> Then I realized that what I thought was just pure nonsense was actually someone talking normally, but it was about a field totally alien to me.
I want to thank you for commenting on this. It's been said before, but: technologists have a tendency to attempt and derive every other field from their own first principles and, when they fail to do so, discount fields as "pure nonsense."
We all (non-technologists included) benefit from not falling into that mode of thought.
Feynman famously suffered from this so it's hardly just computer people.
I spent some time in drug design, surprised at how stupidly things were done in the life sciences. Of course once I was immersed in the field I discovered that many of those so-called "stupid" things were quite rational and even most of the ones that were the result of legitimate path dependence, and not really so stupid as to be worth changing.
I also learned that people in the field had already thought about this and the current state was a result of people trying to fix procedural/cultural bugs.
Of course the residual of subtracting all those "many" things that turned out to be legit still left a few stupidities and tweaking a couple of them was enough to make a big difference to our startup.
Also: our own field (I'm back in computing) is full of path-dependent oddities and wholesale cargo cutting as well. I think it's human nature.
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
That’s a slightly different principle, as it applies to intro-domain work as well (say refactoring code or redesigning a circuit board to reduce cost).
The issue at hand is mistaking one’s own competence in domain D as evidence of competence in domain R.
I'm horrified by the autocorrect typos and misplaced word due to high speed typing on the phone. Actually, I suppose, "due to my lazy proofreading when using the phone."
Wow, reading my comment: what a lot of autocorrect errors that I did not pick up (I was composing on my phone). I’m glad some people found it comprehensible.
What exactly are you expecting OP to provide as satisfactory evidence here? Anything anyone says is gonna be anecdotal.
Personally, probably a solid third of the guys I knew in a college CS program were insufferably close-minded and reductionist about non-"hard stem" fields of study.
To be fair, a lot of people I know who are outside of stem also don't view non-stem fields in a shiny light. It's not a phenomenal inside CS. We as a society value stem fields higher and pay them more on average.
>What exactly are you expecting OP to provide as satisfactory evidence here?
I like how this is phrased. It's a more pithy question than the one I generally use with people who have loosely defined interrogatives or claims, which is:
"What proof would you need to make you believe otherwise"
Replication crisis is real. It's at least somewhat likely that large chunks of the research output in those non-stem fields is just the result of p-hacking. Go ahead and try to replicate studies in Psychology. Good luck.
>Personally, probably a solid third of the guys I knew in a college CS program were insufferably close-minded and reductionist about non-"hard stem" fields of study.
Did you read your own comment? There's a reason people dismiss those fields because they are largely anti-scientific and produce results that don't hold up under scrutiny.
Would is be close-minded or reductionist to dismiss Homeopathy? Because there are certain philosophical topics that have little more merit (beyond a study in philosophical thought/history).
Homeopathy promises tangible physical effects that should be able to be measured, so as a field of study it's "competing" with medicine, so in my opinion it's only fair to judge it on equal terms via empirical study.
Philosophy as a field of study is not at all making those claims, nor is anyone expecting it to.
Some Homeopathists promise tangible physical effects, not all. The point remains the same - how is value determined?
Why shouldn't I teach Q-Anon theory in the classroom, but as a humanity, not a science? or Reality distortion field theory? Witch studies?
Claiming different standards of value feels a lot like the distinction: "science for the world, religion for the soul"
If I had a criticism for the arrogant SW devs depicted earlier as representing a majority, it would be that they don't appreciate logic/science in STEM (or their ability to apply it), not that they apply it to everything.
It's a good question, I'm not sure I'd have an insightful answer there. Surely there's a difference between Q-Anon, the brain-child of one guy just a few years ago, and questions like "how to derive meaning in life?", "how to be a good person?", which have been discussed in virtually every culture over millennia. Q-Anon may be an interesting case study of some aspect of our current zeitgeist and on the nature of truth and could play a role in understanding some small part of the "meaning in life" question.
In my opinion, equating "Q-Anon theory" and pretty much any well-established field of academic study is like comparing one single rubber boot and the evolution of bipedal life. Sure, one can learn a few things from studying the boot, but the depth understanding of the world and our place in it from understanding the evolution of microbes, to animals to even have legs, let alone feet and toes, and an intelligence and culture to the point that we manufacture footwear far surpasses the surface we breach with any one modern example.
If a homeopath isn't promising tangible physical effects (and isn't charging $19.99 per dose, haha) but just spiritual effects, well I don't know. I wouldn't try to judge the validity of his spiritual claims against modern medicine in a controlled trial, no. You can distinguish my previous response as relating to scientific claims posed by certain homeopaths. Beyond those physical claims, anything else doesn't sound too far from a religious claim.
> science for the world, religion for the soul
You say that like it's a bad thing :). I'm not religious, but it's obviously played a major role throughout history in people's search for meaning and for how to be a good person.
I'm not sure I understand your last point. Could you say more about what you mean? Their lack of appreciation for empirical rationalism in their own fields lead them to underestimate the value of other fields? How does one imply the other?
Having worked in technology in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and SV as well as working regularly with (and at) teams on the East coast, in the south, Japan, Taiwan, China, India, Europe, the UK (it ain't Europe now!), I've found this tendency of those in technology, and especially software, to discount the complexity and systematization of other fields, disproportionately common.
I was well and truly familiar with the classic "why don't you just..." way of speaking before I'd ever even visited the bay. Similarly, I'd witnessed (and participated in) mocking of domain-specific jargon when I was younger, and I see it still today.
It's not data, but my experience in the space strongly supports the suggestion that a dismissive, reductive, and aloof posture is quite common in tech. It's one reason that I regularly tell team members that engineers should be professional pessimists, especially about themselves and their ignorance.
I don't have any hard evidence, sorry. I've also never spent any significant amount of time in SV or engaging with SV culture (besides this website).
What I have is anecdotes and idle thoughts: most of my STEM peers were laser focused on their majors and avoided the humanities (and even other STEM topics) like the plague. The university I went to enabled and even encouraged this, since it makes their alumni statistics look great and kept the four-year-graduation-to-tech-job machine well-oiled.
I have a difficult time assigning immediate blameworthiness when talking about this: it's frustrating to hear tech people disregard things just because they fail to adapt them, but it strikes me as a failure of education rather than a solely personal failure.
Well, what you describe here (avoiding humanities) isn't the same as what you describe in you original post (discount fields as "pure nonsense.").
That aside, OP talked about what seems to be jargon, and unfamiliarity with it.
"attempt and derive every other field from their own first principles" - sounds like an attempt to engage with a topic that goes further than merely learning the terminology.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "adapt" in this context; but why do you assist on assigning blame/failure? Is it possible some topics are nonsense?
Funny how I read the same comment sections and don't agree with this characterisation. Maybe selective memory is at play? People tend to remember the 1 arrogant dismissal and forget the 9 measured comments.
In any case; /are you referring to any field outside tech, e.g. history, geology, metallurgy?
I'm a physicist. Interestingly enough, a lot of physicists and other scientists actively participate in music, the arts, and so forth. I'm a musician. I read literature. I visit art galleries and attend the opera.
I think some people have a sort of tribal sense for what ideas they're receptive to. Others don't. I don't know if there's any kind of predictor or pattern.
There are engineers who think that physics is bunk -- that the precision implied by theory is not believable.
I want to thank you for commenting on this. It's been said before, but: technologists have a tendency to attempt and derive every other field from their own first principles and, when they fail to do so, discount fields as "pure nonsense."
We all (non-technologists included) benefit from not falling into that mode of thought.