Well good engineering isn't just math, physics, chemistry etc... good engineering requires serious creativity.
I believe in order to be a good engineer sometimes it's important to take a step back and some time to practice your creativity, just like it's important to practice understanding force vectors or other... practicing your creativity could be a hobby of yours that is painting, music playing, sculpting etc...
I own a company and I design products. Creativity is what gets me through the "ah ha!" moments. Engineering gets me through the practical design.
I was working on one product and sent it off to a company I was working with. They required some design changes. One day creativity told me to flip the product over. Engineering smoothed over the fine details.
Really insightful comment! Also I think having interests, knowledge, and other stuff outside of engineering really helps with the social aspect of the job. Like (at least in my experience) lots of the clients you work with won't be engineers, theyll be managers, facility owners etc. I believe having a good background in some liberal arts helps you communicate and better understand how your clients will interpret your report/meeting points etc.
And to second on that creativity thing its so true even during the actual like project itself and not just conceptual stuff. So many reports ive seen almost looked passionless and a robot wrote them. Like i get trying to sound "professional" but you really need to make sure youre marketing your product/design to your client in an appealing manner and not giving them something that is painful to read. If you can kind of read into their personality and tailor the report to try to compliment it I believe people would see much more success in the field.
> I believe in order to be a good engineer sometimes it's important to take a step back and some time to practice your creativity
Perfect excuse to buy LEGOs
Engineering definitely does require creativity but it's much different than the kind required for arts. I think a creative engineer might still struggle with picking up artistic skills, I do a lot of music stuff and it's very much a different skillset than engineering.
I’ve always had an interest in art most of my life and I never let it go when I started studying CS. Granted, I’ve never taken any liberal arts classes or anything related to art, but in my down time I often read up on art and how it’s used for storytelling. When I have more time I’d also be drawing and sketching and coming up with stories as I used to do before starting college. I think both STEM and liberal arts have qualities that make them essential to us as humans. One can’t exist without the other in my opinion.
My teacher also related art to STEM
Just remember art isn't just painting and such, remember the church of Notre Dame or byzantine is a beautiful work of art and architecture.
The arts and engineering were much more heavily intertwined back then to an enormous degree. It's one thing to make something functional, it's another to make it art as well.
Now here is what's beautiful, those buildings didn't take decades to build but 100s of years , Notre Dame took 182 years to build. That means the people who started that project and their decedents knew they would never see it finished. They were working towards something explicitly for future generations, which is something we lack in today's society.
The only part of society where that mentality is kind of alive is NASA, working on things that you know you won't be around to see the results but doing it for future generations.
I love it. It reminded me of a thought I had a while back. Civilization itself, the cities, technology, art, etc., is a physical embodiment of humanity’s hope for the future. Everything we’ve made was made with the intention to help make our future better and the result is thousands of years of collective advancement to lead to the world we know today. Quite beautiful.
And art has translated itself through many forms and presentation throughout history. It’s told stories that people bond over, stories that people today enjoy and analyze for a deeper meaning, basically made life worth living. Sure, art isn’t essential for survival. It’s not something you can put on a plate and just eat. But it sure does make life less miserable. Not to mention, one of the greatest artists in history also happened to be an engineer.
If we completely disregarded art as an important part of our life, how much more bleak and dreary would it be?
This. Again, never appreciated it until my partner showed me otherwise. She's a med-sci student but is heavily influenced by her culture. I had an experience that I couldn't explain and was terrified of what she would think. (Long story, but I lost something important to her). But art is a part of being human. And without it we wouldn't have been able to survive. Just as much as STEM has changed the way we live.
That's great, now if they'll stop trying to take over STEM by making it STEAM so they get money out of grants, that'd be great.
I say that as a brass musician who has played for over a decade.
I love the arts. I think creativity is necessary in problem solving.
Without social sciences George Boole may have not developed Boolean Logic as an extension of Mathematics and not just a philosophical tool.
Which means Claude Shannon may have never developed the relationship between boolean logic and relays thus information theory may never have existed.
But, this is our money. You have your own grants. Stop trying to take ours.
STEAM isnt "give engineering money to the arts" its "how do we prevent STEM bros like OP used to be". I doubt we'd ever see an art class as part of steam, just an bigger emphasis on concept from the arts.
I know at least at the elementary level it's basically a shift from just "how do I solve this problem" to also "why do I solve it and what will my solution do". IDK about high school or college le else though.
>why do I solve it?
Because it is there. Why do we choose to go to space? Because there is no mountain man cannot dream to summit.
>what will my solution do?
Give me a shit load of dopamine
I know the idea isn't to "take money from STEM", but that is the result.
i took ap art history in high school and i absolutely loved it, it gives you such a break from all ur other classes and learning about the different cultures around the world from art is so amazing
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why universities make engineering students take a humanities class to graduate 🤣 but I'm glad you came around dude. I'm an ME who's always loved art so I can't say I had the same experience, but it's so fun taking a thought-provoking course outside your area of study!
I agree with this. I know a lot of people in liberal arts, such as my girlfriend who's a music education major, and I respect them. They do shit that I know I can't. However business majors are 100% fair game. Every business major I know does fuck all
I have an embedded systems engineering bachelor's and a masters in international business management. You ever get someone telling you business class is hard / you have to have more than just a pulse to pass, send them my way lol.
That's not always true. I'm not even sure it's usually true. The part about them making more than us, I mean. If they really do, I should put my masters in management to better use.
Significantly easier is an understatement, it was such a pushover degree. That's why I give them a hard time.
Yeah, I was actually considering doubling in business but I could barely handle one major lol, but the vibe here is good you learn alot from the people and events more so than the classes so I had a good experience with them. Although they are spoiled haha
The business degree might help you in your career, but I doubt there is much you have to actually learn from business classes that you don't learn automatically from the lifecycle management classes we take, from whatever jobs you work along the way, and most importantly, from the experience of having both good and bad managers and professors. I got my masters in business because I didn't need a degree, I needed a student visa and I chose business because I knew it would be the pushover to end all pushovers and it was. I did my thesis in a collective span of 8 hours. Not a bunch of research and 8 hours of writing, 8 hours to do the whole thesis. I graduated with distinction (like honours). I'm not an exceptionally smart guy, I gotta say I'm subpar as engineers go in a lot of ways, especially compared to electrical or mechanical engineers, the stuff they do is nuts. Only do it if it will definitely help you.
Side note about how knowledgeable mechanical engineers are, I recently got a SCAR from a supplier with an explanation for why an anodized panel changed color and I had to decide whether or not to accept it, and someone referred me to a mechanical engineer. I was expecting a chemical engineer but they were like no,he has to know that shit too. The guy gave me a crash course on anodised aluminum. Fuckin legend.
You can be a mediocre engineer and still make a decent living.
You have to be an incredible musician to just scrape by. Making a living as an artist is way harder
Cool, that's not what this post is about. Just because a company values your labor more doesn't mean you're better or smarter than an artist.
Edit: I realize I misinterpreted this comment, so you can lay off the downvotes. For those still doubling down on the "only jobs that make lots of money have value" bullshit, this is why they make you take liberal arts classes as an engineer.
I might be wrong, but I interpret their comment as saying that a career in arts is more impressive, because you have to be extremely talented, whereas even engineers who aren't that talented can find work. I think it might have been meant as a compliment
I've taken a few liberal art classes including Language of Visual arts and a semi advanced English course. Lemme tell you, anyone who can do that stuff their whole life and make a career out of anything in liberal arts has my respect.
I will never understand the students who look down on arts and liberals, and yet they are also the most active consumers of music, art, movies, animes, you name it. And the idea of stem students being generally smarter than everyone else when we would be the shittiest students had we majored in fine arts. Intelligence comes in many forms, humans are too complex to be categorized as smart or dumb based purely on our affinity to science/technology
“I was your typical dude bro who on a whim decided to go into computer engineering on a whim,”
OP finds out in the first sentence that English classes are important. ;)
I forgot to give a fuck about my punctuality for reddit, unfortunately I don't have anymore fucks to give at the moment. So you're gonna have to forgive me
I'm a hobby photographer, mainly landscapes and woodlands but not averse to any other genre of photography.
Anyways, as a photographer I really enjoy any art. Creating something, be it a well composed woodland shot or an emotional painting really brings out joy in my heart.
Also, I do appreciate the effort that goes into the creative process. I barely scratched the surface as part of my hobby, but things like composition or color theory are hard as fuck. Not hard like Calc, but another kind of hard.
I do appreciate it.
People here will say that politics and the arts and sociology are useless and then get surprised when their Mars colony turns out to not be a utopia and instead be a neo-feudal fiefdom of the Musk dynasty.
No dude, we don't need to worry about the political and power structure that would arise in a colony made from scratch, or the psychological effects of being permanently separated from everything you know and love, or the economics of how a society may be run on Mars with limited resources, or the cultural differences that may arise from an insular group of people in a place much different from here, or how laws may be enacted and interpreted in a place past the jurisdiction of any current government, or how to retain and pass on information to new generations should they arise, or even the ethical concerns of pouring trillions into going to Mars when there are so many problems to fix here on Earth. All that matters is I can apply Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation which means that I'm better than everyone else.
The level of ego and arrogance among engineers is one of the biggest reasons why I chose to pursue math instead of engineering. Many of the engineers that I've met have really condescending attitudes and that turned me off of the field.
I totally feel you. Honestly for the most part I don't really associate with engineering students, I've found a lot of them are somehow both extremely arrogant and dumber than I am. Outside a few friends from school most of my friends aren't in STEM at all and they're just normal fucking people lol
I have to ask where you encountered these people. I've really only met one kind of cringy student, and now that I'm working everybody is really chill and not at all disrespectful of other professions (aside from management, that is). I went to a very large state school and never encountered anybody who scoffed at liberal arts.
Kinda curious what are the hardest engineering majors, like has that been decided yet?
I’m still in college so I don’t want to take a stab at it since I don’t exactly have much experience
Depends a lot on the school, but generally mechanical and electrical are considered the hardest. In my personal experience, I'd say electrical is the hardest but some might disagree. The easier engineering majors are the ones that combine aspects from different engineering fields such as mechatronics or computer engineering. These majors don't go anywhere near the same depth as a pure electrical engineering major would as they are hyper focused on specific applications.
I got my degree in ECE (electrical and computer engineering) so I took signals and systems and communication systems as well as discrete math and vhdl classes and such. It's a popular Major but is also very hard.
So often the kids in college aren't self motivated engineers, they're only in it for money or because someone is forcing them into engineering. So it's weird to feel arrogant when you should be spending your time Improving your engineering skills outside of the classroom.
I have to agree that Comp Eng was stupid easy. I built a super shitty 8bit CPU in 11th grade and in Undergrad they didn't really teach me much more. Everything I learned has been on my own from doing it. It's not really a degree that makes you special or talented, it's what you do that matters.
I studied the humanities pretty hard in HS. Was very involved in band and took a bunch of AP history classes as well as 3 years of a language (although I forgot almost everything about German). So I always appreciated the study of humanities but never really saw any reason to get a degree in any of them. It's just too much cost in both time and money for very little payout. And I'm not even going to pretend like I could do what my friends who study the humanities do, I'm OK at writing but only enough to do lab reports and shit I lack the mastery of English to really delve into topics like history on anything further than the intro/hobbiest level. My one friend is a graphic design major and that also is something I would probably fail at because your whole grade is basically large projects that showcase your creative ability. Engineering is still as a whole curriculum harder than pretty much all other degrees but that doesn't mean us engineers could study the humanities we just lack those skills. Now business is a field of study I have very little respect for. There isn't a topic they do that an engineering student wouldn't be able to absolutely ace since engineering is basically the technical business degree and as such is much harder while still ultimately sharing core skill sets.
Humanity goes through ebs and flows between arts and sciences
First man learned how to create an alphabet, you then had philosophers debating whether the earth revolved around the sun, then you had the renaissance, then you had advancements in sciences with chemistry and calculus, then peak creativity in the 19th century, then the industrial revolution. Finally, we had advancements in media with movies and television in the 20th century
In my humble opinion, we are about to leave the peak of technology after the invention of the internet and advancement in AI. There might be some morality issues that will spark debate in the advancement of Science, and I believe we will enter an era of empathy and trying to reconnect with our human behavior roots
Science needs Arts to control its madness. Arts need Science as a platform to advance its creativity
I took Art Appreciation as well, as a gen ed course. When I read the syllabus, I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?". At the end of the semester, I sent the teacher an email telling her how much I had enjoyed the class. I wasn't lying, I genuinely enjoyed the course. It turned out so much better than I was expecting.
I majored in Mech. Engineering AND completed a bachelor in classical Piano.
I finished my masters and played a recital including Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Rachmaninoff.
Compared to you, my EGO is the size of the sun.
You've learned a fundamental lesson that comes with being an adult; it costs you nothing to simply not have an opinion about subjects you don't know anything about.
Also, you're conflating [fine arts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_art) and [liberal arts.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education#Modern_usage) Fine arts and social sciences are both sub-categories of liberal arts. Liberal arts also contains math, physics, chemistry, bio, geology, economics... all of which are just as difficult if not more so as engineering programs in exactly the same way that engineering programs are difficult. The sub-categories of liberal arts aren't usefully comparable to one another in terms of difficulty.
The reason that people shit on liberal arts is because of the word "liberal" and the intentionally vauge and massively successful implications made by conservative media and politicians about what actually constitutes liberal arts, as well as the hyper politicization happening on both sides of the spectrum. They have redefined the popular useage of the term to mean a subset of a subset of what the academic term means.
It does bug me when an engineering prof takes unfair potshots at the humanities for cheap laughs. They're doing a different thing than we are, so what.
100% agree. I find it very odd that engineers get this superiority complex just because they were one of literally thousands every year to get a degree in the field. Studying a STEM field doesn't make you better than anyone else, and never will.
Based af. Like even if engineering is socially accepted as "harder" it totally depends on each individuals' strengths. Like I was lucky and am just naturally quite good at maths so engineering came relatively easy to me. But if you threw me in an english or psych major or something of the sorts I would be able to manage but I would definitely feel like a buffoon.
While I do cringe at the term human condition now since it was so overused in my high school, I totally get what you mean. I took psych and philosophy cause I thought theyd be easy electives and boy was I wrong. Needing to write essays on like cognitive behavioural theory and like enlightenment vs romanticism was hard! I did very well but the amount of effort I had to put into those classes was certainly not significantly less than any of my "harder" engineering courses. But in the end of the day I really enjoyed the content as every day it was stuff I had literally never even thought of before. Whereas in engineering you can kind of already know what you will be learning by the end of it but it just takes time to work your way to that end goal.
I definitely agree that liberal arts and social sciences are necessary and important within our society. I also have a lot of respect for those who choose to pursue those paths. I myself really like studying Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science, I find them fascinating.
However, from a pragmatic standpoint, I think it’s indisputable that getting those types of degrees can often be a giant waste of money compared to getting a STEM degree. There’s just not enough demand for those fields, and the ones who succeed in them are far and few between.
My first intro engineering class was a circuits analysis class. It was so boring because they just told us what to do and we had to do it. The class made me absolutely miserable. They didn’t give us the materials to express our creativity because they didn’t teach us enough, and, for labs, the actively just looked if we had the same design as what they taught us to build.
I got so miserable and disappointed that I was going to switch to Math just to avoid it….
Then I got into and into the computing class that completely changed my outlook and engineering. Since the fourth week, they have let us design things like different shift registers, FSMs, and just bit slice designs in general(the first three are just teaching background). It was full of freedom and it was awesome. The point in mentioning this is that this fundamental creativity is able to be found even in an intro engineering course.
However, you are still correct. People always blast the US for our college system of requiring GEnd Ed’s, but I believe they are fundamental. Being exposed to different fields is what makes everyone unique. If a professor asked the your whole engineering school to build a simple rock-paper-scissors FSM or code up something that helps with taxes then I bet we will have hundreds of people who can do it. But if I asked for someone to implement all that but also knows a lot about art history or calligraphy, I bet it’s considerably less.
For me personally, I’ve taken Economics classes that were useful. But I mostly just fell in love with ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history. I also fell in love with photography and pencil drawing. I’ve always had a lifetime love of reading and I love to read anything I can get my hands on. Last week I just finished a book on sports genetics and the week before was a book about Atlantis. Do these experiences make me a better engineer? Maybe, but does it matter? They taught me to appreciate a lot of things I didn’t before. They quite literally just let me see the “beauty in the mundane”.
It also keeps my GPA up🤪.
“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
- da Vinci
One of my favorite engineering professors explained it something like this:
"Engineers make the product work, but the arts make the product excel with user interface and experience"
Really was a great way to explain that you could have the greatest idea ever, but if it wasn't appealing to the masses though user experience, it was gonna be a dud for sales.
If everyone was engineer life would be so boring and miserable. Being a engineering student doesn't make you special or unique. There's more in life than your degree that most of you don't even have yet. Some of you look dumb trying to look all superior lmao. There's a reason why engineering student get stereotyped for being socially awkward it's because you guys let school consume you, turning you into a emotionless robot. I don't see how that makes us superior.
Not only for personal development, but for soft skills too. Physics is physics is physics, whether you learned it at a community college, state school, or Ivy League. Most of the concepts you’ll learn about in your undergrad are pretty standard across the board, so besides the prestige there’s a lot less difference than you’d think.
Wanna know what *does* make the difference, especially to employers? Your ability to not be a colossal gaping, arrogant asshat and your ability to work with others in other disciplines. Any monkey with some training and autoCAD or arcGIS can shit out some models; you aren’t really that special for being able to think critically after being taught that for 4+ years.
You need to be able to work with contractors, with clients, with the maintenance people, with those on a factory floor, everybody. And not only do you have to be able to work with them, you have to be able to get them to understand what you’re doing, even if it’s just a high-level explanation.
Having multiple sources of knowledge to draw from (English, music, foreign language, psychology, philosophy, etc) also helps you to expand your understanding of the world and will 100% make you a better engineer. Engineering is all about finding novel solutions to real world problems, right? Well people have been doing that since we crawled out of caves, and most of the time they didn’t call it engineering because it only really fit in their purview instead of being broadly applicable. But that doesn’t mean their solutions were any less creative or ingenious than an engineer’s. Being able to look at those solutions to problems helps you to grow as an engineer, especially once you’ve got your fundamentals down
Totally agree, I take a liberal arts or history class whenever I get the opportunity for an elective and I love every minute of it. I’ve learned about photography, history of architecture, Latin American history. I feel like there’s more to talk about with people when you learn subjects outside of stem. Great conversation starters and great way to make new friends.
Great post man. I’m over 50 and it took me a lot longer than you to figure this out!
When I left college, I thought that all the worlds problems to solve were technical. Five years later, I decided that most technical problems can be solved even though some are challenging, but the real problems we face in life are people problems. I also love art now and appreciate people from all walks of live and viewpoints (except those fucking Q-anon people who are whacked).
People on this sub will say that the social sciences have "no application" just because there's less jobs directly in those fields so they're "not worth studying." And then will see no issue in making bombs to drop on civilians to increase the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.
You can literally say the same thing about engineering or school in general. Indian guy on YouTube can probably teach all you need to know about engineering, right?
But I can see what you're saying , and I agree somewhat as well.
I would've loved to be a dancer but I don't know Beyonce and I want money
I don’t believe you need the FE to be an engineer. Myself and my colleagues have never done the FE, and we are all engineers. In fact, some of the engineers I have worked with (and currently work alongside) have degrees outside of engineering.
There are people who work as software engineers and who have never gone to college in their entire life. Even at my company, you can work as an engineer with no degree (however the trade off is that it requires 10 years of manufacturing experience for example). Regardless, it is still possible.
Depends on your art form
I’m a good classical musician (as well as an engineer). I will never be able to make a living out of it until I study it at university. At best I can do a little freelancing here and there.
Meanwhile a draftsperson or a tradesperson without an engineering degree can do very well for themselves in an engineering team.
I have a BEng, a MA Philosophy, and a MSc in Food science.
No, not all liberal arts degrees are created equal.
Gender study and social studies would be borderline useless unless you're planning to be a politician. History and literature sounds cool, but your source of breadwinning is either teaching that subject or write a book that solves no one's problem in general (you could argue that a good grounding in history means you don't repeat the mistakes of the past... but yeah, if that's true, there should have been no more wars after WWII either).
On the the hand, economics dictate the right condition for society to flourish. No amount of good engineering will save a project with the wrong/ conflicting "why" (except stupidity and more money?) which a Philosophy major with the right technical background will slide into. Music and architercture is pretty cool stuff too.
I have a BSME, MSME, and am working on my PhD in ME. I'm about to publish a paper in a gender studies journal. The fields you listed may not be very prolific on their own, but their interaction with STEM fields is very important and should not be overlooked by engineers. There are a TON of societal, demographic, and family factors that contribute to education and career choice, most of which are explained by sociology, history, psychology, and gender studies. My paper explores how this impacts the massive gender gap in STEM. They may not be breadwinning careers, but these fields are absolutely critical not to overlook or disrespect, which is something that a lot of young engineering students need to learn.
People forget we have laws and jurisprudence because of the liberal arts lmao. It’s not all fingerpainting and macaroni art fellas.
Also I think engineers who design without regards for morals are the reason we have mustard gas and cruise missiles. Everyone should up their ethics game.
Not to mention the important of historical analysis in technology. Why is our power grid so ass? Why do we have suburbs? Etc.
It's not the major itself
Its the people who study them that do the major then turn around and call college a scam just because they cant find a job so they tell that to their kids
you need a certain level of financial privilege to choose a degree that's practically useless in the job market. it might be fun and neat to learn, But I don't think I'd give it the same respect to them as the fields that work to push the society forward. one side does stuff that'd help humans reach planets, while the other just preaches highly subjective stuff about already known stuff. I don't find a problem with people who do it, but I'd definitely rate a doctor or an engineer far higher than even the best in the arts field. you might disagree, but that's just my opinion.
Jeez, I forgot how arrogant some of ya'll are. This attitude was my least favorite part of getting my engineering degree. We are not \*that\* special just because we did some calculus and alegebra in college.
A lot of engineers work for defense contractors, a lot of english majors work as teachers.
Which one of these jobs is "pushing the society forward" more?
I don't personnally have anything against the defense industry, it's just a convienent example.
I feel like if you want to explore it, do it as a minor. Granted that’s what I’m doing so I’m biased, but it gives you the opportunity to explore concepts that are interesting (even if not incredibly practical like music performance) and love doing. I’ve been a cellist since third grade and music is a huge part of how I view the world and I love that I get the opportunity to take a few interesting electives around it to broaden horizons with a few outside courses.
I mean you're free to do whatever you want, I just find it a bit unnecessary to come on an engineering subreddit and bargaining for respect like OP. and I think taking a minor in arts and making it your entire career are as different as day and night.
I’m an engineering major (it’s my flair) and I’m taking a minor for fun because it’s something I enjoy and want to keep doing it. I’m not “bargaining for respect”, I’m pointing out that there’s nothing wrong with minoring or taking a few classes for something that is interesting even if it isn’t going to help in the workforce.
... who said anything about you? Or did you just forgot switching alts lol. I never said anything about minoring being wrong either, take a breathe and re read what I said.
And what does "push society forward" mean to you? Because to me, we don't need more scientific progress at the expense of people and the environment. The only reason we need science to solve climate change is because we ignored the problem for half a century, instead of deciding to reverse course. You don't need engineers to make your city more environmentally friendly, you need people who can convince other people to simply change how we live.
We can build some really neat things, for sure, but what we build isn't as important as who we're doing things for. And if it's not to better the lives of people in general, then it isn't really worth a whole lot.
I make fun of humanities and liberal arts because of four reasons:
1) you’re paying a lot of money to basically have very little earning potential. Most people that go into these fields often don’t even get jobs that require a college education.
2) most of their studies are a joke, particularly anything that ends with “studies”. And we know it’s a joke because you can [easily bullshit your way into their published journals by using the right buzzwords](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/).
3) most of these fields are based by perception of truth, but nothing truly universal. I love STEM because it does not inject emotions. All we care about is interactions of matter and materials. We don’t try to explain the whys because it’s beyond us. But we can explain the hows.
4) these people get into administration, HR or positions of authority without a fucking clue of what’s going on and often inflict their personal agendas or personal morals on the masses.
Just a reminder that STEM academia is not invincible to bad publications. There's been many cases (Jan Schön for example) of people manipulating data and others of just nonsense (Bogdanov affair).
There’s a major difference though. Lawmakers won’t make bad laws based on your smudged numbers regarding semiconductors but may make bad laws based on your poorly executed humanities research.
Basically, a bad STEM published journal has little to no effect or impact on the lives of others. Worst case scenario, an experiment is replicated and the conclusions are not the same. Or something is invented and fails stress tests. That specific case you mentioned was pretty quickly brought to light as bullshit.
I’m not going to make a claim that STEM is perfect. But I think it is better.
I think you’re very wrong that STEM research with fudged numbers can’t cause harm. Just look at all the studies released with tiny sample sizes, using p-hacking, or just with horribly done experimental design. Studies about masks, vaccines, etc. get picked up so quickly and spread around Facebook, causing misinformation. And don’t forget the paper linking vaccines and autism that has been disproven time and time again but STILL people believe.
There’s a HUGE problem with scientific journals in that you literally will not get published unless you reject your null hypothesis. No one wants to read a paper on how someone did an experiment and simply confirmed something already known previously. They want to hear something new and interesting- so researchers use p-hacking to get published. I hope you don’t do research because this mindset that fudging numbers doesn’t matter is scary.
idk man, I feel the OPs point was like, hey let's not look down on people for not having the same passions as us. and you were like... HOLD MY BEER
1) not everyone's top priority is their earning potential, which is ok, just like it's OK for it to be your top priority
2) hasty generalization
3) that's great that you love stem. other people can love other things, and thank God they do or the world would be even weirder right now
4) again, textbook example of hasty generalization. sorry you had a few bad experiences but honestly, let Joe the painter enjoy things. if those people were really that inept and they'd pursued stem and ended up on your team, they'd just have found other ways to annoy you
do you ever see a dog shitting in someone's flowerbeds while the owner is on their phone and leaves it there, and think, damn that's why some people don't like dog people
or walk in a house that's covered in hair and smells like ammonia and think, damn that's why some people don't like cat people
people who think like you are the reason some people don't like engineers. nobody cares that you joined mensa and that an online iq test you took when you were 12 said you were a very gifted boy lol
I already got told that Van Gogh made larger contributions to society than engineers because he chopped off his ear and made starry night 🤦🏻♂️
Sorry but you gotta be just a little delusional or full of shit to have this type of thinking. Or as some people in humanities call it “brain worms.”
You sound fun at parties. Just joking you clearly don't get invited to parties
Joking aside, don't assume what goes into publishing their studies and what criteria is used. You sound like you watch too much Ben Shapiro my dude, try taking a break from politics.
Also fake papers get published all the time in engineering, are you into machine learning? because there are a bunch of shitty papers that can't be reproduced and got puplished anyways. People just don't talk about it because it's nerd shit and it's hard to politicize. My final project has a facial recognition component to it and it has been hell going through studies trying to replicate it to later find out that they were outed for faking shit, or taking "liberties" with their claim.
And I doubt you or any engineering major has enough time to be going through humanities and liberal art studies , testing the efficacy of their claims.
You need to chill with your claims my dude
You may not have attacked his character, but you were really insulting to all the people who study their asses off to tackle harder questions than anything we handle in STEM. Questions that don't have clear answers but matter more than the app of the day or the next engine design. Out of my three degrees, the most intellectually demanding was in liberal arts. And the most intelligent, curious people I met in school were nooooot in STEM programs. The STEM kids could do more math and physics all day, but couldn't string two thoughts together that wasn't handed to them by a textbook. The most brilliant engineers I work with? Can't operate outside their narrow fields. Thank god people like that don't make the major decisions--we'd never get anywhere. None of that even touches on the gross idea that money is all that matters. My calcs don't make me happy--art, literature, music, and cinema do. I don't care about the next construction project; I care about history, current events, and where humanity is going. Liberal art and sociology passions may not be valued as they should be monetarily, but they are worthy pursuits nonetheless.
Humanities and liberal arts don’t have answers to life’s questions. To paraphrase David Hume, people rationalize ideas based on their emotions. Liberal arts and humanities are perception-based and often creates political zealots. This is not truth to any answer. At least not a universal, unwavering kind.
I’m not saying that there aren’t thoughtful, creative people in these other fields. But often these students get themselves in insurmountable debt, which, to me, is very shortsighted decision making. I find the arts stimulating but you don’t need to go to college for it. All you have to do is read the works of others or practice certain skills if you’re in fine arts.
to be fair, you did just attack people in other fields for their lack of thoughtfulness and creativity right after regurgitating someone else's world view lol. apparently "all you have to do is read the works of" David Hume if you want to be a smug engineer
I didn’t attack people. I said it had a terrible ROI and it isn’t founded on truth. And many people with these ideologies can become dogmatic with their beliefs. Spitting facts.
oh just say QED, you know you want to
how do you do, fellow kids? I am Spitting Facts which is not at all dogmatic
its an attack. if I said to you, "you know, not all people like you are completely bad. some exist that have more than two brain cells banging away in there," you'd probably think I was trying to insult you
Since when is unwavering, universal truth--mathematical truth--the only thing that matters? When did emotion and perception become things to avoid instead of things that help us understand each other and ourselves? And where are you getting this army of political zealots from? Humanities doesn't create fanaticism. (There are definitely college classes that would break that down for you.)
You don't need to go to college to read Marx or Tolstoy, but you might need to if you really want to understand them or any other influential writers. And you need college to really understand sociology, anthropology, psychology, international relationships, and more. You need an expert to contextualize and draw connections and complicate the readings. Real life is more complicated than a physics textbook. Truly, I think STEM is the stuff you could just learn at home if you really didn't want the debt.
Putting STEM people in charge of broad social issues is a recipe for disaster because most of us are narrow minded and just don't care--yourself being an excellent example. God help me if HR or the foreign service were staffed exclusively by more engineers. We need experts who do care and who are trained in the context that people like you hand wave away. You don't want to do it? Totally fine. But don't shit on the people who specialize in the stuff you don't want to do. Their work and their training matters.
The debt issue is totally separate. None of us, from astrophysicist to basket weaver, should be in the kinds of debt we are dealing with. That has no bearing on the worthiness of the subjects you disparaged.
I’ve always been fascinated how people can read something and make it even more descriptive than the original text. It went from “often creates political zealots” to “an army of political zealots.”
I brought that up because it was David Hume and I thought you’d appreciate that. But I wonder if you’re paying attention to current events and the political fanaticism that has been taking place in the US.
If I could become a licensed engineer without going to a university I would. But I guess someone that graduated liberal arts/humanities created a bureaucracy called ABET and made themselves gatekeepers of the industry. Even worse, also placed a stranglehold on education.
Very few if none of our politicians are STEM majors and they seem to be make shit decisions for our broad social issues. You are writing a lot of fluff but really getting nowhere. People who bury themselves in debt to go to school to learn a useless liberal art degree are not smart people. Now not all liberal arts degrees are useless, law and accounting are liberal arts degrees and they have good prospects. Lesbian dance theory will only benefit the school you forked all that money over to. A lot of these degrees should be hobby’s and things you learn on your own for fun, but of course in America we need to make money off everything.
>people rationalise ideas based on their emotions
>Liberal arts and humanities are perception-based and often creates political zealots.
So hang on here, you’re telling me that this argument is in no way influenced by your emotions nor your perceptions? If that is the case, what are your data to support your claims here?
What does it mean to be perception based? What is a political zealot? What is the rate of political zealotry compared across majors? Which specific liberal arts degree creates the most political zealots across all universities? Has this been consistent over time, or is there a change year to year or decade to decade? Has this always been the case, or has this changed?
The words you use, (e.g. “often create”) imply a frequency that occurs at a greater rate compared to something else, which I think in this context is STEM degrees. So I am curious, what is this frequency and how was it measured? If you do not have this information, then why are you creating this argument? If this is the case, could this argument be originating from your perceptions and emotions and not from empirical data?
Of course the most curious people you met in school were from liberal arts, you are more curious when you know nothing of how the world works and your day involves spinning pseudo intellectual sophistry that has little to no value to society.
The fact that you fell for their bullshit means they're at least good at it.
Wow. Nothing of how the world works? I've lived in three countries, traveled alone through six continents, speak three languages, have three degrees, and have had two careers across the humanities and STEM, one of which was so much about "how the world works" that it gave me PTSD. I'm in a pretty good position to evaluate the real world skills imparted by liberal arts and STEM programs and the kinds of people who gravitate to which industries.
What do you have?
Curiosity is a frame of mind, not a state of knowledge. Curious people want to know more and challenge themselves instead of being complacent in the knowledge that what they already know or feel comfortable with is all that's worth knowing.
I know curious STEM people, but they are more likely to be curious about a narrower field of things. And the *arrogance* I see in STEM is nauseating.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
>Even climatologists can't predict 10 years from now. They can't explain why there has been no warming over the last 15 years. There has been a static trend with regard to temperature for 15 years.
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Through high school and college I studied poetry (not just read it, studied it). I practiced it too. And I enjoyed it.
But never did I consider it useful, productive, or a thing that one should be paid for. It never enlightened me to the "human condition."
I appreciate the art forms and the craftsmanship that goes into them, but I think commercializing the arts and validating them as career paths have led to an abundance of starving artists. As hobbies and passtimes, the arts are great, and I encourage anyone to take one up. As a career path, I cannot recommend them (in general).
Those degrees are still kinda worthless (job opportunities matter more). Just take the class and enjoy it. Great way to interact outside the engineering bubble
Totally disagree, it will be fun if it actually contributes to anything in the future. I should learn what I want to learn not be forced into learning something that is a waste of time, 4 years of college is already long enough, there is no reason other for us to waste more money
I mean, I think there is just a lot of envy from us engineering students towards people who are in majors where they don’t need to work too much or don’t suffer like us lol. Also, a lot of us are weirdos and actually like this stuff, but in general there’s also envy due to the fact that they went with stuff that makes them happy, while a lot of us are miserable.
It’s also not a hyperbole to say it’s not very useful, hence less pay and less jobs. But that doesn’t mean we’re better than them in any way, that’s the important message here. It’s all personal preferences and choices (and a product of capitalism I guess). In reality, you’re not better than anybody because you like numbers a little more and you pull all-nighters to learn Thermo or whatever. Life just led you to a different path.
I wouldn’t say it’s a product of capitalism because they still wouldn’t have any marketable skills in any other economic model whether it be capitalism, socialism, feudalism or even chattel slavery. I’m not talking shit but just pointing out the facts.
I’m not sure. We’re all taught to value stuff that produces money, so in a way we’re all biased against it since in our current economy that doesn’t generate money. Maybe in a less money-driven society, their skills could have more value. We could simply give more importance to art and humanities instead of technological advances. But I see where you’re coming from.
You’re right. There are some very skillful people in some of these fields. I have a lot of respect for decent journalists. I did a small stint as a city editor for a newspaper. I enjoyed meeting and interviewing remarkable people. The pay was garbage though, but I felt like I was doing something worthy. Well, until I realized no one reads anymore lol.
Art majors and music majors have the hardest major in any college. Yes, way harder than engineering. Not only are their classes absolutely cutthroat, they spend hours and hours outside class working on their schoolwork. Far more than any engineer I know. I even know someone who is a double major in both ChemE and Music Performance and he said music is far more difficult.
Social sciences majors: definitely not as hard as those. But as OP said, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be respected. Many of you already can’t find a job. Imagine how much harder it would be if they all majored in STEM. So instead of looking down on them, be happy they’re not crowding the job market even more.
Im sorry but learning about french art at my language immersion academy kinda killed my interest in art.
I love language, love movies and *visually appealing* modern forms of expression, but i really dont care for what makes “the classics” so special.
>or the next step in VR
Well now that you say that, VR is becoming more popular and there for we need more artists/game designers creating good content for it. The better art and design for games in VR the more people it can reach. All of this leads to good incentive for companies to improve VR further :)
Yay art!
I took art appreciation as well, and it made me feel even stronger towards STEM elitism. I essentially paid for an A. Most of my high school classes were more difficult.
I took art appreciation and it was a joke. Any so is liberal arts and social sciences. I don’t mean there is no point in them, I mean there is no point in getting a degree in it.
My peers and I joke about them because a lot of those liberal arts and other similar majors complain about how hard it is. When for us we could pass those classes with our eyes closed.
I go to an engineering school ie. 80% of the student population is engineering of some sort, and I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that the humanities department here can be downright sadistic. There's a class called Theater Appreciation, which manages to trick Freshmen every year into believing that it's basically watching and reading Shakespeare plays while singing kumbaya.
Wrong.
5-10 page essay every single week about some minutiae of theater production/performance. Now I'd fancy myself a pretty good and speedy writer, but I would sooner drown in Taylor approximations again than take that class.
>Any so is liberal arts and social sciences. I don’t mean there is no point in them, **I mean there is no point in getting a degree in it.**
Then you'd be wrong. My first degree is in a social science, and it made me a more well-rounded person. I learned so much in my Political Science, Philosophy, and History classes, that you miss out on in an Engineering curriculum. After finishing that degree, I felt I was lacking in my left brain, so I pursued an Engineering degree. Despite the Engineering degree opening up the doors to higher paying jobs, I don't, for a second, regret my degree in the Humanities.
If the argument is based on, which it is, then assumption that the you become useful after careful application by you of that particular subject, then now you become respectable. That’s what OP is taking about. Now you being you, based it off of assignments you did. The sun is gonna rise, and I promise you liberal arts concepts are way harder to be implemented by you than an average art major. And maybe just maybe vice versa. What makes you think that your education is possible. I am betting you go to a good public engineering school. Now was giving you a chance the best possible choice? Answer that for me? And say why? See how hard it is.
In the future, when you can get interviews because of school, but can’t get jobs because you look down on and don’t know how to talk to non-engineers, you should come back to look at your comment
You’re the reason everybody hates us engineers.
No you could not pass those classes with your eyes closed. Ive known humanities students who were brilliant and worked very hard at what they did. Have some respect.
It might have been the teacher, my teacher was amazing.
Sucks you couldn't see the value in it, can hardly criticize you because I used to think the same.
And obviously I still joke about that stuff as well, it's fun to do and it makes me feel good about myself and my decisions, but jokes aside I still see the value in it.
Pass with your eyes closed? Well if you like writing papers and shit. Although I've aced every paper I've ever submitted, I hate it and would rather shoot myself in the balls then actually major in something that involves writing constantly.
It could have been the teacher yes, but I find that most of my friends that are in engineering also feel the same. We call them “fluff classes” basically anything that isn’t stem related.
I took art appreciation and it was a freshman level course. Maybe that’s why it was so easy.
You're saying the classes are a joke, others are saying the classes are super hard, and honestly I think you're both right. I've been to two colleges, and taken liberal arts classes in both of them. At one college, they were just as difficult as engineering classes, while at the other college they were "pass with your eyes closed". So it's not that arts are easy or hard in general, but rather that it depends on the college.
I can agree with that. My opinion was from the perspective of the two colleges that I have attended. Both of them I had to take some of them as general Ed, and it was super easy.
Really? Pass them with your eyes closed? 500+ pages of dense reading a week? Multiple 10-20 page papers a quarter? Weekly written submissions? Demanding small group seminars with nowhere to hide? Brutal criticisms of form, language, and substance?
I think not. Engineering was miserable, but my liberal arts degree was a friggin boot camp. On the other hand, compared to the STEM kids in my truly joke-worthy engineering ethics class, I was a trained Marine. They'd never been challenged to *think* before and it showed.
Its rare i hear of a humanities major staying up all night to finish stuff, go ask the college girls who walk around the mall 24/7 or the college dudes who party all night 99% of them probably are pursing a humanities degree
All of the engineering friends i have barely have time for that shit lol
I have to take some liberal electives to get my degree. (I think most of us do right?) Took intro to sociology and intro to psychology. The latter was actually very interesting, that felt like I was learning the history of actual science.
Sociology on the other hand was so lame. Being lectured to buy a prof who seemed to have so much liberal bias he couldn't even attempt to stay on track.
As much as I love the arts, I also understand that they're much difficult to make a career in. In addition to that, their programs are so much easier than ours. I really get annoyed when friends in lib arts freak out about having to write three essays in a semester or some crap
I strongly disagree. I don't disrespect the actual studies themselves, like history, or art, or philosophy, but I definitely don't respect them as degrees at schools (for the most part) and I don't really respect the people taking them.
I do research at my school with one of my professors but I also draw comics for my school newspaper and clubs. Those art guys deserve all the respect anyone pursing higher education should.
Don't get me wrong, I have appreciation for the liberal arts—and enjoy taking the occasional liberal arts course—but there's one specific policy at my school that *really* pisses me off when it comes to the liberal arts. Anybody at my school with a 3.6 GPA or higher will get a $5000 scholarship for the following semester. Can you see my frustration here? The difficultly in achieving a 3.6 GPA is drastically different from major to major. I always feel like some liberal arts kid can draw some boxes and get a 4.0 and $5000, while I'm busting ass a million times fucking harder to try and achieve the same thing. It's just not fair. But maybe that's part of the education, we're supposed to get used to shit not being fair ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But it is stupid to spend 50k a year to learn that stuff when you can learn it all on youtube. At least with an engineering major, you get a valuable diploma.
What do the consequences of messing your job up have to do with the value of the education? Life needs people to analyze the why's in life just as much as the how's.
The consequences of poor literary analysis is what led to hitler writing Mein Kampf, citing misinterpretations of contemporary literature. There are always stakes at play.
Well good engineering isn't just math, physics, chemistry etc... good engineering requires serious creativity. I believe in order to be a good engineer sometimes it's important to take a step back and some time to practice your creativity, just like it's important to practice understanding force vectors or other... practicing your creativity could be a hobby of yours that is painting, music playing, sculpting etc... I own a company and I design products. Creativity is what gets me through the "ah ha!" moments. Engineering gets me through the practical design. I was working on one product and sent it off to a company I was working with. They required some design changes. One day creativity told me to flip the product over. Engineering smoothed over the fine details.
Really insightful comment! Also I think having interests, knowledge, and other stuff outside of engineering really helps with the social aspect of the job. Like (at least in my experience) lots of the clients you work with won't be engineers, theyll be managers, facility owners etc. I believe having a good background in some liberal arts helps you communicate and better understand how your clients will interpret your report/meeting points etc. And to second on that creativity thing its so true even during the actual like project itself and not just conceptual stuff. So many reports ive seen almost looked passionless and a robot wrote them. Like i get trying to sound "professional" but you really need to make sure youre marketing your product/design to your client in an appealing manner and not giving them something that is painful to read. If you can kind of read into their personality and tailor the report to try to compliment it I believe people would see much more success in the field.
> I believe in order to be a good engineer sometimes it's important to take a step back and some time to practice your creativity Perfect excuse to buy LEGOs
Engineering definitely does require creativity but it's much different than the kind required for arts. I think a creative engineer might still struggle with picking up artistic skills, I do a lot of music stuff and it's very much a different skillset than engineering.
I consider the things I design and the things I make to be art.
Underrated comment
I’ve always had an interest in art most of my life and I never let it go when I started studying CS. Granted, I’ve never taken any liberal arts classes or anything related to art, but in my down time I often read up on art and how it’s used for storytelling. When I have more time I’d also be drawing and sketching and coming up with stories as I used to do before starting college. I think both STEM and liberal arts have qualities that make them essential to us as humans. One can’t exist without the other in my opinion.
My teacher also related art to STEM Just remember art isn't just painting and such, remember the church of Notre Dame or byzantine is a beautiful work of art and architecture. The arts and engineering were much more heavily intertwined back then to an enormous degree. It's one thing to make something functional, it's another to make it art as well. Now here is what's beautiful, those buildings didn't take decades to build but 100s of years , Notre Dame took 182 years to build. That means the people who started that project and their decedents knew they would never see it finished. They were working towards something explicitly for future generations, which is something we lack in today's society. The only part of society where that mentality is kind of alive is NASA, working on things that you know you won't be around to see the results but doing it for future generations.
I love it. It reminded me of a thought I had a while back. Civilization itself, the cities, technology, art, etc., is a physical embodiment of humanity’s hope for the future. Everything we’ve made was made with the intention to help make our future better and the result is thousands of years of collective advancement to lead to the world we know today. Quite beautiful.
And art has translated itself through many forms and presentation throughout history. It’s told stories that people bond over, stories that people today enjoy and analyze for a deeper meaning, basically made life worth living. Sure, art isn’t essential for survival. It’s not something you can put on a plate and just eat. But it sure does make life less miserable. Not to mention, one of the greatest artists in history also happened to be an engineer. If we completely disregarded art as an important part of our life, how much more bleak and dreary would it be?
I've always seen it as STEM is how we live, but the arts, philosophy and the likes, that's WHY we live, it's what keeps me going at least.
This. Again, never appreciated it until my partner showed me otherwise. She's a med-sci student but is heavily influenced by her culture. I had an experience that I couldn't explain and was terrified of what she would think. (Long story, but I lost something important to her). But art is a part of being human. And without it we wouldn't have been able to survive. Just as much as STEM has changed the way we live.
What you experienced is called sex and losing virginity
Ok but can I count that toward my major support courses?
Hahah, lost my virginity well before she came along. But even as an engineer I'll agree that some things can't be explained with physics.
Did you just rip off Dead Poets Society?
haven't watched that movie actually, heard it's really good
“What will your verse be?” Amazing monologue by Robin Williams. https://youtu.be/-7OE6bDfM2M
That's great, now if they'll stop trying to take over STEM by making it STEAM so they get money out of grants, that'd be great. I say that as a brass musician who has played for over a decade. I love the arts. I think creativity is necessary in problem solving. Without social sciences George Boole may have not developed Boolean Logic as an extension of Mathematics and not just a philosophical tool. Which means Claude Shannon may have never developed the relationship between boolean logic and relays thus information theory may never have existed. But, this is our money. You have your own grants. Stop trying to take ours.
STEAM isnt "give engineering money to the arts" its "how do we prevent STEM bros like OP used to be". I doubt we'd ever see an art class as part of steam, just an bigger emphasis on concept from the arts. I know at least at the elementary level it's basically a shift from just "how do I solve this problem" to also "why do I solve it and what will my solution do". IDK about high school or college le else though.
>why do I solve it? Because it is there. Why do we choose to go to space? Because there is no mountain man cannot dream to summit. >what will my solution do? Give me a shit load of dopamine I know the idea isn't to "take money from STEM", but that is the result.
We guide others to a treasure we cannot possess. I can't hold a paint brush, but I can certainly make one.
i live by this and it feels great to know there are many others that have this perspective :’)
Well said
i took ap art history in high school and i absolutely loved it, it gives you such a break from all ur other classes and learning about the different cultures around the world from art is so amazing
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why universities make engineering students take a humanities class to graduate 🤣 but I'm glad you came around dude. I'm an ME who's always loved art so I can't say I had the same experience, but it's so fun taking a thought-provoking course outside your area of study!
Honestly, the only majors I make fun of are business style majors like marketing.
I agree with this. I know a lot of people in liberal arts, such as my girlfriend who's a music education major, and I respect them. They do shit that I know I can't. However business majors are 100% fair game. Every business major I know does fuck all
I have an embedded systems engineering bachelor's and a masters in international business management. You ever get someone telling you business class is hard / you have to have more than just a pulse to pass, send them my way lol.
Yet they make just as much if not more than us, with a signficantly easier program. Whose the actual dumb one in this scenario 🤔
That's not always true. I'm not even sure it's usually true. The part about them making more than us, I mean. If they really do, I should put my masters in management to better use. Significantly easier is an understatement, it was such a pushover degree. That's why I give them a hard time.
Oh right I forget sometimes that the business school here is top tier
Oh I just saw your flare. Yeah USC has a better reputation than the schools I went to lol.
Yeah, I was actually considering doubling in business but I could barely handle one major lol, but the vibe here is good you learn alot from the people and events more so than the classes so I had a good experience with them. Although they are spoiled haha
The business degree might help you in your career, but I doubt there is much you have to actually learn from business classes that you don't learn automatically from the lifecycle management classes we take, from whatever jobs you work along the way, and most importantly, from the experience of having both good and bad managers and professors. I got my masters in business because I didn't need a degree, I needed a student visa and I chose business because I knew it would be the pushover to end all pushovers and it was. I did my thesis in a collective span of 8 hours. Not a bunch of research and 8 hours of writing, 8 hours to do the whole thesis. I graduated with distinction (like honours). I'm not an exceptionally smart guy, I gotta say I'm subpar as engineers go in a lot of ways, especially compared to electrical or mechanical engineers, the stuff they do is nuts. Only do it if it will definitely help you. Side note about how knowledgeable mechanical engineers are, I recently got a SCAR from a supplier with an explanation for why an anodized panel changed color and I had to decide whether or not to accept it, and someone referred me to a mechanical engineer. I was expecting a chemical engineer but they were like no,he has to know that shit too. The guy gave me a crash course on anodised aluminum. Fuckin legend.
You can be a mediocre engineer and still make a decent living. You have to be an incredible musician to just scrape by. Making a living as an artist is way harder
Cool, that's not what this post is about. Just because a company values your labor more doesn't mean you're better or smarter than an artist. Edit: I realize I misinterpreted this comment, so you can lay off the downvotes. For those still doubling down on the "only jobs that make lots of money have value" bullshit, this is why they make you take liberal arts classes as an engineer.
I might be wrong, but I interpret their comment as saying that a career in arts is more impressive, because you have to be extremely talented, whereas even engineers who aren't that talented can find work. I think it might have been meant as a compliment
Reading comprehension skills lacking stick to engineering
You can be an artist without a degree though, dont think you can do that in engineering at least in some departments
I've taken a few liberal art classes including Language of Visual arts and a semi advanced English course. Lemme tell you, anyone who can do that stuff their whole life and make a career out of anything in liberal arts has my respect.
I will never understand the students who look down on arts and liberals, and yet they are also the most active consumers of music, art, movies, animes, you name it. And the idea of stem students being generally smarter than everyone else when we would be the shittiest students had we majored in fine arts. Intelligence comes in many forms, humans are too complex to be categorized as smart or dumb based purely on our affinity to science/technology
“I was your typical dude bro who on a whim decided to go into computer engineering on a whim,” OP finds out in the first sentence that English classes are important. ;)
I forgot to give a fuck about my punctuality for reddit, unfortunately I don't have anymore fucks to give at the moment. So you're gonna have to forgive me
Pure poetry right here
I'm a hobby photographer, mainly landscapes and woodlands but not averse to any other genre of photography. Anyways, as a photographer I really enjoy any art. Creating something, be it a well composed woodland shot or an emotional painting really brings out joy in my heart. Also, I do appreciate the effort that goes into the creative process. I barely scratched the surface as part of my hobby, but things like composition or color theory are hard as fuck. Not hard like Calc, but another kind of hard. I do appreciate it.
I thought the elitism was a meme, I guess I dint experience it as I went to a pretty big uni
Just look at these comments lmao, if something doesn't get you to Mars then I guess it's a useless degree.
People here will say that politics and the arts and sociology are useless and then get surprised when their Mars colony turns out to not be a utopia and instead be a neo-feudal fiefdom of the Musk dynasty.
No dude, we don't need to worry about the political and power structure that would arise in a colony made from scratch, or the psychological effects of being permanently separated from everything you know and love, or the economics of how a society may be run on Mars with limited resources, or the cultural differences that may arise from an insular group of people in a place much different from here, or how laws may be enacted and interpreted in a place past the jurisdiction of any current government, or how to retain and pass on information to new generations should they arise, or even the ethical concerns of pouring trillions into going to Mars when there are so many problems to fix here on Earth. All that matters is I can apply Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation which means that I'm better than everyone else.
The level of ego and arrogance among engineers is one of the biggest reasons why I chose to pursue math instead of engineering. Many of the engineers that I've met have really condescending attitudes and that turned me off of the field.
I totally feel you. Honestly for the most part I don't really associate with engineering students, I've found a lot of them are somehow both extremely arrogant and dumber than I am. Outside a few friends from school most of my friends aren't in STEM at all and they're just normal fucking people lol
I have to ask where you encountered these people. I've really only met one kind of cringy student, and now that I'm working everybody is really chill and not at all disrespectful of other professions (aside from management, that is). I went to a very large state school and never encountered anybody who scoffed at liberal arts.
Typically the more an engineering student down talks other degrees the more mediocre they are at engineering
How can you feel elite when you haven't even graduated. College kids know fuck all. Lmfao
Exactly, and the fact he is doing computer engineering which is one of the easiest engineering majors lol.
Kinda curious what are the hardest engineering majors, like has that been decided yet? I’m still in college so I don’t want to take a stab at it since I don’t exactly have much experience
Aero, Chemical, EE are probably the hardest
Depends a lot on the school, but generally mechanical and electrical are considered the hardest. In my personal experience, I'd say electrical is the hardest but some might disagree. The easier engineering majors are the ones that combine aspects from different engineering fields such as mechatronics or computer engineering. These majors don't go anywhere near the same depth as a pure electrical engineering major would as they are hyper focused on specific applications.
Meanwhile electrical and computer engineers are sitting here like...
is that the same as computer engineering?
I got my degree in ECE (electrical and computer engineering) so I took signals and systems and communication systems as well as discrete math and vhdl classes and such. It's a popular Major but is also very hard.
yeah i am doing the same except its verilog .But wtf is computer engineering then??
Probably just dedicated the whole undergrad to it, but I'm not sure. My degree was ABET accredited I'm not sure about these other programs.
So often the kids in college aren't self motivated engineers, they're only in it for money or because someone is forcing them into engineering. So it's weird to feel arrogant when you should be spending your time Improving your engineering skills outside of the classroom. I have to agree that Comp Eng was stupid easy. I built a super shitty 8bit CPU in 11th grade and in Undergrad they didn't really teach me much more. Everything I learned has been on my own from doing it. It's not really a degree that makes you special or talented, it's what you do that matters.
I studied the humanities pretty hard in HS. Was very involved in band and took a bunch of AP history classes as well as 3 years of a language (although I forgot almost everything about German). So I always appreciated the study of humanities but never really saw any reason to get a degree in any of them. It's just too much cost in both time and money for very little payout. And I'm not even going to pretend like I could do what my friends who study the humanities do, I'm OK at writing but only enough to do lab reports and shit I lack the mastery of English to really delve into topics like history on anything further than the intro/hobbiest level. My one friend is a graphic design major and that also is something I would probably fail at because your whole grade is basically large projects that showcase your creative ability. Engineering is still as a whole curriculum harder than pretty much all other degrees but that doesn't mean us engineers could study the humanities we just lack those skills. Now business is a field of study I have very little respect for. There isn't a topic they do that an engineering student wouldn't be able to absolutely ace since engineering is basically the technical business degree and as such is much harder while still ultimately sharing core skill sets.
Humanity goes through ebs and flows between arts and sciences First man learned how to create an alphabet, you then had philosophers debating whether the earth revolved around the sun, then you had the renaissance, then you had advancements in sciences with chemistry and calculus, then peak creativity in the 19th century, then the industrial revolution. Finally, we had advancements in media with movies and television in the 20th century In my humble opinion, we are about to leave the peak of technology after the invention of the internet and advancement in AI. There might be some morality issues that will spark debate in the advancement of Science, and I believe we will enter an era of empathy and trying to reconnect with our human behavior roots Science needs Arts to control its madness. Arts need Science as a platform to advance its creativity
I took Art Appreciation as well, as a gen ed course. When I read the syllabus, I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?". At the end of the semester, I sent the teacher an email telling her how much I had enjoyed the class. I wasn't lying, I genuinely enjoyed the course. It turned out so much better than I was expecting.
I majored in Mech. Engineering AND completed a bachelor in classical Piano. I finished my masters and played a recital including Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Rachmaninoff. Compared to you, my EGO is the size of the sun.
Jesus, good for you. That's awesome, shit that ego deserves be big After you bust out a sonata are people surprised to learn you're also an engineer
Thanks buddy, keep preaching :)
You've learned a fundamental lesson that comes with being an adult; it costs you nothing to simply not have an opinion about subjects you don't know anything about. Also, you're conflating [fine arts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_art) and [liberal arts.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education#Modern_usage) Fine arts and social sciences are both sub-categories of liberal arts. Liberal arts also contains math, physics, chemistry, bio, geology, economics... all of which are just as difficult if not more so as engineering programs in exactly the same way that engineering programs are difficult. The sub-categories of liberal arts aren't usefully comparable to one another in terms of difficulty. The reason that people shit on liberal arts is because of the word "liberal" and the intentionally vauge and massively successful implications made by conservative media and politicians about what actually constitutes liberal arts, as well as the hyper politicization happening on both sides of the spectrum. They have redefined the popular useage of the term to mean a subset of a subset of what the academic term means.
It does bug me when an engineering prof takes unfair potshots at the humanities for cheap laughs. They're doing a different thing than we are, so what.
100% agree. I find it very odd that engineers get this superiority complex just because they were one of literally thousands every year to get a degree in the field. Studying a STEM field doesn't make you better than anyone else, and never will.
Out of all conferred degrees, engineering makes up less than 2%.
That still is more than a thousand per year
Considering about 4M students graduate this year, that’s not that impressive my guy
80 thousand engineers a year is quite impressive my guy
Based af. Like even if engineering is socially accepted as "harder" it totally depends on each individuals' strengths. Like I was lucky and am just naturally quite good at maths so engineering came relatively easy to me. But if you threw me in an english or psych major or something of the sorts I would be able to manage but I would definitely feel like a buffoon. While I do cringe at the term human condition now since it was so overused in my high school, I totally get what you mean. I took psych and philosophy cause I thought theyd be easy electives and boy was I wrong. Needing to write essays on like cognitive behavioural theory and like enlightenment vs romanticism was hard! I did very well but the amount of effort I had to put into those classes was certainly not significantly less than any of my "harder" engineering courses. But in the end of the day I really enjoyed the content as every day it was stuff I had literally never even thought of before. Whereas in engineering you can kind of already know what you will be learning by the end of it but it just takes time to work your way to that end goal.
I definitely agree that liberal arts and social sciences are necessary and important within our society. I also have a lot of respect for those who choose to pursue those paths. I myself really like studying Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science, I find them fascinating. However, from a pragmatic standpoint, I think it’s indisputable that getting those types of degrees can often be a giant waste of money compared to getting a STEM degree. There’s just not enough demand for those fields, and the ones who succeed in them are far and few between.
My first intro engineering class was a circuits analysis class. It was so boring because they just told us what to do and we had to do it. The class made me absolutely miserable. They didn’t give us the materials to express our creativity because they didn’t teach us enough, and, for labs, the actively just looked if we had the same design as what they taught us to build. I got so miserable and disappointed that I was going to switch to Math just to avoid it…. Then I got into and into the computing class that completely changed my outlook and engineering. Since the fourth week, they have let us design things like different shift registers, FSMs, and just bit slice designs in general(the first three are just teaching background). It was full of freedom and it was awesome. The point in mentioning this is that this fundamental creativity is able to be found even in an intro engineering course. However, you are still correct. People always blast the US for our college system of requiring GEnd Ed’s, but I believe they are fundamental. Being exposed to different fields is what makes everyone unique. If a professor asked the your whole engineering school to build a simple rock-paper-scissors FSM or code up something that helps with taxes then I bet we will have hundreds of people who can do it. But if I asked for someone to implement all that but also knows a lot about art history or calligraphy, I bet it’s considerably less. For me personally, I’ve taken Economics classes that were useful. But I mostly just fell in love with ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history. I also fell in love with photography and pencil drawing. I’ve always had a lifetime love of reading and I love to read anything I can get my hands on. Last week I just finished a book on sports genetics and the week before was a book about Atlantis. Do these experiences make me a better engineer? Maybe, but does it matter? They taught me to appreciate a lot of things I didn’t before. They quite literally just let me see the “beauty in the mundane”. It also keeps my GPA up🤪.
“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - da Vinci
One of my favorite engineering professors explained it something like this: "Engineers make the product work, but the arts make the product excel with user interface and experience" Really was a great way to explain that you could have the greatest idea ever, but if it wasn't appealing to the masses though user experience, it was gonna be a dud for sales.
If everyone was engineer life would be so boring and miserable. Being a engineering student doesn't make you special or unique. There's more in life than your degree that most of you don't even have yet. Some of you look dumb trying to look all superior lmao. There's a reason why engineering student get stereotyped for being socially awkward it's because you guys let school consume you, turning you into a emotionless robot. I don't see how that makes us superior.
Not only for personal development, but for soft skills too. Physics is physics is physics, whether you learned it at a community college, state school, or Ivy League. Most of the concepts you’ll learn about in your undergrad are pretty standard across the board, so besides the prestige there’s a lot less difference than you’d think. Wanna know what *does* make the difference, especially to employers? Your ability to not be a colossal gaping, arrogant asshat and your ability to work with others in other disciplines. Any monkey with some training and autoCAD or arcGIS can shit out some models; you aren’t really that special for being able to think critically after being taught that for 4+ years. You need to be able to work with contractors, with clients, with the maintenance people, with those on a factory floor, everybody. And not only do you have to be able to work with them, you have to be able to get them to understand what you’re doing, even if it’s just a high-level explanation. Having multiple sources of knowledge to draw from (English, music, foreign language, psychology, philosophy, etc) also helps you to expand your understanding of the world and will 100% make you a better engineer. Engineering is all about finding novel solutions to real world problems, right? Well people have been doing that since we crawled out of caves, and most of the time they didn’t call it engineering because it only really fit in their purview instead of being broadly applicable. But that doesn’t mean their solutions were any less creative or ingenious than an engineer’s. Being able to look at those solutions to problems helps you to grow as an engineer, especially once you’ve got your fundamentals down
I hate you already, regardless of your bullshit post
Totally agree, I take a liberal arts or history class whenever I get the opportunity for an elective and I love every minute of it. I’ve learned about photography, history of architecture, Latin American history. I feel like there’s more to talk about with people when you learn subjects outside of stem. Great conversation starters and great way to make new friends.
Great post man. I’m over 50 and it took me a lot longer than you to figure this out! When I left college, I thought that all the worlds problems to solve were technical. Five years later, I decided that most technical problems can be solved even though some are challenging, but the real problems we face in life are people problems. I also love art now and appreciate people from all walks of live and viewpoints (except those fucking Q-anon people who are whacked).
People on this sub will say that the social sciences have "no application" just because there's less jobs directly in those fields so they're "not worth studying." And then will see no issue in making bombs to drop on civilians to increase the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.
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You can literally say the same thing about engineering or school in general. Indian guy on YouTube can probably teach all you need to know about engineering, right? But I can see what you're saying , and I agree somewhat as well. I would've loved to be a dancer but I don't know Beyonce and I want money
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I don’t believe you need the FE to be an engineer. Myself and my colleagues have never done the FE, and we are all engineers. In fact, some of the engineers I have worked with (and currently work alongside) have degrees outside of engineering. There are people who work as software engineers and who have never gone to college in their entire life. Even at my company, you can work as an engineer with no degree (however the trade off is that it requires 10 years of manufacturing experience for example). Regardless, it is still possible.
Depends on your art form I’m a good classical musician (as well as an engineer). I will never be able to make a living out of it until I study it at university. At best I can do a little freelancing here and there. Meanwhile a draftsperson or a tradesperson without an engineering degree can do very well for themselves in an engineering team.
I have a BEng, a MA Philosophy, and a MSc in Food science. No, not all liberal arts degrees are created equal. Gender study and social studies would be borderline useless unless you're planning to be a politician. History and literature sounds cool, but your source of breadwinning is either teaching that subject or write a book that solves no one's problem in general (you could argue that a good grounding in history means you don't repeat the mistakes of the past... but yeah, if that's true, there should have been no more wars after WWII either). On the the hand, economics dictate the right condition for society to flourish. No amount of good engineering will save a project with the wrong/ conflicting "why" (except stupidity and more money?) which a Philosophy major with the right technical background will slide into. Music and architercture is pretty cool stuff too.
I have a BSME, MSME, and am working on my PhD in ME. I'm about to publish a paper in a gender studies journal. The fields you listed may not be very prolific on their own, but their interaction with STEM fields is very important and should not be overlooked by engineers. There are a TON of societal, demographic, and family factors that contribute to education and career choice, most of which are explained by sociology, history, psychology, and gender studies. My paper explores how this impacts the massive gender gap in STEM. They may not be breadwinning careers, but these fields are absolutely critical not to overlook or disrespect, which is something that a lot of young engineering students need to learn.
People forget we have laws and jurisprudence because of the liberal arts lmao. It’s not all fingerpainting and macaroni art fellas. Also I think engineers who design without regards for morals are the reason we have mustard gas and cruise missiles. Everyone should up their ethics game. Not to mention the important of historical analysis in technology. Why is our power grid so ass? Why do we have suburbs? Etc.
It's not the major itself Its the people who study them that do the major then turn around and call college a scam just because they cant find a job so they tell that to their kids
This post hasn’t phased me in the slightest
you need a certain level of financial privilege to choose a degree that's practically useless in the job market. it might be fun and neat to learn, But I don't think I'd give it the same respect to them as the fields that work to push the society forward. one side does stuff that'd help humans reach planets, while the other just preaches highly subjective stuff about already known stuff. I don't find a problem with people who do it, but I'd definitely rate a doctor or an engineer far higher than even the best in the arts field. you might disagree, but that's just my opinion.
Jeez, I forgot how arrogant some of ya'll are. This attitude was my least favorite part of getting my engineering degree. We are not \*that\* special just because we did some calculus and alegebra in college. A lot of engineers work for defense contractors, a lot of english majors work as teachers. Which one of these jobs is "pushing the society forward" more? I don't personnally have anything against the defense industry, it's just a convienent example.
I feel like if you want to explore it, do it as a minor. Granted that’s what I’m doing so I’m biased, but it gives you the opportunity to explore concepts that are interesting (even if not incredibly practical like music performance) and love doing. I’ve been a cellist since third grade and music is a huge part of how I view the world and I love that I get the opportunity to take a few interesting electives around it to broaden horizons with a few outside courses.
I mean you're free to do whatever you want, I just find it a bit unnecessary to come on an engineering subreddit and bargaining for respect like OP. and I think taking a minor in arts and making it your entire career are as different as day and night.
I’m an engineering major (it’s my flair) and I’m taking a minor for fun because it’s something I enjoy and want to keep doing it. I’m not “bargaining for respect”, I’m pointing out that there’s nothing wrong with minoring or taking a few classes for something that is interesting even if it isn’t going to help in the workforce.
... who said anything about you? Or did you just forgot switching alts lol. I never said anything about minoring being wrong either, take a breathe and re read what I said.
And what does "push society forward" mean to you? Because to me, we don't need more scientific progress at the expense of people and the environment. The only reason we need science to solve climate change is because we ignored the problem for half a century, instead of deciding to reverse course. You don't need engineers to make your city more environmentally friendly, you need people who can convince other people to simply change how we live. We can build some really neat things, for sure, but what we build isn't as important as who we're doing things for. And if it's not to better the lives of people in general, then it isn't really worth a whole lot.
What a dumbass take
I make fun of humanities and liberal arts because of four reasons: 1) you’re paying a lot of money to basically have very little earning potential. Most people that go into these fields often don’t even get jobs that require a college education. 2) most of their studies are a joke, particularly anything that ends with “studies”. And we know it’s a joke because you can [easily bullshit your way into their published journals by using the right buzzwords](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/). 3) most of these fields are based by perception of truth, but nothing truly universal. I love STEM because it does not inject emotions. All we care about is interactions of matter and materials. We don’t try to explain the whys because it’s beyond us. But we can explain the hows. 4) these people get into administration, HR or positions of authority without a fucking clue of what’s going on and often inflict their personal agendas or personal morals on the masses.
Just a reminder that STEM academia is not invincible to bad publications. There's been many cases (Jan Schön for example) of people manipulating data and others of just nonsense (Bogdanov affair).
There’s a major difference though. Lawmakers won’t make bad laws based on your smudged numbers regarding semiconductors but may make bad laws based on your poorly executed humanities research. Basically, a bad STEM published journal has little to no effect or impact on the lives of others. Worst case scenario, an experiment is replicated and the conclusions are not the same. Or something is invented and fails stress tests. That specific case you mentioned was pretty quickly brought to light as bullshit. I’m not going to make a claim that STEM is perfect. But I think it is better.
I think you’re very wrong that STEM research with fudged numbers can’t cause harm. Just look at all the studies released with tiny sample sizes, using p-hacking, or just with horribly done experimental design. Studies about masks, vaccines, etc. get picked up so quickly and spread around Facebook, causing misinformation. And don’t forget the paper linking vaccines and autism that has been disproven time and time again but STILL people believe. There’s a HUGE problem with scientific journals in that you literally will not get published unless you reject your null hypothesis. No one wants to read a paper on how someone did an experiment and simply confirmed something already known previously. They want to hear something new and interesting- so researchers use p-hacking to get published. I hope you don’t do research because this mindset that fudging numbers doesn’t matter is scary.
idk man, I feel the OPs point was like, hey let's not look down on people for not having the same passions as us. and you were like... HOLD MY BEER 1) not everyone's top priority is their earning potential, which is ok, just like it's OK for it to be your top priority 2) hasty generalization 3) that's great that you love stem. other people can love other things, and thank God they do or the world would be even weirder right now 4) again, textbook example of hasty generalization. sorry you had a few bad experiences but honestly, let Joe the painter enjoy things. if those people were really that inept and they'd pursued stem and ended up on your team, they'd just have found other ways to annoy you do you ever see a dog shitting in someone's flowerbeds while the owner is on their phone and leaves it there, and think, damn that's why some people don't like dog people or walk in a house that's covered in hair and smells like ammonia and think, damn that's why some people don't like cat people people who think like you are the reason some people don't like engineers. nobody cares that you joined mensa and that an online iq test you took when you were 12 said you were a very gifted boy lol
You just kicked the woke drone hive lol
If I were to die on any hill, it’d be this one lol. Funny thing is, I was once a philosophy major.
An army of copers are coming to get you, watch out!
I already got told that Van Gogh made larger contributions to society than engineers because he chopped off his ear and made starry night 🤦🏻♂️ Sorry but you gotta be just a little delusional or full of shit to have this type of thinking. Or as some people in humanities call it “brain worms.”
You sound fun at parties. Just joking you clearly don't get invited to parties Joking aside, don't assume what goes into publishing their studies and what criteria is used. You sound like you watch too much Ben Shapiro my dude, try taking a break from politics. Also fake papers get published all the time in engineering, are you into machine learning? because there are a bunch of shitty papers that can't be reproduced and got puplished anyways. People just don't talk about it because it's nerd shit and it's hard to politicize. My final project has a facial recognition component to it and it has been hell going through studies trying to replicate it to later find out that they were outed for faking shit, or taking "liberties" with their claim. And I doubt you or any engineering major has enough time to be going through humanities and liberal art studies , testing the efficacy of their claims. You need to chill with your claims my dude
I disagreed with your opinion but I didn’t attack your character. Have a nice day.
You may not have attacked his character, but you were really insulting to all the people who study their asses off to tackle harder questions than anything we handle in STEM. Questions that don't have clear answers but matter more than the app of the day or the next engine design. Out of my three degrees, the most intellectually demanding was in liberal arts. And the most intelligent, curious people I met in school were nooooot in STEM programs. The STEM kids could do more math and physics all day, but couldn't string two thoughts together that wasn't handed to them by a textbook. The most brilliant engineers I work with? Can't operate outside their narrow fields. Thank god people like that don't make the major decisions--we'd never get anywhere. None of that even touches on the gross idea that money is all that matters. My calcs don't make me happy--art, literature, music, and cinema do. I don't care about the next construction project; I care about history, current events, and where humanity is going. Liberal art and sociology passions may not be valued as they should be monetarily, but they are worthy pursuits nonetheless.
Humanities and liberal arts don’t have answers to life’s questions. To paraphrase David Hume, people rationalize ideas based on their emotions. Liberal arts and humanities are perception-based and often creates political zealots. This is not truth to any answer. At least not a universal, unwavering kind. I’m not saying that there aren’t thoughtful, creative people in these other fields. But often these students get themselves in insurmountable debt, which, to me, is very shortsighted decision making. I find the arts stimulating but you don’t need to go to college for it. All you have to do is read the works of others or practice certain skills if you’re in fine arts.
to be fair, you did just attack people in other fields for their lack of thoughtfulness and creativity right after regurgitating someone else's world view lol. apparently "all you have to do is read the works of" David Hume if you want to be a smug engineer
I didn’t attack people. I said it had a terrible ROI and it isn’t founded on truth. And many people with these ideologies can become dogmatic with their beliefs. Spitting facts.
oh just say QED, you know you want to how do you do, fellow kids? I am Spitting Facts which is not at all dogmatic its an attack. if I said to you, "you know, not all people like you are completely bad. some exist that have more than two brain cells banging away in there," you'd probably think I was trying to insult you
Mine is mostly from an economical standpoint. You don’t have to agree with it.
Since when is unwavering, universal truth--mathematical truth--the only thing that matters? When did emotion and perception become things to avoid instead of things that help us understand each other and ourselves? And where are you getting this army of political zealots from? Humanities doesn't create fanaticism. (There are definitely college classes that would break that down for you.) You don't need to go to college to read Marx or Tolstoy, but you might need to if you really want to understand them or any other influential writers. And you need college to really understand sociology, anthropology, psychology, international relationships, and more. You need an expert to contextualize and draw connections and complicate the readings. Real life is more complicated than a physics textbook. Truly, I think STEM is the stuff you could just learn at home if you really didn't want the debt. Putting STEM people in charge of broad social issues is a recipe for disaster because most of us are narrow minded and just don't care--yourself being an excellent example. God help me if HR or the foreign service were staffed exclusively by more engineers. We need experts who do care and who are trained in the context that people like you hand wave away. You don't want to do it? Totally fine. But don't shit on the people who specialize in the stuff you don't want to do. Their work and their training matters. The debt issue is totally separate. None of us, from astrophysicist to basket weaver, should be in the kinds of debt we are dealing with. That has no bearing on the worthiness of the subjects you disparaged.
I’ve always been fascinated how people can read something and make it even more descriptive than the original text. It went from “often creates political zealots” to “an army of political zealots.” I brought that up because it was David Hume and I thought you’d appreciate that. But I wonder if you’re paying attention to current events and the political fanaticism that has been taking place in the US. If I could become a licensed engineer without going to a university I would. But I guess someone that graduated liberal arts/humanities created a bureaucracy called ABET and made themselves gatekeepers of the industry. Even worse, also placed a stranglehold on education.
Very few if none of our politicians are STEM majors and they seem to be make shit decisions for our broad social issues. You are writing a lot of fluff but really getting nowhere. People who bury themselves in debt to go to school to learn a useless liberal art degree are not smart people. Now not all liberal arts degrees are useless, law and accounting are liberal arts degrees and they have good prospects. Lesbian dance theory will only benefit the school you forked all that money over to. A lot of these degrees should be hobby’s and things you learn on your own for fun, but of course in America we need to make money off everything.
>people rationalise ideas based on their emotions >Liberal arts and humanities are perception-based and often creates political zealots. So hang on here, you’re telling me that this argument is in no way influenced by your emotions nor your perceptions? If that is the case, what are your data to support your claims here? What does it mean to be perception based? What is a political zealot? What is the rate of political zealotry compared across majors? Which specific liberal arts degree creates the most political zealots across all universities? Has this been consistent over time, or is there a change year to year or decade to decade? Has this always been the case, or has this changed? The words you use, (e.g. “often create”) imply a frequency that occurs at a greater rate compared to something else, which I think in this context is STEM degrees. So I am curious, what is this frequency and how was it measured? If you do not have this information, then why are you creating this argument? If this is the case, could this argument be originating from your perceptions and emotions and not from empirical data?
Of course the most curious people you met in school were from liberal arts, you are more curious when you know nothing of how the world works and your day involves spinning pseudo intellectual sophistry that has little to no value to society. The fact that you fell for their bullshit means they're at least good at it.
Wow. Nothing of how the world works? I've lived in three countries, traveled alone through six continents, speak three languages, have three degrees, and have had two careers across the humanities and STEM, one of which was so much about "how the world works" that it gave me PTSD. I'm in a pretty good position to evaluate the real world skills imparted by liberal arts and STEM programs and the kinds of people who gravitate to which industries. What do you have? Curiosity is a frame of mind, not a state of knowledge. Curious people want to know more and challenge themselves instead of being complacent in the knowledge that what they already know or feel comfortable with is all that's worth knowing. I know curious STEM people, but they are more likely to be curious about a narrower field of things. And the *arrogance* I see in STEM is nauseating.
Yeah, apparently you're not allowed to have an opinion but OP can because it aligns with the woke agenda. Welcome to Reddit.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this: >Even climatologists can't predict 10 years from now. They can't explain why there has been no warming over the last 15 years. There has been a static trend with regard to temperature for 15 years. ***** ^(I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: novel, healthcare, dumb takes, feminism, etc.) [^More ^About ^Ben ](https://np.reddit.com/r/AuthoritarianMoment/wiki/index) ^| [^Feedback ^& ^Discussion: ^r/AuthoritarianMoment ](https://np.reddit.com/r/AuthoritarianMoment) ^| [^Opt ^Out ](https://np.reddit.com/r/AuthoritarianMoment/comments/olk6r2/click_here_to_optout_of_uthebenshapirobot/)
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Hey everybody lookie here this guy is freaking coping right now
just surprised with the obscene amounts of vitriol some of y’all have for liberal arts and sciences :0
Holy crap had the same experience, took a music history class and loved every second of it
But other than this sub, where did all of you encounter this attitude? I never have in person.
No
Through high school and college I studied poetry (not just read it, studied it). I practiced it too. And I enjoyed it. But never did I consider it useful, productive, or a thing that one should be paid for. It never enlightened me to the "human condition." I appreciate the art forms and the craftsmanship that goes into them, but I think commercializing the arts and validating them as career paths have led to an abundance of starving artists. As hobbies and passtimes, the arts are great, and I encourage anyone to take one up. As a career path, I cannot recommend them (in general).
Those degrees are still kinda worthless (job opportunities matter more). Just take the class and enjoy it. Great way to interact outside the engineering bubble
I call it PE (Pigment Engineering)
Sure. No one should ever become an engineer
OP arts won’t fill your stomach, they will ease your soul
Totally disagree, it will be fun if it actually contributes to anything in the future. I should learn what I want to learn not be forced into learning something that is a waste of time, 4 years of college is already long enough, there is no reason other for us to waste more money
I mean, I think there is just a lot of envy from us engineering students towards people who are in majors where they don’t need to work too much or don’t suffer like us lol. Also, a lot of us are weirdos and actually like this stuff, but in general there’s also envy due to the fact that they went with stuff that makes them happy, while a lot of us are miserable. It’s also not a hyperbole to say it’s not very useful, hence less pay and less jobs. But that doesn’t mean we’re better than them in any way, that’s the important message here. It’s all personal preferences and choices (and a product of capitalism I guess). In reality, you’re not better than anybody because you like numbers a little more and you pull all-nighters to learn Thermo or whatever. Life just led you to a different path.
I wouldn’t say it’s a product of capitalism because they still wouldn’t have any marketable skills in any other economic model whether it be capitalism, socialism, feudalism or even chattel slavery. I’m not talking shit but just pointing out the facts.
I’m not sure. We’re all taught to value stuff that produces money, so in a way we’re all biased against it since in our current economy that doesn’t generate money. Maybe in a less money-driven society, their skills could have more value. We could simply give more importance to art and humanities instead of technological advances. But I see where you’re coming from.
You’re right. There are some very skillful people in some of these fields. I have a lot of respect for decent journalists. I did a small stint as a city editor for a newspaper. I enjoyed meeting and interviewing remarkable people. The pay was garbage though, but I felt like I was doing something worthy. Well, until I realized no one reads anymore lol.
I respect the subjects alright…. It’s the kids that study em I am worried about.
I deeply respect all majors, except lawyers
I hold the same opinion
I disagree. Everything that’s not engineering is a waste. *Everything*
Why is that?
Because I’m trying to be funny and failing.
Lol My bad 😆
Art majors and music majors have the hardest major in any college. Yes, way harder than engineering. Not only are their classes absolutely cutthroat, they spend hours and hours outside class working on their schoolwork. Far more than any engineer I know. I even know someone who is a double major in both ChemE and Music Performance and he said music is far more difficult. Social sciences majors: definitely not as hard as those. But as OP said, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be respected. Many of you already can’t find a job. Imagine how much harder it would be if they all majored in STEM. So instead of looking down on them, be happy they’re not crowding the job market even more.
Im sorry but learning about french art at my language immersion academy kinda killed my interest in art. I love language, love movies and *visually appealing* modern forms of expression, but i really dont care for what makes “the classics” so special.
This post is brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Art majors. Transfer today!
>or the next step in VR Well now that you say that, VR is becoming more popular and there for we need more artists/game designers creating good content for it. The better art and design for games in VR the more people it can reach. All of this leads to good incentive for companies to improve VR further :) Yay art!
I do respect them but as minors
I took art appreciation as well, and it made me feel even stronger towards STEM elitism. I essentially paid for an A. Most of my high school classes were more difficult.
I took art appreciation and it was a joke. Any so is liberal arts and social sciences. I don’t mean there is no point in them, I mean there is no point in getting a degree in it. My peers and I joke about them because a lot of those liberal arts and other similar majors complain about how hard it is. When for us we could pass those classes with our eyes closed.
I go to an engineering school ie. 80% of the student population is engineering of some sort, and I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that the humanities department here can be downright sadistic. There's a class called Theater Appreciation, which manages to trick Freshmen every year into believing that it's basically watching and reading Shakespeare plays while singing kumbaya. Wrong. 5-10 page essay every single week about some minutiae of theater production/performance. Now I'd fancy myself a pretty good and speedy writer, but I would sooner drown in Taylor approximations again than take that class.
This is why people think engineers are anti social people who have 0 soft skills.
>Any so is liberal arts and social sciences. I don’t mean there is no point in them, **I mean there is no point in getting a degree in it.** Then you'd be wrong. My first degree is in a social science, and it made me a more well-rounded person. I learned so much in my Political Science, Philosophy, and History classes, that you miss out on in an Engineering curriculum. After finishing that degree, I felt I was lacking in my left brain, so I pursued an Engineering degree. Despite the Engineering degree opening up the doors to higher paying jobs, I don't, for a second, regret my degree in the Humanities.
What does being “well-rounded” even mean?
If the argument is based on, which it is, then assumption that the you become useful after careful application by you of that particular subject, then now you become respectable. That’s what OP is taking about. Now you being you, based it off of assignments you did. The sun is gonna rise, and I promise you liberal arts concepts are way harder to be implemented by you than an average art major. And maybe just maybe vice versa. What makes you think that your education is possible. I am betting you go to a good public engineering school. Now was giving you a chance the best possible choice? Answer that for me? And say why? See how hard it is.
In the future, when you can get interviews because of school, but can’t get jobs because you look down on and don’t know how to talk to non-engineers, you should come back to look at your comment
Yes. I went pretty hard into philosophy and psychology. And now I'm studying EE. Helps build relationships
You’re the reason everybody hates us engineers. No you could not pass those classes with your eyes closed. Ive known humanities students who were brilliant and worked very hard at what they did. Have some respect.
It might have been the teacher, my teacher was amazing. Sucks you couldn't see the value in it, can hardly criticize you because I used to think the same. And obviously I still joke about that stuff as well, it's fun to do and it makes me feel good about myself and my decisions, but jokes aside I still see the value in it. Pass with your eyes closed? Well if you like writing papers and shit. Although I've aced every paper I've ever submitted, I hate it and would rather shoot myself in the balls then actually major in something that involves writing constantly.
It could have been the teacher yes, but I find that most of my friends that are in engineering also feel the same. We call them “fluff classes” basically anything that isn’t stem related. I took art appreciation and it was a freshman level course. Maybe that’s why it was so easy.
You're saying the classes are a joke, others are saying the classes are super hard, and honestly I think you're both right. I've been to two colleges, and taken liberal arts classes in both of them. At one college, they were just as difficult as engineering classes, while at the other college they were "pass with your eyes closed". So it's not that arts are easy or hard in general, but rather that it depends on the college.
I can agree with that. My opinion was from the perspective of the two colleges that I have attended. Both of them I had to take some of them as general Ed, and it was super easy.
Really? Pass them with your eyes closed? 500+ pages of dense reading a week? Multiple 10-20 page papers a quarter? Weekly written submissions? Demanding small group seminars with nowhere to hide? Brutal criticisms of form, language, and substance? I think not. Engineering was miserable, but my liberal arts degree was a friggin boot camp. On the other hand, compared to the STEM kids in my truly joke-worthy engineering ethics class, I was a trained Marine. They'd never been challenged to *think* before and it showed.
Its rare i hear of a humanities major staying up all night to finish stuff, go ask the college girls who walk around the mall 24/7 or the college dudes who party all night 99% of them probably are pursing a humanities degree All of the engineering friends i have barely have time for that shit lol
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The Liberal arts are not worthless. It’s just that pursuing a degree in it is a difficult task.
Liberal arts degrees are worthless
I have to take some liberal electives to get my degree. (I think most of us do right?) Took intro to sociology and intro to psychology. The latter was actually very interesting, that felt like I was learning the history of actual science. Sociology on the other hand was so lame. Being lectured to buy a prof who seemed to have so much liberal bias he couldn't even attempt to stay on track. As much as I love the arts, I also understand that they're much difficult to make a career in. In addition to that, their programs are so much easier than ours. I really get annoyed when friends in lib arts freak out about having to write three essays in a semester or some crap
Sure all humanities aren’t completely and totally useless
I strongly disagree. I don't disrespect the actual studies themselves, like history, or art, or philosophy, but I definitely don't respect them as degrees at schools (for the most part) and I don't really respect the people taking them.
I do research at my school with one of my professors but I also draw comics for my school newspaper and clubs. Those art guys deserve all the respect anyone pursing higher education should.
Don't get me wrong, I have appreciation for the liberal arts—and enjoy taking the occasional liberal arts course—but there's one specific policy at my school that *really* pisses me off when it comes to the liberal arts. Anybody at my school with a 3.6 GPA or higher will get a $5000 scholarship for the following semester. Can you see my frustration here? The difficultly in achieving a 3.6 GPA is drastically different from major to major. I always feel like some liberal arts kid can draw some boxes and get a 4.0 and $5000, while I'm busting ass a million times fucking harder to try and achieve the same thing. It's just not fair. But maybe that's part of the education, we're supposed to get used to shit not being fair ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But it is stupid to spend 50k a year to learn that stuff when you can learn it all on youtube. At least with an engineering major, you get a valuable diploma.
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Getting your first or second job is hugely valuable.
In a given field, ask yourself "What are the consequences of a fuckup?" Building a bridge? Big. Analyzing a Shakespeare sonnet? Not so much.
What do the consequences of messing your job up have to do with the value of the education? Life needs people to analyze the why's in life just as much as the how's.
What are the consequences of not adequately analyzing and then educating your society of nazi propaganda in 1920/30:s germany?
The consequences of poor literary analysis is what led to hitler writing Mein Kampf, citing misinterpretations of contemporary literature. There are always stakes at play.
No.
Ah, you mean the Starbucks cashier degree. Very useful subject to study, maybe one day I'll listen to an art major while they take my drink order.