It took more self-control than I even knew I had not to comment in
that thread.
I’d honestly forgotten how ridiculous TheMotte posters are, or how
vehemently they believe in The Cathedral. Reading the thread, it becomes
obvious that one of the reasons ‘OP’ hates the social/political sciences
so much is that social/political scientists often say things that go
against their personal politics.
And they can’t handle the obvious explanation for this (that maybe if
their ideas aren’t shared by the people who study the topic for the
living, they aren’t good ideas), so the only solution they have left is
to claim that the entire field is intellectually bankrupt. They can’t be
wrong - instead there must be some kind of conspiracy or fault in
academia that makes it more left-wing.
They also have no idea how research in the social sciences operates.
At all. They’re an almost textbook case of a STEMlord who holds all
other fields to the standards of the experimental sciences, assumes that
competence in STEM confers competence in every other field, and has no
understanding of the impact the social/political sciences has made in
their lives. And I say this as someone who works in STEM themselves -
it’s really disappointing how common people like this are.
but they like know javascript or something, so theyre the ultimate authority on providing goods and services to the people
(actually i think most STEMlords are self hating cucks without tech jobs)
I always find it hilarious when they start frantically looking for explanations for why most 'smart' (prolly not the right word, idk) people seem to disagree with them. And it happens semi-often there.
Could I be out of touch? No, it's the [academics] who are wrong!
I am tempted to address specific pieces of the OPs post. But rather than sift through the rubble of a ruined worldview, I would rather make a few remarks on the it as a whole:
It confuses "real" (quantifiable) economic value with human value. Dogmas such as "science = truth" invariably follow with " well the more sciencier it is the truer it is!". And none of the social/political forces that underpin the worldview itself are explicity discussed. How frustrating!
I will echo your sentiment in how common this belief is amongst STEM majors.
As far as I know its the belief that mainstream academia has leans left not because the right wing does stuff like deny climate change (despite what actual climate scientists say) or endorse trickle down economics (despite what most actual economists say), but because there's a leftist conspiracy to keep right-wing thought out of academia.
It's especially hypocritical coming from the Right, which usually believes that a demographic's representation in an area reflects natural, innate tendencies. Barely any women in tech? They say most women just aren't suited for the work. Tons of Black people in jail? They say Black people are just naturally more criminal.
But when there aren't enough right-wingers in academia, suddenly it can't be because right-wing thought is getting more blatantly anti-intellectual; it has to be some kind of anti right-wing conspiracy.
The conservative persecution complex is really something else. They can control the presidency, the senate, the supreme court, and the majority of state governments, as they do in the US, and still the left is supposed to exert total influence on every part of our lives and are culpable for every single problem that exists anywhere.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/04/28/conservatives-will-never-get-the-respect-they-crave-they-dont-deserve-it/
“ Despite holding nearly every lever of power in America, conservatives are still very upset that no one likes them:”
“ But at a certain level, this tired conservative whine is correct: the people who lead and create culture don’t respect them. Artists, actors, inventors, comedians, entrepreneurs, academics, musicians, journalists and professionals across almost all creative industries have no patience for what passes for modern conservatism. And why should they?”
Ugh, I hear this from my right-wing relatives all the time, that universities are controlled by liberals and preach left-wing propaganda. The really important thing for universities to do is to teach critical thinking so people can come to their own conclusions.
> The really important thing for universities to do is to teach critical thinking so people can come to their own conclusions.
And I guess conservatives presume that people coming to their own conclusions after university *must* reflect a similar distribution of views of those people prior to attendance or among society in general, *or something is afoot*.
A Moldbug phrase. All of society and how things actually work is a memetic parasitical conspiracy. Also, academics actually rule the world. And America is a communist country.
A short guide to STEMlords' tolerance towards social sciences
When SS has archeological or literary proof against religion; proposes seemingly discriminatory statistics; has a psychology pop science article that favors their biases= They may be soft but they're an asset to explaining things science can't reach yet.
When SS says anything else= What a stupid waste of time and money; anything non-STEM related may also be called a hobby.
It's an almost classic hallmark of their particular kind of bigot.
Though to be fair that's pretty much the lens through which they judge every science (things like physics and engineering only escape their scorn because they can't be 'corrupted' by 'wokeness').
They hate biology almost as much as they hate the social sciences, simple because actual geneticists tend to disagree with their racial hierarchies of intelligence (that suspiciously always tend to be based on the work of 1980s psychologists - they say they prefer the 'hard' sciences to the 'soft', but when it comes down to it what they really like is anything that can make them feel superior).
Ask them to provide a single genetic/evolutionary mechanism for anything they propose and they instantly break down, because not only can they not provide an explanation, they also don't understand enough about biology to even begin to make one up that sounds vaguely plausible.
This is super funny because at least half the political scientists I
know work somewhere in public administration or adjacent to it, where
they work together with engineers to design goods and
services.
I think the alternative quote could have been If you, after high school, opt for studying "soft sciences", it means you basically despise work (as in "productive work": which also explains their opinion of lawyers.
teachers provide the service of teaching which if it's teaching a "real" subject (i.e. STEM) is useful otherwise it's hogwash waste of $$ (from their POV)
If studying the causes of war, or why people join gangs would be so
much “producing something useful”, then why today, with all the
man-hours that have been spent in the course of history in studying such
“useful” topics, we still have plenty of wars, famine and gangs today?
It looks as if all these studies didn’t produce a lot of effects, in the
end… While instead, for example, we don’t have any more smallpox, which
has been eradicated thanks to “slightly more productive” - to put it
mildly - studies.
If studying the spread of pandemics and how to stymie them would be so useful, then why today, with all the man-hours that have been spent in the course of history in studying such “useful” topics, we still have a deadly pandemic paralyzing the western and only the western world?
I’m guessing psychology is also among the “soft sciences.” Thanks for
the notion of selection bias, work-despisers!
Hell, the whole screed is a erroneous characterization that gets by
on the same low standard it’s complaining about, if not worse.
To accept it entails that you must reject it.
A good portion of the hard sciences have nothing to do with goods and
services.
Do you think that consumerist dweebs get anything when a new genus of
mouse louse is described? No. Is string theory relevant? No. Did we get
anything practically useful out of the Large Hadron Collider? No.
I don’t give a s**t if you need goods and services. Do you need
bridges, buildings, shops, food, material goods, iPhones, surgery,
plumbing, cars? Well, don’t look at me!
Take Sociology and Anthropology, for instance. 5th- and 2nd-most
Democrat-dominated professions on the chart. Now, I have only caught
glimpses of the weird shit academic anthropologists get up to, but even
with that, the vast myriad of ways different human cultures have defined
justice, peace, freedom, proper family and gender roles, and so forth,
while still managing to function (or thrive!) would make me way less
likely to think “OK but my late-2010s American urban-class culture has
got that shit all figured out, to the extent that I can publicly call
for the mass murder of anyone who disagrees.” Yet that is apparently the
only conclusion professors of sociology and anthropology ever come
to!
I mean, all the replies are critical, ranging from “you have a point,
but…” to “this is garbage, next time we ban you.” That’s gotta count for
something, right? The very fact that someone like this exists is
morbidly fascinating, but they’re clearly not going unchallenged even in
/r/TheMotte.
It's worth noting that /r/sneerclub is basically "shitrationalistssay"
Typically a post on /r/themotte that made it here would be -10 or so karma wise, but it's not that *every* post is like this, it's that there's this undercurrent of this sort of thinking in most posts.
The three themes would be
1. A dislike of black people (hbd, 50/13)
2. a liking of white people (see liking 1950)
3. a dislike of social science
4. a positive affect for STEM
Sure these things will be wrapped up in language to obsure these 4 points but occasionally the veil breaks (as seen in this post). Some large fraction of sneerclub is a frustration that these 4 points get pushed into the forefront all the time.
I'm not familiar enough with reddit to know exactly why I haven't been seeing the post scores recently (some sub-specific setting got changed I assume?), but I used to pay close attention to them precisely to gauge if the posts were representative or just some rando outsider getting shouted down, and maybe one in five linked here was at negative scores. For example, [here's perhaps my personal favourite example of themotte brand of insanity](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/e1qmph/right_now_teen_girls_are_very_much_sequestered/) and I can tell you that one was double digit upvoted.
What you're saying is probably less wrong now as some recently linked ones have clearly been negatively received and I'm guessing the hidden scores mean fewer such posts get filtered out, but it definitely hasn't been the trend previously.
It took more self-control than I even knew I had not to comment in that thread.
I’d honestly forgotten how ridiculous TheMotte posters are, or how vehemently they believe in The Cathedral. Reading the thread, it becomes obvious that one of the reasons ‘OP’ hates the social/political sciences so much is that social/political scientists often say things that go against their personal politics.
And they can’t handle the obvious explanation for this (that maybe if their ideas aren’t shared by the people who study the topic for the living, they aren’t good ideas), so the only solution they have left is to claim that the entire field is intellectually bankrupt. They can’t be wrong - instead there must be some kind of conspiracy or fault in academia that makes it more left-wing.
They also have no idea how research in the social sciences operates. At all. They’re an almost textbook case of a STEMlord who holds all other fields to the standards of the experimental sciences, assumes that competence in STEM confers competence in every other field, and has no understanding of the impact the social/political sciences has made in their lives. And I say this as someone who works in STEM themselves - it’s really disappointing how common people like this are.
The hints of climate denialism are puzzling in someone so aggressively posturing as pro-STEM.
[deleted]
This is super funny because at least half the political scientists I know work somewhere in public administration or adjacent to it, where they work together with engineers to design goods and services.
They’re right, I really dont give a shit about providing goods and services, and Im proud of the fact.
Wonder how they feel about lawyers, or teachers?
This is some advanced brain-damage
I’m guessing psychology is also among the “soft sciences.” Thanks for the notion of selection bias, work-despisers!
Hell, the whole screed is a erroneous characterization that gets by on the same low standard it’s complaining about, if not worse. To accept it entails that you must reject it.
But evangelizing some silly fake money on the internet is very necessary and useful to society as long as you have an engineering PhD, right?
alternative quote I could have used
“If you, after high school, opt for studying”soft sciences”, it means you basically despise work (as in “productive work”:”
A good portion of the hard sciences have nothing to do with goods and services.
Do you think that consumerist dweebs get anything when a new genus of mouse louse is described? No. Is string theory relevant? No. Did we get anything practically useful out of the Large Hadron Collider? No.
But it was still pretty interesting work.
You’ve Galt to be kidding me!
This is what engineers actually believe
The funny thing is that if you look at the power-core of ‘rationality’, aka CFAR, MIRI, and more, one notices 2 things:
- They are academic to the point of being the ivory tower
- They live and work in “ultra liberal” Berkeley, and are associated with UCB
So much for rationality being a ‘hard science’ type of thing.
Alright, STEMlord, let’s see you solve this trolley meme without philosophy.
Yeah, looks like the upper hand is on the other foot.
…uh
Hylynka woulda banned this guy, they only accept Trad-Nazi nerds on TheMotte, not incels
would you rather have grifts and séances? eyyyyyyyy XD
I mean, all the replies are critical, ranging from “you have a point, but…” to “this is garbage, next time we ban you.” That’s gotta count for something, right? The very fact that someone like this exists is morbidly fascinating, but they’re clearly not going unchallenged even in /r/TheMotte.