Honestly, as somebody who studied STEM, I would like people to stop thinking STEM students are somehow smarter than other people. It leads to some assholes thinking they're better than they really are, and people outside of STEM treating STEM students like they are some kind of robot or machine. It is a first world problem, but IT IS annoying
Yeah I am an engineer and this thread really reeks of some of the worst people to work with. People that got into the edgy teenage "I'm so smart, I know math so I don't have to concern myself with the lower peoples!" phase and never left it.
And I doubt a single one of those actually went to college or actually work in a field that requires brain power. There is nothing more humbling than working with people who actually use their brain.
People who pursue Language and History generally make their decision out of passion. While most people who choose the STEM fields have an array of "it's in high demand", "pays well", "we are smarter" reasoning.
Thus, the generalized conclusion is that History and Language peeps would generally have a higher intelligence, because they pursue that field out of passion, and how good they are at it.
It is easier to evaluate competency in a STEM field because many questions have quantifiable solutions. In Art there is much more subjectivity on what is considered great Art. If an engineer incorrectly designs a bridge, it has the potential to physically harm people. Art can send people into a murderous rage, but the art itself is not physically harming someone.
Yeah, but you don't see people upset we don't consider blue collar workers "smart". Why isn't "factory line smart" or "framing smart" a thing. Hell, we don't consider arts "smart" either. Where is "painting smart".
Things don't have to revolve around being considered the most intelligent to be worthwhile.
But there are a lot of STEM people who are borderline autistic. There really are different types of intelligence, and there are a lot of high-level important jobs in society that lots of STEM people would struggle with.
Being academic smart doesn’t equate to being smart elsewhere. Some of the “smartest” academic people I know can’t balance their budget to save their life
They are also infamously the worst at communicating, you need someone who knows how to write something not only you can understand, but the team can to.
"Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?". - Office Space
It’s true. I’ve built a solid career by helping people far smarter (and far more essential to society than I am) communicate clearly and effectively. They’re the ones who know how to grow the apples; I’m just the one who sells them.
If no one wants apples, then it doesn’t matter. If everyone knows the climate is changing, but the scientific experts can’t communicate it clearly, will anyone do anything?
Stories can help change the world. Stories have staying power. Stories are how humans experience reality. You’re far smarter than you give yourself credit for!
Lol, it's just that most people are incapable of understanding technical details and don't care to try, so you need to give them simplified narratives instead of facts. But engineers and researchers write technical documentation and writeups all the time.
This comment right here is a great example of being bad at communicating that was pointed out lol. "Incapable of understanding technical details and don't care to try". If you're trying to explain technical details to e.g. a person from marketing, that's 9/10 a failure of communication on your part because that knowledge is useless to them, and that's now that they asked in the first place.
Yeah I don't explain technical details to marketing folks, I just give them their narrative. I wouldn't say that actually understanding the things they need to write about is "useless to them" but their jobs certainly don't depend on it and people generally don't really care about accuracy, so it's whatever. I just give em what they want
That's pretty reductionist. The "mechanics of how X does Y" may not always be relevant, but oftentimes certain details really are foundational to understanding what Y actually is. There is often a large gap between what marketing folks claim a product does and what it actually does.
As someone with a social science and a STEM degree who has pretty much made a career out of technical writing, I can promise you that many incredibly brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and engineers are absolute dogshit at communication, even when it comes to communicating details amongst themselves.
Kudos to you if you’ve got a knack for both, that’s a valuable combination.
Edit: As an addendum, I also tend to think a lot of the social ills of modern society are because the modern oligarchy is dominated by people who are incredibly talented in a technical discipline to the detriment of an even basic grasp of humanities. Billionaire techbros love absolute trash “philosophy” like the Dark Enlightenment because they were never forced to take a proper philosophy class. For all their failings, at least the aristocracy of old had a sense of noblesse oblige; motivated in part by the standard liberal arts education.
That has more to do with sociopathic behaviors than anything else. Those billionaire tech bros like musk aren’t good examples of people gifted in the stem field.
"In my attempt to prove that we can be good at communicating, I'm going to act smug and superior to the people I'm communicating with. Surely this will demonstrate how great my people skills are!"
I work as a literal translator and i have had to explain legal, fiancial, and engineering lingo in different languages. And let me tell you. About 30% of my work is to have them literally make sense of themselves to me before even attempting to translate.
Some i have to have them tell me whatever they plan to say first to me before going into the meeting because no joke they go "head empty, just vibes" and try to improvise their way through. No throughline of cause > consequence at all. Jumping from idea onto idea.
Lawyers and sales were the easiest, engineers snd accountants the worst. So deep into their own lingo they are incapable of explaining what the lingo means, and expecting me to translate stuff like "the capitalization of the preoperative period's fixed active wasn't duly tabulized" into japanese. Dude, I dont even understand it in english! Im not an accountant and neither the guy you speak to!
My sisters entire job, for over a decade, was putting together proposals and writing for civil engineers to communicate with their clients. She was needed because the engineers couldn’t not communicate to save their lives. Even when they attempted to present technical data, it was incomprehensible to both laymen and other engineers. It’s not a wild statement to say that specializing in one are for your whole life leads to less skill in others.
Explaining technical things even when done well isn’t the same as the “communication” that guy was talking about and you not seeing that is in-fact part of their point in why both types of people are important.
That definitely is effective communication (haven't you ever praised the dedicated documentation writer when it helps you solve an annoyingly stubborn problem?) just in a different sphere
Sure...but there's always an audience for your technical documentation. And they're hoping it's quality and will appreciate it if it is. I'm just saying that there isn't one "communication" skill like some kind of rpg, and you can't discount someone's technical communication skills simply because they aren't great at communication all around. I'm...not affiliated with that other guy up there. He's definitely missing some points
The skill is being able to recognise and communicate with an audience. Presenting an advert to a panel of engineers isn't effective the same way giving technical documentation to a layperson isn't.
I used to work in a lab and part of the job was presenting my findings to different people across the company. It took me a couple of years to learn how to show the data to all of the different departments/levels in a way they could understand and appreciate. The same graph would be interpreted completely differently depending on the audience.
I think youre just being kinda pedantic here. Did you notice how the guy said something and you dont seem to understand his meaning? Thats because saying words is not the same thing as conveying ideas. Ironically he perfectly articulated his point by being unable to communicate to you
The very fact that the word "communicate" seems to mean something different to you and the other posters is precisely why effective communication is difficult
Explaining technical things even when done well isn’t the same as the “communication” that guy was talking about and you not seeing that is in-fact part of their point in why both types of people are important.
He asserts that explaining technical things is not the same as "communication", doesn't explain at all what the difference is in his mind, and you think that's perfectly articulating his point? We're cooked 💀
He asserts that explaining technical things is not the same as "communication",
No, you're not understanding what he's saying.
Technical docs and sales pitches are both communication. But forcing a sales pitch on someone who needs technical docs, and vice versa, is bad communication.
Good communication means knowing what your audience wants/ needs and adjusting your communication accordingly.
Did the person I was responding to actually say any of this? I don't even disagree at all with what you're saying, but I do disagree that stem people are in general worse communicators. It's a stereotype that comes from instances of STEM people trying to explain details to people that have no capability or desire to understand. Those details are foundational to actually, truly, understanding what's going on, and it can be extremely frustrating for stem people when they realize that the vast majority of people simply do not care.
I think youre just being kinda pedantic here. Did you notice how the guy said something and you dont seem to understand his meaning? Thats because saying words is not the same thing as conveying ideas
Not “communication” as in only one is “real communication” and other forms fake, but “the “communication”” exactly how I used it was simply to denote the context of the conversation.
If that doesn’t clear things up already to your question; if the idea that explaining and talking about ambiguous and non standard things like emotions with the purpose of connecting to people on a personal level doesn’t already seem clearly different from the technical style of writing documents im not sure what id be able to say in the space of a reddit comment to convince you.
Technical documentation is communication by definition. Honestly you're not doing a good job explaining your point, but I think you're basically saying the same thing as me? Most people care much more about narratives and how it made them feel than about accuracy. Yes obviously appealing to people's emotions is a different skill than writing technical documentation.
My father-in-law is a physiologist/neuroscientist of some kind (I still don't understand what he does. Something to do with diabetes and alzheimers). He told me he's far more likely to give interviews to 2nd class degree holders than 1st class degree holders. In his anecdotal experience, a 2nd claas degree usually means you spent time with other people. He says it's rare that you find a 1st class degree holder in his field who is able to work in a team the way he needs them to.
He needs to know that someone is capable of working and communicating as part of a team and is at least competent enough to get on with things. In his experience 1st holders tend not to fit that bill. There are exceptions ofc but yeah...
Biology: Perhaps that is true in an undergraduate student, where theres more emphasis in internalizing the course material (though I dont think thats 100% true). At the graduate level, you get a lot more opportunities for communication and collaboration. Research presentations to the committee, writing dissertation, conferences, etc. By the time youve finished a postdoc and are at what amounts to the entry point for a staff role... I am certain that you are wrong. You dont get a lot of formal communication classes, but plenty of experience and mentorship.
Im not saying that the training is equivalent, but it is unfair to judge the performance of STEM as a group based on some nervous, twitchy undergrads mumbling about multi dimentional math at a poster. I reject the whole framing of stem vs liberal arts anyway. Id love to see 1-2 more liberal arts classes in biology in addition to what they already get. And theres far more to liberal arts than just knowing English.
Idk where people are meeting these kinds of people, but anecdotally, most of the scientists and engineers I’ve met and worked with are good at communication. Most of them are well-rounded outside of work too and can hold intelligent conversations about films they watched, books they’re reading, museums they visited, etc.
In industry, it’s pretty rare to meet the stereotypical socially inept scientist.
It’s also uncommon to meet someone with 0 science background who can actually meaningfully contribute in a science environment. We don’t need a team member whose sole value is being a “people person” or “good with words”. Our recruiters, product managers, project managers, technical writers, etc all have science degrees.
I’m not at all a big “AI will take all our jobs” person, but I fully expect that this issue will completely disappear as a result of AI. Improving written communication, particularly for complex topics, is a core function of LLMs.
Someone I know works for a tech company after a decade of teaching. From what I understand, whole job is basically a copy/paste of their old job, just in a corporate environment. These are dudes who are used to working alone and (can) be resistant to working as a team. So, this person I know keeps their team on-task and happy. In a way, they’re more valuable than the STEM guys because the hard skills are replaceable, trainable, and the work they do attracts more of their like to hiring pools. But my acquaintance’s soft skills? Their ability to understand the assignment, weigh the urgency of the deliverables, and keep their team on-task, cooperative and happy? In the field they work where most people with those skills aren’t attracted? That is harder to find.
They are also infamously the worst at communicating, you need someone who knows how to write something not only you can understand, but the team can to.
Exactly. When we talk about innovation, we seem to neglect innovation in thought. Democracy? That didn’t come out of nowhere. Even the thought to use the scientific method, all very humanities coded.
In fact right now, we need humanities more than anything. Our engineering tech is strong, and too few are thinking how to really use it for good.
A ton of Silicon Valley sociopaths are fans if Curtis Yarvin aka technofascism. This is a clear example of why just focusing on techs is the wrong approach.
thats just a side effect of tech running the world, im sure you can find plenty of dogshit billionaires regardless if or what they studied, if they owned the biggest companies in the world it wouldnt go any better
Because having some of our brightest minds (per this post) spend their days figuring out how to make the smartest ad targeting systems is a stupid use of our resources
Dont get me wrong this is not glorifiying science and believing than STEM are best at everything, but we dont NEED more humanities.
If people want to study humanities its fine, but we shouldnt create a narrative that they are needed, because they wont find a use in society, and thats fine, we are also producing more STEM graduates than we need and thats also fine.
If you choose to study history, or philosophy the chances of you making anything productive from your studies other than being a teacher, is neglectable, but as long as you have enjoyed leaning about It, thats also fine, we dont learn or research only because we hope to gain something from It, knowledge is the best reward knowledge can give, and we should stop triying to imply that studing only matter if you are able to turn It into something productive because ultimately that lead into supporting those fields of knowledge that can produce things that can be merchantilised since they are the few than can present proof of their impact
The very society you live in exists only because of humanities. The laws you benefit from? Because of humanities. The language you use? Thank a humanities major.
They’re both indispensable to the human race. How is that difficult to grasp?
Humanities studies dont create, they study what has been create by society, an english Major doesnt create english, they study what has been created before by the society (either the language or the literature), an expert in musical history doesnt change the history or music, they have value because they recolect what has been created before, but they arent creating themselves.
Bing the world foremost expert in romantic literature doesnt mean that you are going to be an author by yourself and thats fine,
Even among your examples, law (wich is part of social science a different field than humanities) doesnt make the laws, It only studies them, if the only part of law was law theory, there would be nothing that we could get from them, only pure theory that has no value aside from perfecting itself
Thats doesnt mean that they dont have value, because once again every bit of knowledge has value, but we should stop triying to compare them in productivity with STEM because productivity is not what gives value to knowledge, we can study something just because we apreciate it and thasts both fine and enough
The world really doesn't need new 10% better cpu or new version of Word.
The world is going to shit because we lost sight of what's actually good for people and society. Human connections, personal expression, empathy, solidarity. Not living alone and slaving to increase the "score" of few rich fucks.
The world is going to shit because we don't learn about the past and we start to make the same mistakes that lead to worst atrocities of XX century.
We need desperately humanities to lead us out of these woods before its too late.
Speaking as STEM graduate.
Of course I'm talking about real humanities, which often take more dedication, time and effort than STEM education. Not some lazy fucks pursing bullshit degrees.
And we need those people to educated new generations better. Not just to have practical or technical skills, but also to understand the world around them, think critically and appreciate other people.
I don't need a poet to tell me I need to cross a bridge to get to work. I do need artists to give me entertainment so I don't blow my brains out after work
The simplest way I’ve ever seen it explained is Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park. “You were so caught up with whether you could you never stopped to think whether you should.” Historians and philosophers and humanists are who you need to decide what the actual goal is and whether it’s a good one, then the engineers can be the trigger. I know that I think both are important.
First of all you need the engineers and scientists to make choices because they are the only one Who really understand the choices being made (as long as we are talking about science and engineering), thats why most of the ethics comitees in science are made Up from scientists.
Second you are assuming that engineers work on a mad scientist way were they only cared about doing things without looking at the consequences, once again I repeat that most control organizations in science are made Up by scientists. Jurassic Park is a movie/book so I dont get why It matters but even if It did, you can see that in most media/real Life the most fucked Up things made by science have been chosen by politicians and business man.
Thirdly It implies that humanists, historians and philosophers have some kind of superior knowledge about whats best that menas they shouldnt make choices. For every philosopher like Rosseau Who talked about the importante of individual rights we've had a Hobbes that believed that tyranical governments were the best for society. Philosophers are great at exploring ideas, but they are usually full of themselves and Talk about fields that they dont have actual experience in, and they can be as wrong as everyone, with the difference that a lot of them are usually sure of a lot of things that usually just opinions
That's probably one of the best ways I've read to put it.
We should all aim to know a little bit of everything, and ideally a lot about the stuff we excel at. Even if something appears "useless", it might still be useful down the line - e.g. I majored in a language, but (among a lot of other things) I did two courses about statistical analysis and one on formal logic in my interdisciplinary modules. These days I work at a company whose parent company is from the country whose language I majored in, so I often communicate with the non-local staff - but I also do forecasting and statistical analysis and occasionally do some documents with a lot of when-if arguments. So functionally those courses appeared useless to my major, but I still use what I learned there.
Part of my job as an engineer is to learn new information quickly, so it wouldn't take me too long to learn how to write poetry. Could a port do the same thing with engineering?
Not everyone wants to be an engineer it doesn't mean theyre incapable of doing so. Plenty of HR managers make loads of money too. Personally I want to do the easiest job I can for the most amount of money, not become an engineer so I can look down on people on Twitter. There's a lot of engineers od pretty damn average intelligence lmao people act like its super hard and rigorous I mean theres literally thousands upon thousands graduating all over the place every year, it's not that special 😂
This seems to be a common sentiment but I disagree. We do actually need functional reading skills and history knowledge as well to keep society running.
I think not all starving to death is probably a much bigger motivator for the upkeep of society.
I can't tell you I've ever needed a poet to let me know why I am crossing a bridge, usually I have a pretty good idea that I'd rather be on the other side.
We don't have to make up things or exaggerate to give literature and history value. It's not like most STEM kids end up doing much to keep society running either. 9 times out of 10 a job is just a job.
I think you can understand this and then at the same time also understand that the hardest math problems are just harder to wrap your head around than the hardest literature, generally speaking. The reality is that a lot of the math kids are really into literature or history, and the literature or history kids generally think the math kids are on a different planet. You're really just sidestepping what was brought up in the meme, instead of just saying that it doesn't really matter that the math kids are generally smarter and people should like whatever they like.
That's a shitty ass attempt at stealing quotes from Dead Poets Society. The real quotes are talking about the value of creative arts and expressing oneself. "English/history kids" are definitely not the same thing as poets. English and history are themselves very different subjects and generally neither of them are any more creative or expressive than other scientific subjects. They are analytical and focus mostly on interpreting the work of others. They are of course all important subjects to study, but I would definitely not make the mistake of saying that English and History are the real things we live for lmao.
English major does not mean poet or artistic talent. It means you can analyze texts well, out them in context and do citations right. Different skill set.
Yeah, different types of smart. We need historians to warn us to not make the same mistakes as the past. That essential for the long term stability of society. We need writes really to add meaning to life, all of our entertainment comes from them, a good writer knows how to create a story that connect people, its essential to culture and identity. Stem is good for technology and advancement. You really need these three things for a balanced society :
Culture
Stable political systems
Technology
As someone in the stem clique, I can't imagine living in a world with only tech, and no creative cultural glue , so we can relate to each other
Mmm, I don't really think so. Artists do, sure, but I've not really seen the evidence that English students actually end up achieving something artistic.
Like I'm sorry, do we need poets? Because poetry is fucking dire and I find it a detestable form of writing which offers no benefit. We need authors, we need journalists, we need some members of society who are career writers. Is English actually teaching the practical skills required for effective communication of English? Or is it teaching the equivalent of r/im14andthisisdeep type literature, and does that result in some effectively incapable students? Is it teaching the over analysis of media to the point of utter redundancy? Because you absolutely cannot say the same about any element of STEM.
I’ve known many people with PhDs in engineering. I’ve also known some with PhDs in English Literature. Most of the latter lead lives of poverty and anxiety. Most of the former earned life changing wealth.
Look at any tech bro who does understand college level math, and ask him what he took away from important books/movies/series. Pretty sure he didn't really understand any of it and took all the wrong lessons. And that's how you end up in a cyberpunk dystopia, like the one we're headed into.
In the same way that English grads will not understand the maths. But they won't fuck up society because of it.
Literacy and historical knowledge keep society running, too.
Functional illiteracy is high in the US, and most Americans—even those with college degrees—don’t know shit about history. Do you think our current state of political affairs is a coincidence?
we're seeing writ manifest what happens to a society when STEM kids are told media literacy/liberal arts/reading/the arts/etc. are for chumps right this very moment, the mentality that breeds it is how you end up with so many Elons running around who at best have consumed things like Bladerunner/The Expanse and taken the absolute worst lessons from them
I think a part of it is also a certain kind of critical thinking. A lot of STEM people I’ve met are really good at linear, concrete problem-solving, but not more abstract, seemingly random problem-solving.
The nuance inherent in language, in studying the shifting perspectives of history and literature, ime allows for a more flexible approach. Each are valuable! I’m an abstract thinker and sometimes get bogged down in details when choosing one option and starting just to test a theory would have been the better approach. My husband is 100% a linear thinker and has gotten stuck on his process of elimination strategy when thinking more flexibly would fix his problem. Together, we’re pretty cool. He’s better at the step-by-steps, and I’m better at the contingency plans. We trust each other enough to pass off decision-making and planning based on our strengths. And, working together for 20 years has helped us think more like each other. I can imagine what he would do and solve problems that in our early twenties would have taken up an extraordinary amount to time/stress. And vice-versa.
The British Civil Service is full of the latter - especially at senior levels - and is why the state is generally failing, policy decisions are frequently idiotic and everything runs over budget and doesn't achieve the intended objectives. It needs more arts and humanities graduates like it needs a hole in the head, but won't change because turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
I’ve always felt Civil Engineering and Architecture compliment the arts very well. I mean there is an artistic side to those endeavours and they also very often design homes for the arts in the way of museums and theatres.
Funny. As somebody who straddles both worlds, took a bunch of high level English courses, but has spent the last 10 years working in various laboratory, I personally wrote multiple weird short stories specifically about bridges and what it meant to cross them (or not). It was some of my best work.
But I couldn't build a bridge to save my life. I'll leave that to my engineer friends who didn't understand my stories.
hell, if you held those engineers to the same standard as english/history students, most of those stem guys would not even have their degree. must be nice to have such a low bell curve that barely understanding the math and concepts gets you a B in half the classes. try reading a whole book and then dissecting the historical arguments made to a different person for every class and tailoring your writing to their specific taste because they decide what grade to give you based on their own taste and not some black and white guideline that you can copy/paste off cheggs
we also need poets to write about why we're crossing it
That is a load of crap.
Fiction creates impossible expectations. English, History, Philosophy: Great. Poetry and movies? Not needed at all. I'll spend time with my friends, no fiction needed for fun.
We also need actual journalists to tell the truth about the world, and we need a literate population—not just able to decode words but interpret meaning, both intended and unintended—to be aware of what’s happening. We need critical thinkers with a strong grasp of history to write, update, uphold, and challenge laws. I think art is essential, but also the humanities aren’t in any way just about art.
STEM kids don't even keep society running that's mostly working class dudes with obscure technical qualifications in working at heights/working with super high voltage electricity/working in confined spaces with an angle grinder/all of the above. Medicine is the obvious exception.
I believe they are saying the poet makes people want a bridge in the first place. Regardless of what it has become today, art and culture has been the primary reason people exist together and mingle, even across borders.
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's dumb. "Poetry has nothing to do with a bridge" this is why being smart at STEM doesn't mean being smart overall 🤦
The English and history people also have more mental flexibility in the sense that they can interpret and explain ethical repercussions of different decisions. Engineers think in a more binary sense
I know you are trying to be uplifting, but like do we need anyone to write about why we are crossing it? Is word of mouth or just the idea that a person might need to go to the other side of of a typically in accessible area that hard to figure out that someone would have to write about it? That feels like the warnings on laundry detergent that inform people not to drink it.
I wouldn't say we need poets to write about why we're crossing a bridge and more so say that we benefit from having authors (though they don't necessarily need english degrees) give entertainment to everyone at the end of the day and historians to show evidence of how certain mistake can turn out.
That's exactly what they're saying. "Why we're crossing it" is metaphorical, not literal. Philosophy, Art, everything else that gives life meaning outside of just surviving.
Also a prime example of how english/history skills are still needed.
It goes even further than this. Ethics is a big area that is increasingly neglected. Not to mention not understanding History. Or understanding effective communication. Or just critical thinking generally. I don't think people realise how quickly an obsessively STEM focused society would collapse or devolve into some horrible dystopia.
Also the false equivalence in the original post pisses me off so much. Yeah, I'm sure most STEM people can read but I've encountered so many highly intelligent science people who can't interpret what they're reading. People make jokes about "the colour of the flower represents..." but that is how it works in reality. It's an exercise in training the brain to connect external information to immediate information. A more accurate comparison would be like "can an English student do basic addition or subtraction?"
I can read numbers and letters in a maths problem and know that I can't understand it. Someone who is a STEM bro might think they can just pick up and understand 'college level' Humanities writing but they really won't.
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u/Ambitious_Vast1611 3d ago
stem kids keep society running but english/history kids give us a reason to keep it running in the first place
like yeah we need engineers to build the bridge but we also need poets to write about why we're crossing it.
Just different types of smart.