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Tech Needs Humanists More

86 points · 148 comments · eigenBasis

  1. moolcool · · focus · HN ↗
    People often complain about the humanities requirements for CS degrees, and now the world is run by tech executives who don’t have a clue.
    1. hardbass · · focus · HN ↗
      Do we have any examples of societies or governments ran by humanities people? I at least don't know any country ran by tech execs. If we can find examples of both, then we can compare and see.
      1. pasc1878 · · focus · HN ↗
        The UK government ministers have a lot of Oxford PPE graduates – the first P is Philosophy,

        The current PM has an English degree.

        The last one to have a scientific background was Thatcher.

        1. hardbass · · focus · HN ↗
          That's just the Prime Minister. One person being from tech background doesn't make it a system ran by techs if the rest are of some other viewpoint or profession. So we would need examples of both governments ran by a group of humanities people having the "real power" and compare it to a government ran by a group of technical/engineering people.

          You said the current UK government is mostly Philosophy background people. So how would you rate its performance?

          1. pasc1878 · · focus · HN ↗
            I do not know about majority PPE.

            This applies to many of the UK governments since WWII.

            I suspect most ministers have been humanities graduates. STEM is a very small minority.

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