Why shouldn't STEM be prioritized over humanities, etc?

Great Debates
61

Apologies.

I would say a degree in the sciences is not exactly a “communicator, first and foremost”. The scientific education gave him the background needed to speak coherently and confidently on the subject, even if he was never a practicing scientist.

Not to pick on the media too much, since we know where that goes–but it’s clear from the reporting on scientific subjects that the majority of journalists and reporters do not have even a hint of science education, let alone the equivalent of an undergraduate degree. A communicator with that background might as well be a full-fledged scientist in comparison. Attenborough didn’t need a degree in the humanities to become a great science communicator, but I’m pretty sure he did need that STEM degree.

62

Did they go with LED because it was so much better, or because it was so much more available? It’s basically impossible to find old-style incandescent bulbs anymore; while newer more energy-efficient models can be had, they’re not quite the same (in particular, the color temperature is off, they usually run hotter and they’re more expensive). The choice wasn’t ‘stick with the old or embrace the new,’ but instead ‘pick one of these new alternatives because the old kind is gone.’ The Energy Independence and Security Act and its associated regulations are political acts, not scientific ones.

However, the opposition to Tesla and other energy-saving ideas isn’t being framed as sacrificing their own well-being, but instead as burnishing their credentials as true patriots by refusing to fall for those nasty liberal schemes to undermine their country. That is part of their self-interest: to be and be seen as patriotic and loyal, not like those others.

No, they buy it because elephant ivory has a cultural value to them. The financial aspect is well down the list. Similarly, they buy rhino horns and tiger parts because of their use in Chinese traditional medicine, where they are consumed and no longer available to be more valuable later on. The belief that rhino horn will help your arthritis or tiger penis will cure impotence is objectively, scientifically wrong, but that doesn’t prevent the trade.

Tesla gets a heck of a lot of publicity; Elon Musk is a master at it. Just this month, Tesla became the world’s largest car manufacturer measured by market capitalization, despite the fact that it has never had a profitable year and produces fewer than one-twentieth the number of cars as the 2nd-largest, Toyota Motor Corporation (which has posted one year of operating losses since World War II). I think psychology accounts for Tesla’s stock market success far more than science, and the hype generated by its surging stock price doesn’t come from the advertising budget.

or convince customers that there’s some intrinsic reason to pay more for gas-powered semis, or convince regulators to impose additional restrictions on electric vehicles, or undertake various other political or social measures to undercut science. Economics is only as strong as the political will to abide by what it says. (Consider, e.g., that most western European countries get the same health outcomes for less money than the US; how strong is the push for European-style health systems in the states?)

63

Sorry no. If you don’t actually work in the sciences, you’re just someone with a science degree, not a scientist.

Attenborough’s first jobs after service were in editing and then in broadcasting. He very much was a communicator first. This is easily seen by his other jobs at the BBC.

I doubt he needed that degree. My other favourite British naturalist, Gerald Durrell, certainly never needed one.

64

This was a while ago, before incandescents became hard to find, but after the big price drops on LEDs. And anyway, they would have been bitching and moaning had the switch been forced on them. Instead, they saw that the combination of price and lifetime and energy savings was compelling and brag about how much they’re saving. Same goes for their plug-in hybrid.

Why do people buy ivory?

The study showed that ivory attracts these women for a number of reasons: It is rare and beautiful, it carries cultural significance, it makes a good gift. There were other drivers as well. “Ivory is a status symbol,” says Lo, referring to the product that people sometimes call “white gold.” It’s a luxury product that people use to flaunt their wealth, she explains.
…
It’s because of this that China’s rising middle class began to look to ivory as a good place to park their money a decade or so ago, says Vertefeuille. “Ivory never goes bad, right? So it’s something you can invest in long term, something that can be seen as a smart way to spend your money, and something you can show off too,” she explains. “It’s a collector’s mentality, like high-end art.”

The cultural aspect is part, certainly. But the investment aspect is certainly a part, and the “collector’s mentality” only makes sense for a product that will dwindle in supply.

I should note that it was scientific research into these social aspects that allowed them to determine this. So even if the final result is a form of messaging (they mention that emphasizing elephant welfare hits home with some groups), the way they got there is with science.

Smart moves at a society level are more difficult than ones at an individual level, even when something benefits almost everyone.

65

When I was at school (mumble-mumble years ago), the core curriculum for everyone included three hard sciences (one with a lab component), three social sciences, and three math course (one of which was symbolic logic). Also three arts, three humanities, three English (including English comp and presentation skills), and assorted other foreign language, PE, health etc courses.

I learned a lot of things outside my major subject. I can’t remember all of them (I mean, the geology course I took was deathly dull but that was likely due to the teacher) but I picked up a lot along the way.

66

STEM is already prioritized over the humanities and we’re going to end up with a glut of STEM degrees out in the market including plenty of grads not actually qualified for the jobs and plenty more totally dissatisfied with the low pay in a competitive job market when they were promised a golden ticket to success, not to mention no change in the student loan money pit.

67

This seems like a strange comment, considering at most, US new sales of electric cars are 2% of all new car sales. That’s incredibly small. Not to mention that there are large government subsidies for EVs (though Trump has gotten rid of a lot of it on the federal level).

Tech can only go so far. 2% of new car sales isn’t going to drastically reverse climate change - but maybe that number can rise if government subsidies increase dramatically once again.

68

And if people are still reaching for the “golden ticket degree” illusion, we really are facing a failure of general education.

69

As someone with a graduate business degree (MBA), a STEM undergraduate degree (BS in Computer Science), and a sort of hybrid graduate degree (MS in Information Tech. & Management), I feel reasonably qualified to compare the two fields of study.

Business degrees tend to be generalist degrees, especially the MBA. Most of the undergrad variants are somewhat more specialized, but only really accounting seems to be hyper-focused on the actual nuts and bolts of the discipline.

The MBA in particular is a general business degree with a specialization that amounts to what would be an undergrad minor. We took courses from all the business disciplines (accounting, finance, marketing(x2), strategy, economics(x2), org behavior), and some non-business courses that are related (statistics/statistical analysis and operations research).

Then, we took courses in our concentration- in my case IT & Mgmt, which were (IMO) a strange hybrid of STEM and business- kind of like STEM-lite, with a heavy business focus.

To draw a direct comparison- when I took databases/database programming as a computer science undergrad, we spent most of our time doing things like the mathematics of set theory, the various sorts of databases, normalization of databases and some work on queries and query optimization. NO mention of what you might actually use this stuff for in the real world.

In the business school, our database course spent most of our time comparing types of databases with respect to WHY you’d choose one over the other, the basic concepts of relational databases, and the majority of time on how to actually design a database and an associated application to actually solve a business problem. No real mention of normalization, querying, optimization, etc…

I think a lot of the actual STEM jobs out there are probably better served by business school grads with MIS/IT degrees than actual CS, CE or EE grads, as most of what the latter learn is only really applicable if you work for Google, Microsoft or another serious tech company. If you go to work for an everyday company, most of the actual difficulty will be in the soft side of things- the business case, the requirements, the specs, testing, etc… and not in the actual nitty-gritty tech stuff like coding, configuration or optimization. And the STEM degrees only teach you that nitty-gritty stuff.

70

It is not University of Indiana, it is IU (Indiana University). U of I grad and IU father.
Irkutsk I don’t know.

71

We’re already seeing it now. Ph.Ds in biology are all over the place, most of them vying for a limited number of tenure track positions while they starve on adjunct professor wages. I don’t think they were promised a golden ticket (I certainly wasn’t. I studied ecology knowing that my ticket was always going to be made out of flimsy cardboard). But they were told they were making all the right choices for normal middle-class lifestyle.

72

I have noticed that in places like Reddit, if you confess to having fallen on hard financial times, the first thing people ask you is if you can code. People seem to think a person learning to code is like a man learning how to fish. As long as you can code, you can get a job.

I don’t know how true this is. To me, it’s like saying as long as you can write, you can get a job. True in one sense, but stupid in all the senses that matter.

73

Tesla is no longer receiving Federal subsidies for their vehicles, and they are still selling as many as they can make. The $7500 rebate sped things along a bit, but there may be better things to do with the money (I’d rather have a carbon tax/credit scheme for gas gars than EV subsidies).

In 2010, EV sales were around 0.1%, so for it to be 2% now is an astonishing growth rate. Some places are ahead of others; in CA it’s around 8%. If EV growth can continue that rate, it’ll be at 40% in a decade, and that very much is significant.

The 2% is continuing to rise on its own, but we need to see more automakers with a compelling product. I like Tesla but they are just one company, founded less than 20 years ago, competing with automakers with more than a century of growth and experience, and numerous product lines that Tesla doesn’t yet cover. What Tesla has done is provide the existence proof that EVs can almost completely replace fossil fuel cars, and not just as a compromise but with significant net benefits. And that was completely a function of technology.

If there’s a social problem here, it’s conservatism at the automakers in embracing the new technology. Unfortunately, it’s not a problem that anyone has had luck in solving before. History is riddled with industries with an obvious path toward the future but failed to embrace it: Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears, etc.

74

As far as I know, it’s not true at all. Unless somehow actual coders are so hard to find that they’re hiring random people with unverifiable coding experience or nigh-worthless coding certificates, most coding/developer jobs are still going to college grads and/or self-taught programmers with a body of work that they can show to prove their skill.

If anything, the requirements for a lot of IT/STEM jobs are TOO specific- they want someone with experience in X-industry IT, experience with/coding in a certain software package/development language, and a bunch of other stuff. Never mind that you may have a guy with 10 years experience in X-industry IT and all of that with a competing product, he’ll probably get passed over because he doesn’t have THEIR software/language experience.

Most of that “learn to code!” and “computer career” stuff is nonsense. At best, it gets you a job as a help desk goon or a cable monkey somewhere, which is the sort of job a twenty-something falls into, not something someone actively seeks out in IT/STEM.

75

Healthy economies, like healthy societies require balance. Favouring STEM over arts or vice versa are both the same flawed concept. Because it is a VERY varied world, that needs the contributions of both to truly thrive.

And arts courses are easy…for people with an arts aptitude, but painful for science nerds. As the reverse is also true.

How is this NOT self evident for anyone with eyes?

76

Frankly I think STEM has been pushed too much. Their are plenty of other worthy areas like art, music, english, history, etc…

77

I would argue that’s a huge assumption. Considering last year’s (1.9%) were slightly below the year prior (2.1%). The needle has not been moving all that quickly. A lot of that is that automakers have been trying to make EVs as well, but a lot of them aren’t selling great - partially due to range issues, partially due to price. The only really way to make sure it takes over a substantial part of the market is by the government stepping in and offering subsidies for EVs again as well as smacking internal combustion cars with higher taxes. That requires some political ability. In addition, you are going to have to be able to convince legislators to do that knowing that gas tax revenues are going to plummet - in Georgia EVs actually have an additional tax every year to make up for the fact they don’t pay gas tax (no, really!).

Furthermore, Tesla may have helped kick the door down, but there are plenty of traditional car makers putting their foot into EVs. The Nissan Leaf has been the world’s best selling EV car. Chevy, Audi, BMW, and VW have EV cars - though they tend have pretty limited range, and are pricey aside from the Chevy Bolt. If you want a EV dominated future, it’s going to be due to the Leaf and Bolt - and if Toyota and Honda start selling EV Camrys and Civics for similar as their do their internal combustions.

78

There’s too much lumpiness at the scale of a year. Expiring subsidies, product releases, etc. all conspire to make any one year an outlier. If you smooth out 2018 a bit, it still looks exponential.

The range and price issues are technological. EV battery chemistry continues to improve, and the price per cell is still dropping exponentially. It took thousands upon thousands of small, incremental improvements to bring the price from $1000/kWh a decade ago to <$200 today, and soon <$100.

The 2010 LEAF was only suitable for diehards with <100 mi range and odd looks. It sold in reasonable numbers but you will never convince the majority of the public to drive one, and in some ways had the negative effect of convincing people that all EVs must be crummy weirdmobiles.

It took years to overcome that attitude, and it wasn’t by TV shows explaining how econoboxes were actually pretty cool after all and in any case they’ll help save the planet. The attitude changed when tech improvements allowed a fast, cool-looking car with enough range to be practical.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people get so used to tech improving continuously, that they start to think it’s some kind of automatic process that just happens. Sometimes I even see this within the tech industry, where a given person might feel bad that their entire contribution was to make some process 0.5% more efficient. Of course it’s not remotely automatic, and it’s the combined small contributions from millions of tech workers that allow this improvement. Sometimes the improvements are more dramatic but even the small ones are necessary, and in some cases more likely to be the origin of dramatic final effects.

79

You are never going to get there with a Tesla, with even with a $35k car (their ‘cheap’ car), it’s still seen as a car for the rich. Not to mention Elon Musk embarrassing himself daily in 2020. And let’s not mention the CyberTruck.

Leaf actually brought EVs to a lot of people especially after the low price due to tax credits. And that’s, once again, the key. You need to create policies that make them desirable and waiting until you can sell an EV for $20k without tax credits doesn’t seem like it’s going to come anytime soon. Tax credits of EVs and increased gas/carbon taxes will make that a reality - but it’s going to take political capital and people who can exercise that capital. And marketing.

I’m also not sure if you noticed but the 2010 Nissan Leaf fits right into the hot hatch trend in cars. Honda Fits sell insanely well, and Leafs look better than those (though the Mazda 3 hatch and VW Golfs look better than the Leaf).

80

Of course, different people have different priorities. Most educational fields have at least some social value. In theory, academia values and fosters knowledge in general.

Naturally, education is also a business. This means that government, industry, politicians and many stakeholders have strong and different opinions on the best things to teach. Many students themselves want education that favours practical skills and makes them competitive for lucrative jobs. This provides an element of supply and demand and most schools are strongly aware of this.

Post pandemic, no one would be surprised if Silicon Valley took a larger role in providing alternatives to a college education. There are many ways of showing sufficient competence. The university model is good at inproving general skills in reading, comprehension, language skills and research. Some skills can be learned online.

Where you stand tends to depend on where you sit. Academics will tend to see value in their area of expertise. STEM is hard enough that not everyone can learn all the skills, or wants to put in that degree of time or effort. Many would be content to let markets set priorities. There is something to be said for being passionate about whatever you study. I took a practical route and felt I could pick up competence in interesting but arguably less relevant studies on my own time.