What liberal arts education is for (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#31

Post by wannabe44 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:24 AM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

WalterBright wrote: post #4

I took and engineering and science program in college. The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction. It's served me well. To make a living, it is necessary to learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bom…

> The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc.

That's just the justification they give for their existence. You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that.

The only reason humanities departments are this big today is because of the biological waste who can't make it to STEM or any other useful profession. If we limit humanities to classicists, linguists etc... whose work is actually rigorous and not just peddling political nonsense, humanities would not have such a bad rap.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#32

Post by gdwatson » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:25 AM UTC

mlsu wrote: post #24

The liberal arts education was originally conceived to educate the leaders of society. That is where the free-minded pedagogical angle comes from, it's explicitly privileged. The idea was that if the leaders of society learned what it means to have values, integrity, what it is to be virtuous, etc, then they would diffuse those values into society and create a just world. Society would transcend in the image of the g…

There are two angles on this. There is the rejection of the humanities in favor of science and wealth, which are good things in themselves but are not everything. But, on the other hand, what many modern humanities faculties offer is a very time-bound activism that rejects books from 500 years ago and is not interested in the permanent things.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#33

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:25 AM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #20

WalterBright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Caltech, the usual was to double major with one to make money, the other for fun. The fun one was usually Astronomy, where it was well known there were no prospects for employment. In my case the problem was there were too many fascinating engineering classes to take. I tried to pick out ones that would be of maximum benefit to my chosen career.

Tbf, Caltech is also a much more self selecting student base. Plenty of my MIT friends explicitly chose MIT over Caltech because they wanted a technical education but also the freedom to deep dive in English or Political Science as well (Caltech has great faculty in the HSS, but class choice was unsurprisingly limited). That said, based on your account age, I think you studied in the 1980s to early 2000s back when pr…

I graduated before 1980. A degree requirement was taking some liberal arts courses. I decided on economics. The prof taught that free markets were bad and marxism was good. That left(!) a bad taste wrt liberal arts. He went on to garner many accolades for his work.

I fulfilled the rest of the liberal arts requirement with foreign language classes and business accounting classes. I was not interested in taking political classes.

Fortunately, Newtonian Mechanics was free of politics. If your rocket doesn't fly, you cannot pretend it did.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#34

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #30

Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bom…

I haven't noticed that liberal arts majors are better at deciding whether to build a bomb or a bridge. Just look at all the boneheaded decisions by government.

A supposedly smart engineer type should be smart enough to spot the hole in this argument in their sleep.

"You need flour to make a cake." "I have plenty of flour and it never turned into a cake."

You have observed that it's possible to be educated and unwise.

Any individual may or may not be worth a damn at anything regardless of anything.

But you very rarely arrive at wisdom just by ignorant native intuition. At best some people are naturally well-intentioned, but being well intentioned in ignorance isn't very good. You're just easy for everyone else to manipulate.

It works the other way too. If you want to be effective at abusing and manipulating everyone else, you are a lot more effective at your negative goals if you aren't ignorant.

Basically there is no way to spin it that being ignorant is better than being educated.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#35

Post by wannabe44 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:35 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #8

Yet another dubious claim that "skills of close reading and critical questioning" are the products of a liberal arts education. Students can gain such things just fine in a STEM field if they care enough and aren't the sort who are just doing the bare minimum to get the sheepskin.

Nietzsche, Norse havamal, Greek epics and the Vedas of India did teach me some critical thinking skills on how we take certain types of morality and virtue for granted in the current society.

All this critical thinking runs opposite to the monoculture of liberal arts departments. Anyone would be better of studying them by themselves.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#36

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:38 AM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

WalterBright wrote: post #4

I took and engineering and science program in college. The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction. It's served me well. To make a living, it is necessary to learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bom…

>“The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc.”

This sounds good, but I suspect this is only applicable on a surface level due to the fact that the decision making will involve an extensive amount of stem-based analysis.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#37

Post by ajkjk » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:39 AM UTC

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#38

Post by fwn » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:41 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #23

vineyardmike wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education. That said, not everything is about a job or work. Sometimes (usually) education is itself a goal.

If education is the goal then it is a form of consumption and there is nothing wrong with consumption, but why should the government give out subsidized loans for consumption to young people? If people want to have an education for the sake of an education they should stop arguing in favor of maximally inflated tuition. You want the benefits of the consumer good while paying the least amount of money for it. Meanwhil…

It is worth noting that most of liberal arts education is fantastically cheap compared to many STEM degrees, especially medicine. Whenever you need a laboratory, a hospital.. it gets much more expensive than anything a liberal arts teacher can come up with.

I think it is a uniquely American perspective to automatically assume that worthy (or even just prestigious) education somehow has to cost at least 200k USD financed through life-altering, non-defaultable student loan contracts.

I do understand that the money is not just drained. Whenever I was on an American campus as a student, I was in awe at their extravagant setups. Lots of food, an irritating amount of sports, more like a small resort town than a place to do educational work.

No wonder there is only a very small fraction of the population who would choose to study humanities in such a system. But it says much more about the system than about the humanities or liberal arts.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#39

Post by XorNot » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:44 AM UTC

wannabe44 wrote: post #31

Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bom…

> The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc. That's just the justification they give for their existence. You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that. The only reason humanities departments are this big today is because of the biological waste who can't make it to STEM or any other useful profession. If we…

> You neither need not count on someone who wrote a thesis on 'feminist perspective of aztek dance' or some nonsense like that.

I like how this criticism can never point to anything real, people just make something up and then assign an implausibly large budget to it and then say everyone is doing that.

Re: What liberal arts education is for (2024)

#40

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #36

Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an infant first couple years of college, us engineers knew we were the useful smarties. Art is nice and all but it doesn't grow crops or cure cancer. So the arts are just this luxury that we can only afford thanks to us non-luxury necessary engineers & scientists. Sometime later I realized that stem only tells you how to build a bridge or a bomb etc. The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bom…

>“The humanities are what tells you whether to build a bomb or a bridge etc.” This sounds good, but I suspect this is only applicable on a surface level due to the fact that the decision making will involve an extensive amount of stem-based analysis.

Agreed that stem is a tool.

Tools help accomplish goals. Tools do not set goals.