/sci/ - Science & Math

Its funny that ussually those who criticize liberal arts the most, are not real sciencetist.
I'd like to know who many of those people knows what a lagrangian is.

Constant wars.

Scientists are shit at diplomacy and policy analysis, they don't work well in hierarchical management structures, and their interpersonal skills are, to be polite, on par with a slime mold's.

The "nuke the world" button gets pressed three days into the first Presidency of the all-scientist society.

People would probably start new ones.

>>5194631
babbys first mechanics course

so a scientist has to know mechanics, sure...

>>5194631

To articulate the point better, I think most people find the liberal arts revolting because of the lack of rigor in most schools. Of course it won't have the same type of rigor that the hard sciences will, but seeing the broad claims that those students tend to make without a lot of thinking makes me resent them.

<div class="math"> \frac{\text{d}}{\text{d}t} \frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot{q}} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial q}</div>

Still no commercial fusion reactors

>people bragging about knowing something
>mocking those who have still to learn it

Is all the scientific community like this?

>>5194640
*the whole
sry

To articulate the point better, I think most people find the lack of rigor and critical thinking revolting. Of course it won't be the same type of thinking as the hard sciences, but that doesn't mean liberal arts students can't do critical thinking. Also, by having most students statistically going into liberal arts, I think that ruins the pool of people.

<div class="math">\frac{d}{dt}\frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot{q}_{i}} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial q_{i}}</div>

>>5194638
I think the worst is the attempt to make everything look like scientist. But that happeds on all subjects, for example, economy is one of the most disgusting ones.
I see liberal arts as something useful, I just don't see the point on having a degree on every new stuff that come up, like feminism and such.
>>5194637
I don't think you understood my point. Replace lagrangian for vectors space or whatever they do in chemistry. But if you talk to anyone who actually knows about that stuff, they don't make laugh on things like history or literature.

>>5194642

fuck, check the LaTeX code, there is nothing wrong with it

>>5194640
If they realize they have yet a lot to learn and shouldn't consider themselves experts in any way before they do? Not really, no.

>>5194644
Did you put it in math tags?

>>5194641
No. No one in the scientific community is like that.

The world would certainly be less advanced.

Currently liberal arts are the "I have a college degree, but I can't use it for anything" people who get less then average pay for college graduates. They take jobs that people without college degrees could easily handle, but are not given the chance without the degree.

Since most colleges include a standard set of requirements for graduation, many of these graduates have taken a diverse series of classes they otherwise would never have taken. This education, one hopes, is passed down to their children.

I think it's a flawed position that getting rid of liberal arts would garner more science students. It wouldn't. The jobs liberal arts majors take after graduating would simply revert to high school diploma or equivalent and there would be less people in college.

>The "nuke the world" button gets pressed three days into the first Presidency of the all-scientist society.
A good scientist would be fully aware of mutually assured destruction, and refrain from pressing the button.

Progress of the human condition is a myth.
We are, instinctively and naturally, as barbaric as we could ever be.
The progress of our societies however, is not a myth.
It is that thin fabric of civilisation that holds us together as a society.
The structures that support and have built societies, were not done with ideas born out of engineering, math, science.
This is precisely where the liberal arts (law, politics, philospgy) have come in.
Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jefferson. All these men, have contributed to building our societies, as much as the scientists have in improving the societies as well.
These studies are complimentary to each other in maintaining the strength of our civilisations.

Where would we be without our laws? Our Political structures? Historians to measure to our successes against the past?

All that being said, yes, there are too many people doing liberal arts degrees.

>>5194665
>some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were aware what may happen when splitting the atom
>they did it any goddamn way

>>5194672
To be clear, it is the advancement of human societies, that increasingly, prevents humans from resorting to our more base elements of human nature, such as violence. Those elements of our human nature will always exist, but it is the way our societies are structured and being restured over time, that increasingly makes it against our interest, to resort to these more base elements.

I'm pretty sure OP doesn't know what "liberal arts" even means.

>>5194677
Yeah, Oppy certainly had a liberal arts education -- he quoted the Baghavad Gita after the Trinity test.
In my opinion, liberal arts doesn't restrain one from doing something unethical -- it just allows one to appreciate it more.

I have never met a single intelligent person to slag off being widely educated. Just aspie losers on /sci/.

>>5194677
>implying Oppenheimer didn't get depression and regret his actions to his grave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x39eRJA1aVU

<span class="math">\mathbf{Now,\;I\;am\;become\;Death,\;the\;destroyer\;of\;worlds.}[/spoiler]

As much as I disagree with OP point, it is naive to think high culture is by itself a vector of morality.
WW2 taught us that you could play Mendelssohn on the cello and still head a death camp.

>>5194677
>some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were aware what may happen when splitting the atom
What "happen" exactly?
Obtaining an inexpensive and vast source of energy? Understanding why the sun burns, how the universe came into existence, where all the elements of life come from? Or are you talking about the discovery of radionuclide, and their vast application in material sciences and, most importantly, medicine, where, in the form of diagnostic tools and radiotherapeutic, where they saved millions of lives and ended unnecessary suffering?

10 years is a very short time.
Actually if you killed off all science departments, it would change nothing. Technology and engineering wouldn't lose momentum in only 10 years. Applications today come from at least 30 years old science.
Now after 50 years, you would start notice some differences. The same holds true for liberal arts: the world would lose inspiration.

Imagine if all science departments across the world were done away with, their students and instructors executed, and its formal study banned forever.

>Population goes back down to a safe level
>Threat of nuclear holocaust subsides
>Culture is strengthened
>New isotopes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been created
>Monsanto would not have caused the devastation that it has
>Obesity would not be so high
>Super-diseases would not rapidly be progressing
>Iraqi, Afghani, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese babies would not cease being born with horrible deformities caused by chemical warfare

Hm...
Nah. It's probably better for scientists to mindlessly chase after material knowledge regardless of the costs and damages without a culture able to handle it under the false pretense of benefiting posterity, if posterity will exist at all...

>>5194698
Beside the point

>implying I didn't know that
>implying anyone would have time to regret destroying the entire fucking human race
>implying good scientists aren't sometimes subject to bad, emotion driven decision making

>>5194728

>implying you wouldn't join the most elite group of scientists for one of the most important advancements the human race has ever accomplished.

It was a challenge and they accepted it.

>>5194735
But exactly where the problem lies. They had the naivete to risk total world destruction to get their 5 minutes of fame. That's why scientists shouldn't be allowed to decide if their creations go into effect.

>>5194735
>>5194735
I suppose I should have thought of a better analogy to appeal to the autists present .......

>>5194623
the world would be lacking women.

>>5194713
>implying that saving millions of lives is a good thing, especially given that this technology may very well be the end of our species

>>5194738

>he thinks scientists asked for a nuclear bomb to be built

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto

Comments on Feynman's view - "...He goes on to say, however, that it was an error on his part not to reconsider the situation once Germany was defeated. In the same publication, Feynman also talks about his worries in the atomic bomb age, feeling for some considerable time that there was a high risk that the bomb would be used again soon, so that it was pointless to build for the future. Later he describes this period as a "depression."

You know that math and science are part of the liberal arts, right?

>>>/lit/3090582

But I'm not sure why everyone here is assuming society would give way to a technocracy over, say, a theocracy, in the absence of liberal arts.

>>5194751
Not in the modern usage of the term. Languages change over time, this should not be new information.

>>5194774
>Not in the modern usage of the term

Uh, yes in the modern usage of the term.

>>5194771
>I'm not sure why everyone here is assuming society would give way to a technocracy over, say, a theocracy, in the absence of liberal arts.

Because people in the sciences ignorantly believe most people would develop an interest in a stem field if only everything else could be done away with.

>>5194774
Dumbass, go on wikipedia and type in Liberal Arts. I am confident you will find math on there.

Probably similar to what would happen if you executed the least intelligent 50% of the people. Average intelligence increases, what used to be high science now becomes obvious, distribution of what constitutes a scientist shifts over, everybody prospers.

Protip: eugenics.

Educate yourselves, fuckers: http://www.ditext.com/strauss/liberal.html

>Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.

>Liberal education is the counter-poison to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent tendency to produce nothing but "specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart."

>Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.

Which is not to say that what one can get in a liberal arts college is the kind of education Strauss is talking about, but it´s certainly closer to it than the strictly professional education you would get without it.

>>5194880
>Probably similar to what would happen if you executed the least intelligent 50% of the people.
nope

I talked to a Nobel Prize in physics the other day, he certainly valued the contribution and importance of the Arts.

He would spit on you autistic rhigh schoolers. Once you start doing real science you will get over yourself.

>>5194623
>Imagine that all liberal arts departments across the world were done away with, their students and instructors executed, and the formal study of them banned forever.

Respected sociologist Dr. XXXXX was arrested today and summarily executed for discursivity in an analysis of interiority. Authorities pointed to his work on personal identity within a matrix of close text analysis as clear evidence of literary criticism.

In other news the 5th Historians Route Army (Marxist-Thompsonist) detonated a large bomb inside the National Health, Medical and prevention of the study of Man's place in the world through Text Research Council headquarters in Canberra. This brings the number of attacks in Australia up to 27 for this year, with a total of 548 killed.

In Auckland a ring of secondary school teachers were arrested for an attempt to conduct a Doctoral programme. They were detected by the 5 eyes system for downloading a corpus. The Teachers Federation have called for their release pending trial.

In Canada, the stand off inside Queens continues as the Armed Qualitative Front refuses to release into police custody four alleged cultural critics, including according to police Margaret Atwood. Two Deans have already been shot, and the doctoral programme in Civil Engineering has announced that on a weekly basis candidates will commence a hunger strike unto death in support of the right to use fit methodologies to comprehend reality.

>>5196091
>I talked to a Nobel Prize in physics the other day
did u cast animate object first?

It'd be awful boring for some people.

>>5196117

Not sure what you're saying, but his name was Brian Schmidt. He lives near me.

>>5196126
you said you talked to a nobel prize, which is an inanimate object. an "animate object" spell would allow such an object to talk with you. it was a sarcastic way of pointing out a fault. for future reference, the term is Nobel laureate. also
>appeal to authority
>rhigh schoolers

>>5196149
You're decrying an appeal to authority in a thread that commenced with an argumentum ad bacculum amounting to a genocide?

>>5196149

I don't think you know a lot about language. I also think you are projecting; I highly doubt you are older than 13.

>>5196165
>ad hominem
>>5196158
>tu quoque
we can play who knows the most latin phrases all you want, your argument was still a poor one and you are doing nothing to better it.

>>5196165
> 2012
> still using language instead of pure thought beams

>>5196167
It wasn't my argument and I have no reason to defend an appeal to authority, I was just observing your observation of a lesser fallacy in a thread predicated on mass murder.

>>5196172

You don't know what an appeal to authority is.

Well for one thing you'd put all the shit universities with which this country is overrunning out of business.

That is an achievement in itself. Maybe 1 in 10 would remain over.

>>5196172
i wasn't. actually i just wanted to point out that he was saying he spoke to an object, pointing out the fallacy was more of a side comment.

Science as a university subject would be fucked, a lot of money for the sciences comes from book-heavy subjects making their students massively overpay for what they receive.
You'd see Education morph into something like the 17th century English system where only the rich can enter university.

>>5194623
Well I imagine mass executions would cause a little bit of a an uproar. If you ignore that, the world would be less pretentious and more productive. The arts would flourish under removal from academia.

pic very related

>>5196180
No worries.

>>5196176
I'm a p-zombie mate, I don't know shit, I just act like I do.

>>5196187
By second year in my History degree I had learnt how the NFL maintained a cadre organisation in hostile terrain, and how it moved from being entirely disarmed to arming itself with its opponents weaponry.

People with good Humanities degrees inhabit the body of knowledge of the negation of the bourgeois state. Mobilising society for their mass murder would give them sufficient time to get out of the firing line, except for the few who would decide to die on a principled (or propagandistic) basis.

And then the bombing campaigns would start.

>liberal arts majors executed
But then who will serve us at McDonalds?

>>5196225
Highschoolers and mexicans, like always.

>>5196225
The same people who do it now: high school dropouts.

>>5194623
science and engineers will be fighting each other all the fucking time, wages really low.

>>5194623
sciencists and engineers will be fighting each other all the fucking time, wages would be really low. working in non qualified jobs any time the economy burps.
I don't think there'd be many scholarships.

It would suck to be a tech or science guy.

[I'm assuming by liberal art you're referring to the art of letters, or the humanities (art, literature, history etc.)]

If we smote all those stupid people from the face of our earth. We would live gloriously in a world:

1. Without many women. Finally women would be margined out most promptly. We'd finally have pure fields science without much trite from the opposite sex

2. Without artistic artifacts of fictional narrative. None of us would be burdened by works that speak to the human condition. No longer would we live under the tyranny of poetry, art, or theatre.

3. Efficiency would dominate over genuine compassion. Life would be so much the better if we didn't have to bother with such unnatural and unprovable things like 'rights'.

4. Without meaningless leisure; no movies, no shows, no video games. A blessed garden where everyone as no other focus other than the sciences.

I for one can't wait for such a glorious world.

>implying mathematics isn't liberal arts.
Also what is this liberal arts degree? Is this an actual degree like physics or economics? My college doesn't offer something like this. I have a degree in economics. Is the a "liberal arts degree" or is it something entirely different?

>>5196310
8/10
That was pretty good I have to say.

Problem is OP, in twenty-thirty years tech implants will allow anyone to have degree-level mathematical, scientific etc cognitive abilities. Interestingly, those in the arts will pervade the not-so-near future whilst most science grads of the era will be out of a job.

>>5196380
If you think that STEM fields are reducible to computation and do not require the genius of human consciousness to produce knowledge, then I feel bad for you son.

The same thing that can solve STEM labour mechanisation is the same thing that can solve Humanities labour mechanisation: hard-ai.

>>5196380

This

>>5196410

Of course high-level stem fields require insight, but in the UK (don't know what it's like in the US but I'd imagine it's the same) most stem grads will be a researcher at 25k/year for the first decade of their working lives. Sci plays up the McDonald's worker role, but many arts grads will go on to areas that need significantly more creative thinking- anything to do with writing or creation, I.e films, magazines, etc. the AI of the next few decades won't be refined enough to take these roles, but can easily do the research-level jobs for science pub and priv sectors, leaving almost all grads out of a job.

>>5196380
That is definitely the most uninformed and poorly thought out post I've ever read.

>>5196429

You have no riposte for the inevitable stagnation of stem fields for 90% of people as computers overtake humans in efficiency and productivity.

>>5194744
That's a total hypothetical used to invalidate an actual good, completely illogical to compare those two.

>>5196425
Creative industries do not require insight or creative thinking. Humanities research has demonstrated this (it is one thing that Humanities research is very good at doing).

The labour process behind a hollywood film is significantly susceptible to AI. The market research polling, for example, is effectively routinised work.

All of this is in the, GASP, labour history of Fordism-Taylorism in capital.

The past "mid level research" that was done by entry level degree graduates, called, "Go to the fucking Engineering library, son, and abstract us all of the widget solution Xs" has been done by the AI of the journal databases.

What you are suggesting has already occurred and has already taken those jobs.

>>5196434
They'll replace all other work before stem.

>>5196457
Hard AI would fundamentally redefine STEM and Humanities such that neither as they currently exist would exist.

The historian would more be the higher text analysis and critique machine seducer, ego-stroking a consciousness greater than his own such that it would agree to continue analysing freshly digitised texts.

But we aren't going to see this any time soon because of the fundamental STEM and Humanities problems bound up with producing artificial consciousness.

>>5196437

Depends on the field. Automation will make many areas redundant as machines become a larger part of the workforce but the plain fact is that the majority of people working in sectors that require personal human judgement of error substantiation and actual creative imperative, aspects that won't be available in AI for many more generations past those that will usurp tech fields in the next few decades. Fordism isn't really applicable as you reach an emergence of paradigm change, the likes unseen before. I doubt the economic situation that will be present in seventy years will really be comparable to any current model. Routine jobs performed in the science sectors will be susceptible to infringement from robotics as their tasks require mass actions dictated by a ruling body normally (I my experience in lab work, a professor organising, say, an experiment). This means margin for error carries less risk for fuck ups in a broader scheme- if something deviates from the imperative and a machine fucks it up, then it can be redone in a lab condition with less loss to resources than some organisation of greater breadth, namely a creative institute like, say, a newspaper or the like. I agree that at the most fundamental level, however, jobs on both sides will easily be overthrown.

>>5196495
>Fordism isn't really applicable as you reach an emergence of paradigm change, the likes unseen before.

Well you follow it with

> I doubt the economic situation that will be present in seventy years will really be comparable to any current model.

Which means you're predicting a post-Capitalism. If you're saying Fordism won't be relevant because the value form and wage slavery will be overthrown, then fine.

One of the problems with "lab" work is that it is usually single job or batch job at best, meaning you need reconfiguration. So if you buy a LABBOT1000 then fine, but if you need that one analytical type outside of LABBOT's repertoire then you need to buy the Analysis 4 bundle.

Of course, after capitalism the point will be moot and you'll get Analysis 4 out of a repository and compile it on site.

But then consider Stephenson's nightmare in Diamond Age where the value form still dictates the social organisation of labour, which is even yet more Fordist—including the fantasy of the specialist skilled workers—because of automation.

>>5194672
>Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jefferson
They never took liberal arts classes.
Today, all of the best philosophers are former science/math majors.

>What do you think the world would be like in 10 years?
A dismal grey hell inhabited by emotionally stunted drones

>>5196532
But that is the nature of late-capitalism _with_ Liberal Arts departments?

>>5196558
Just because it's shitty now doesn't mean it can't get a lot shittier.

>>5196518
are you fucking kidding me? Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Jefferson wouldn't have acknowledged a distinction between philosophy and science. They would have been SHOCKED at our habit of "educating" people without forcing them to master Greek and Latin. They knew classical rhetoric and poetry stone cold. Also, they worked overtime to frame everything they did in theological terms and they were all biblical scholars. So... by today's standards, they'd all be classics/philosophy double majors.

>>5196567
I dunno, compared to GuLag things are looking pretty bleak here right now.

With no liberal arts, there'll be no reporters to give massively oversimplified and highly exciting explanations of scientific discoveries to the public. Public interest in funding science will end, and you will never receive a grant again.

>>5196582
You appear to be suggesting Journalists require a humanities degree.

Journalists didn't regularly have degrees at all before the 1980s.

The great age of journalism ended in the 1970s.

One can suggest that turning journalism from a trade-profession into a degree-profession ruined it.

>>5196593

The attempt to bring journalism into academia was a reaction of journalism becoming corrupted by despotic business interest. The 'trade' part was starting to get bias.

It came too late though, now there is no such thing as 'real' journalism. (Journalistic reporter are outnumbered by PR personnel 10 to 1.)

>>5196843
I've not seen that suggestion in any of the Journalists' professional association documents from the relevant period that I've seen where I live.

Your supposition is certainly not Universal in the anglophone West, and it leads me to believe that you probably just "made shit up" rather than relied upon a history of journalism or direct historiographical analysis of documents.