The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#12The same joke over and over.
It's still true.
What's true about it? That, within certain contrived scenarios involving existential threats to humankind, humanities knowledge becomes useless?
Science and technology are important, and deserve more respect and funding than they get in this society, but not to the detriment of all else.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#13Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful positive effect at all on the human condition? Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day…
Haha, good one. I had prepared a rather sharp reply, but just before hitting the reply button I figured this is just some awesome trolling... Right? I hope so!
It could go either way. We're already well into Poe's Law territory.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#14As someone with a philosophy degree and many years of formal training in classical music, I give this piece a hearty thumbs up.
While the author clearly values the liberal arts (um, it's McSweeney's), there's something to be said for actually getting things done in the world. A lot, actually.
What the author is parodying is less the degree itself but more the miles wide and inches deep approach to education and life that many intelligent people are fond of taking.
I've been guilty of this, and satire is usually born of familiarity, so I assume the author has been as well. The point is, recognize that pursuit of education as amusement and status symbol is a hobby done for you and none other, and if you want to make some kind of impact outside of your own head, you're going to either have to get deeper and more focused or get more pragmatic.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#15Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful positive effect at all on the human condition? Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day…
Listen... I studied Math (B.S), Philosophy (Minor), and Classical Literature(B.A). I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage a bit of perspective on your part.
Sure, read some books, give them good thought, encourage others to read them too. Write poetry, publish articles, and start groups to discuss and reevaluate the social, psychological, and aesthetic relationships expressed by and represented in artistic productions. Think about, read up on, and be interested in history, social geography, food politics, 10th century Latin lyrics, the structuralist writings of Roland Barthes (Mythologies is one of my personal all time favorite books), and the consequences of modernism in the 21st century - do all of that. I'm saying do it. But do not attempt to argue that the study of the natural world is bereft of its own wonder, beauty, and artistry. Science, and more importantly, the scientific perspective, has liberated us (as a civilization) from the oppression of authority-as-truthmaker, and imbued us with an inquisitive fact-seeking attitude that serves the progress of humanity.
I'm giving you a point up - you deserve a second chance.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
The irony of this is incredible. You're reaching to label this as an example of confirmation bias. What's the term for trying to make data fit a preconceived idea, again?
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#17There's a flaw in assuming that an undergraduate liberal arts education is terminal. For instance, "between 1986 and 1995, more people earning PhD degrees in the earth sciences graduated from Carleton (50) than any other four-year college." And that's from a tiny liberal arts school with a total population of ~2,000 students.
There’s a lot of fuzziness about what “liberal arts” actually means. To me it means something like a general education including both sciences and the humanities. In this sense there’s nothing the least surprising about getting a liberal arts education and a degree in the earth sciences. But I see it in a lot of contexts where it seems to mean fluffy humanities and only fluffy humanities.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#18Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful positive effect at all on the human condition? Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day…
We only know about the threats to our existence because of science. You could not even make the above statements without the knowledge it has delivered.
Its true that some things it has created have caused problems, but it is also responsible for many of the solutions to those problems and will deliver many more.
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#19Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful positive effect at all on the human condition? Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day…
Perhaps you should
- stop using your computer
- stop using electricity altogether
- stop using any form of transport other than walking
- stop wearing modern clothes
- stop drinking water that was cleaned with the help of technology
- stop eating food that was produced with the help of technology
- stop living in a house
And most of all, stop reading those books for your liberal arts degree. Who needs science?
Re: The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree
#20Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful positive effect at all on the human condition? Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day…
Pretty much everyone I love is alive and healthy today because of science. I myself am alive and healthy today because of science.
Hell, you can even start pointing at particular bits of science. For example, there would be mass famine without the Haber-Bosch process for ammonia synthesis.