonging this stupid discussion, but what’s the point? What does either side stand to gain from belittling the other? I don’t care that you think all your liberal arts major friends are stupid and illogical. Likewise, I don’t really care that your South Pacific Islander Gender Studies major second cousin got a job on Wall Street. Anecdotes rarely tell the whole story and the truth is that your personal strengths and weaknesses as well as your experience are what lead to success and failure in the workforce and in life in general. Sorry in advance for the moralizing tone. It’s just that I think there are more constructive discussions to be had.</p>
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They may not teach the use of flowery indirect language but they certainly encourage it, if unintentionally. Students are encouraged to BS their way through assignments* and clear concise language would make the lack of substance too blatantly obvious.</p>
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<li>At my college, some non-science professors openly state that they don’t expect students to do all of the assigned readings, but they do expect students to deliver papers drawing from all of the assigned readings.</li>
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I’ve never had a humanities professor who encouraged excessive use of flowery language to avoid getting at a point.</p>
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I’m sure those professors meant to say is that they don’t expect their students to have the entirety of every reading completed on time due to large amounts of other readings/problem sets/whatever. However, to write a paper on a reading, one would have to at least know what the reading was about. I’ve written a number of papers on primary sources I did not finish reading on time; I just went back and read and analyzed the texts at a later date.</p>
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<p>If the assignment has narrower scope than the readings, I don’t see how someone didn’t do the entirety of the reading would necessarily be BS’ing. As long as they read the relevant parts it would be fine.</p>
<p>A grader doing their job shouldn’t have any problem marking people off for arguments that lack substance, just like how someone grading math homework would deduct points for simply claiming a substantial step in a proof.</p>
<p>It’s possible that by self-selection there’s a lot more dead weight at the bottom of many humanities and social science majors and that leads to a certain amount of grade inflation. But that doesn’t mean that a motivated student wouldn’t gain anything by studying those subjects and would be destined for a dead end job.</p>
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<p>Wait a minute now… So most anticipated the internet 40 years ago? No one caught this?</p>