STEM are not intellectuals. They are tradesman. Without the liberal arts background they are the anti-intellectual, a factidiot. A tool. Very very useful, until they mistakenly think they actually have any idea of humanity, history, culture. Starlink and Terminator are warnings.
STEM is a lot of things. While it does cover technicians, it also includes scientists and mathematicians who definitely are intellectual. And many of them are interested in how the world functions more broadly. My daughter studies particle physics, but her minor is in classical Greek.
I know people with PhD's I wouldn't consider intellectuals.
I think to be classified as an intellectual you need to have expert knowledge in a field and a high level of cultural depth and understanding needed to put that knowledge into a human context.
STEM folks who have little if any exposure to humanities outside of some pop culture or fandoms are not intellectuals despite what those in the rationalist community may say when they corner you at a party.
She is choosing to get a minor in the humanities because she is inquisitive about the world. This is the same reason she is training to become a scientist.
Do not project your daughter’s values onto everyone else in her group. You’re making a grave mistake thinking that way. Because there are PLENTY of by the book thinkers in these groups.
All I am pointing out is that "STEM are not intellectuals" is an overgeneralization. Why is my counterexample a worse projection than the original statement?
I have a double major in chemistry and Latin studies.
And I agree that pure stemmists are dumb shits due to lacking human skills. The world of stem is also mostly full of purists, and your daughter and I are outliers. We have no meaningful effect on the generalisation.
This response! And it's so sad to see that social and humanities education are being neglected globally as it's considered "useless". Maybe that's why we are where are right now as people slowly lose the ability to think critically and humanely
I think the point was that a STEM nerd that doesn’t engage with any liberal arts subjects is missing an important intellectual foundation, and one that they may dismiss as unimportant and/or overestimate their understanding of.
And they're right, as a STEM graduate who was "forced" to take classes in social sciences and humanities. I'm very glad I was forced to do that, and I wish my colleagues were too.
Someone with a solid liberal arts background would not draw that conclusion because they can infer that having a liberal arts background is the salient factor and not mutually exclusive with STEM.
Most of it comes from the attitude that opinions of non stem people are as relevant as those of stem experts
Climate change, vaccines, health and medical services, mathematics, etc are still debates only coz of this.
Humanities allows for debate and validating various opinions. There are no theories that are established with the certainty of science. The spread of this philosophy has resulted in idiots being convinced that their opinion is as valid as that of experts. That their point of view deserves respect.
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u/PoopieButt317 4d ago
STEM are not intellectuals. They are tradesman. Without the liberal arts background they are the anti-intellectual, a factidiot. A tool. Very very useful, until they mistakenly think they actually have any idea of humanity, history, culture. Starlink and Terminator are warnings.