I’ve been thinking lately how lots of tech people dunk on humanities and liberal arts, only to come to forums like this and discuss ethics, reality, and the nature of consciousness (at quite a shallow level)
Alternative hypothesis: these people have a better framework to discuss "ethics, reality and the nature of consciousness" than people who do humanities have.
That explains the Hawking example in this thread, too.
Proposed causal explanation from me: STEM interest and education gives you skill and tools for principled, consistent reasoning, expressing nontrivial concepts (that's what mathematics is largely about), as well as appreciation and deeper understanding for how things in our actual, physical universe work, from biology and physics to computation. Conversely, humanist base with no STEM experience collapses to rhetoric, completely detached from actual reality.
There's an argument for improving communication and collaboration between empirical sciences and humanities. But it's false to claim that serious philosophers cannot or do not have sufficient grounding in mathematics and physics. Two immediate examples that spring to mind are Tim Maudlin and Jeremy Butterfield.
I'd flip this around and say that serious philosophers do have sufficient grounding in mathematics and physics, by definition: without it, you can't have serious philosophy.
Now by "sufficient grounding" I don't mean formal education and title. The point I'm making is that STEM fields provide grounding that's necessary but not sufficient to do proper philosophy, and humanities provide information that, while valuable and useful, is neither necessary nor sufficient.
If you accept that premise, then it's obvious from pure statistics that you'll find better philosophy in STEM circles than humanities, simply because it's more likely a philosophically inclined mind there had a chance to acquire the necessary grounding (whether due to formal schooling or personal interests).
moolcool · · focus · HN ↗
sseagull · · focus · HN ↗
“Engineer’s disease” and all that.
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
That explains the Hawking example in this thread, too.
Proposed causal explanation from me: STEM interest and education gives you skill and tools for principled, consistent reasoning, expressing nontrivial concepts (that's what mathematics is largely about), as well as appreciation and deeper understanding for how things in our actual, physical universe work, from biology and physics to computation. Conversely, humanist base with no STEM experience collapses to rhetoric, completely detached from actual reality.
n4r9 · · focus · HN ↗
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Now by "sufficient grounding" I don't mean formal education and title. The point I'm making is that STEM fields provide grounding that's necessary but not sufficient to do proper philosophy, and humanities provide information that, while valuable and useful, is neither necessary nor sufficient.
If you accept that premise, then it's obvious from pure statistics that you'll find better philosophy in STEM circles than humanities, simply because it's more likely a philosophically inclined mind there had a chance to acquire the necessary grounding (whether due to formal schooling or personal interests).