Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of people just don’t have the brainpower to be comfortable with abstract physical or mathematical concepts. Nearly everyone can understand a love story.
Isn't part of the point of Romeo and Juliet that it's not a love story? Romeo and Juliet thought they were in love but they really were hormonal teens who knew each other for only two days. My understanding is that's the purpose of Romeo's initial infatuation with Rosaline; it shows that he's really just someone in love with the idea of being in love.
The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy that. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is not only basic, but can be stated in a sentence. Being able to generally recall the plot of Romeo & Juliet (or any Shakespeare play) is objectively harder than being able to spit out that sentence. I'll make the bold claim that Second Law of Thermodynamics would be recalled by far more scientists than the plot of Coriolanus would be by MFAs. The worst thing we do…
>>> is objectively harder I don't think it's objectively harder - at the very least, [citation needed]. It might be subjectively harder for you. But one is a random factoid, the other one is a story. Humans are, in general, exceedingly good at stories. Facts, we tend to focus on the areas we know. You and I might be good at physics facts, or software facts. Somebody else might be good at agriculture facts, or knittin…
The frequent retellings of familiar stories with new characters and plot twists suggests to me that there might not be as much learning involved in stories as pattern recognition. I have no citations to back that up but would be delighted to read a story that critiques the accepted story story.
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never said any of that. Perhaps you could benefit from a humanities education to learn how to respond an argument and construct your own.
>I never said any of that. Ah, but you did, and you stepped in something that a lot of scientists (and devs) resent, having others assume that they are robots, without heart or passion or insight. What you said was even worse, one group of people are trying to understand "what it means to be human", implying that the other group of people is not. It's literally dehumanizing, and I called you out, and now you're respo…
Humanities are the disciplines that focus on the question of what it is to be human. Sciences are the disciplines that focus on understanding physical reality, and in an indirect way the changes in our understanding of nature and physical reality do impact the discourse in Humanities.
None of that even remotely means anyone not involved in humanities is a "robot". You resent caricature of "devs" as "robots, without heart or passion or insight" and that is a false picture of devs, agreed. But that has nothing to do with the question of the two cultures.
The two cultures (actually the author managed to find a 3rd in "engineering" in his rather rambling rant) are ultimately about "tools". Here the tools in question are 'cognitive tools'.
The cultures are really cultures that grow around distinct cognitive tools.
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also picking on a particularly difficult area. The "second law of thermodynamics" is actually extremely subtle. In its original formulation it's basically a big mess talking about energy flows. In its simple/elegant/modern form, it relies on an understanding of this crazy thing called "entropy" which is measured like energy but isn't, and which gets pushed with an "intuitive" interpretation that is anything but…
It is not that hard to understand that a broken glass won't mend itself spontaneously
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#55> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and i…
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#56I get confused who is complaining about who. It reminds me of the two Spiderman meme where each are pointing at each other [1]. Most recently, I was watching an interview with Iain McGilchrist. His thesis in "The Master and His Emissary" is that our society has veered too far towards the intellectual. According to his thesis, scientific concerns are dominating our decision making processes. The ills in society are ca…
It would generally be fine if scientific concerns dominated decision making processes in most domains. The problem is that decision makers often decide based on their own preconceptions and biases, then justify those decisions after the fact with a thin veneer of cherry-picked "science". Then they use logical fallacies to demonize their opponents as "anti-science". (This is a general comment about problematic decisio…
As I understand it, his principle complaint is that analytical thinking has become the default mechanism for decision making. For example, if we were to have a discussion on whether people should live in cities or suburbs/rural areas, some people would immediately go to quantities and metrics. Maybe questions about carbon footprints or the cost of transportation or the ability to distribute food. In fact, given the demographic of HN, the vast majority here would probably think that was the correct approach. McGilchrist argues that is the result of indoctrination.
As a counter example, consider yourself feeling hungry and looking in the fridge to decide what to eat. You are unlikely to make that decision primarily based on some kind of analytical process involving calories or costs. You might take those into account (e.g. by avoiding eating cake for breakfast or something) but you would also use your intuition and preference. The same is true when you choose where to vacation, or what music to listen to, or who to marry.
Yet applying the same kind of preference to most other societal decisions is frowned upon these days. We are taught to think critically, to follow the data, to use logic as our primary means. We are trained to silence the non-analytic parts of our decision making process as if allowing them to influence our decisions is almost evil. We are taught to be objective and to break down complex questions into smaller pieces that we can quantify.
This leads to a mismatch between the kind of decision making process that is natural in most areas of life and the decision making processes we champion in modern education and policy making. If you are to believe him, half of our brain is dedicated to an intuitive decision making process - so we are advocating for throwing out half of our wisdom. In his view, if an entire half of our brain is dedicated to that kind of reasoning then we should consider that it has sufficient usefulness that we ought not to completely ignore it or work so hard to suppress it.
Again, I'm poorly steel-manning his position and I don't entirely agree with him. But there is something to be said about his position and its effects. It is hard not to see the general trend to use science to answer all questions, even those that you point out ought to remain free from its dominance.
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s because studying the humanities is quite a bit different than studying a technical field. The humanities are broadly trying to answer “what does it mean to be a human, and how should we live?” Sure, physics provides the occasional relevant answer, but less directly. It discovers facts about nature, and sometimes those facts give the discussion more context.
>The humanities are broadly trying to answer “what does it mean to be a human, and how should we live?” That's quite condescending. Scientists must not know how to live, or what it means to be human, since they don't have an English degree. Look, the humanities is where people who say things like "I'm not good with numbers" go. That's it.
edit: but since I'm here and fired up. here are some results from the trivial google search "famous humanities majors"
https://time.com/3964415/ceo-degree-liberal-arts/
https://blog.tesu.edu/10-notably-successful-people-with-libe...
https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-liberal-arts-majo...
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#58Another quote which gets to the heart of it, I think: >I remember G.H. Hardy remarking to me in the 30's with some mild puzzlement: 'Have you noticed how the word "intellectual" is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition that doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me.' Its scientists complaining about not being accepted by the "cool kids". A tale as old as time.
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would generally be fine if scientific concerns dominated decision making processes in most domains. The problem is that decision makers often decide based on their own preconceptions and biases, then justify those decisions after the fact with a thin veneer of cherry-picked "science". Then they use logical fallacies to demonize their opponents as "anti-science". (This is a general comment about problematic decisio…
I think my choice of words "scientific concerns" was poor. And to steel-man McGilchrist's position is difficult since he writes voluminous books that I honestly don't have the patience to read in their entirety. So I kind of have to piece together his ideas from the 3 or 4 podcasts I've seen him on. I also don't entirely agree with his framing. As I understand it, his principle complaint is that analytical thinking h…
I'm still learning it and it's interesting but I can't shake the feeling that the process almost seems designed to day-dream up patterns and connections between things where there are none. On the other hand, any more quantitative approach seems like it would only be useful to confirm my pre-existing beliefs, and not significantly innovate on them.
Perhaps we need a bit of both.
Re: The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]
#60> Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and i…
I don't buy that. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is not only basic, but can be stated in a sentence. Being able to generally recall the plot of Romeo & Juliet (or any Shakespeare play) is objectively harder than being able to spit out that sentence. I'll make the bold claim that Second Law of Thermodynamics would be recalled by far more scientists than the plot of Coriolanus would be by MFAs. The worst thing we do…