RedRalph
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2007
- Messages
- 20,708
So IrishMouse or PenisMouse, what's your fancy?
Mickey Mouse Degrees
- Thread starter Elta
- Start date
So IrishMouse or PenisMouse, what's your fancy?
A true application of modus pwnens if I ever saw one...
But since I already found all I could with what I really had anything to say about in the thread (political affiliation of people at universities/professionals/whatever data we could find, which unfortunately wasn't everyone) and I do know that I can't change someone's opinions, people can live with their anecdotal stories of ignorant engineers who they didn't like back in college and so on.And The Mouse is more properly written as Muad'Dib in these parts.
nonconformist
Miserable
Hey, Ralph, I heard you loved taking the mick
Wait...
Did somebody seriously try to claim that being able to write a paper about Jesus was more useful, important, or indicative of intelligence than the ability to do say calculus? That is total crap, our society is entirely built on science and technology and non technical knowledge is both easy to acquire and nearly worthless. I spend most of my time hanging around my universities math/science tutoring center just studying or hanging out with some of my friends who work there. There is a constant stream of people from crap degree programs spending hours up there trying to wrap their heads around simple things like factoring, order of operations, or exponents, and complaining about how worthless mathematics is. Quite simply these people are stupid, but they'll get college degrees because no real brain power is required to do simple social science degrees you know things like "sport science", tat don't require any math beyond algebra or science beyond some simple biology class.
I will say quite confidently that computer scientists, hard scientists, mathematicians and to a lesser extent engineers are in general far brighter than social science or even business majors. Simply because they are required to actually think and solve problems rather than remember and spit back information.
Now I don't think that huge and sweeping generalizations can be made either way about them politically. Though I wouldn't be surprised if engineers tended to learn Conservative, and certainly research scientists are overwhelmingly Liberal. I personally am quite Liberal, but I don't think that's particularly connected in any way to my choice of study.
Did somebody seriously try to claim that being able to write a paper about Jesus was more useful, important, or indicative of intelligence than the ability to do say calculus? That is total crap, our society is entirely built on science and technology and non technical knowledge is both easy to acquire and nearly worthless. I spend most of my time hanging around my universities math/science tutoring center just studying or hanging out with some of my friends who work there. There is a constant stream of people from crap degree programs spending hours up there trying to wrap their heads around simple things like factoring, order of operations, or exponents, and complaining about how worthless mathematics is. Quite simply these people are stupid, but they'll get college degrees because no real brain power is required to do simple social science degrees you know things like "sport science", tat don't require any math beyond algebra or science beyond some simple biology class.
I will say quite confidently that computer scientists, hard scientists, mathematicians and to a lesser extent engineers are in general far brighter than social science or even business majors. Simply because they are required to actually think and solve problems rather than remember and spit back information.
Now I don't think that huge and sweeping generalizations can be made either way about them politically. Though I wouldn't be surprised if engineers tended to learn Conservative, and certainly research scientists are overwhelmingly Liberal. I personally am quite Liberal, but I don't think that's particularly connected in any way to my choice of study.
Racsoviale
Smoke me a kipper!
I once wrote a thesis in a mandatory class on ancient Mesopotamia and worked Asterix into my assignment.
Im BA in history and Media Science(Film and television)
Am I useful?
Im BA in history and Media Science(Film and television)
Am I useful?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
This, I feel, says a lot about the "engineering" mindset, albeit a somewhat extreme example- all social, cultural or philosophical observation and study is considered worthless, only technologically orientated endevour is of value. There's a certain distrust of culturally or socially focused work in that mindest, often manifesting itself in a resentment of those fields. Certainly, I've never heard an arts student moan about engineering the way that engineers like to moan about arts.
I'm not convinced that this is an inherently "conservative" viewpoint, of course, although it seems like it would mesh well with conservatism. "Conservatives" often seem to take an "everything is fine, stop asking" attitutde to the social and cultural status quo- or what is retermed "traditional values" when it begins to slip away from them- and so resent active exploration of those fields, which often seems to lead to a distruct or dislike of liberal arts/social sciences.
Honestly, I think Western engineers just have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. They've never had the respect of more "noble" professions such as medicine or science, or even those such as Law which are actually less demanding, exclusive or productive- I'm not sure why that is, given that in much of the world engineering is a highly respect profession, far more so than law- so they get a bit tetchy when they see that kind of respect being extend to those in "worthless" liberal arts fields.
That's not to say that they're wrong, of course, or that they don't deserve more respect. I just think that the particular variety of heated remark that we see flying around this thread may be more than "enthusiastic debate"...
Moderator Action: Enough with the spam. Enough with the crude humour. And enough with the insults
Probably because engineering is essentially a form of creativity with science as its basis expressed in pragmatic and useful applications, while the other is, well, fluff. Depends what you value, really.
I don't think anybody does what they do for the prestige, so much as it is for the love of whatever it is that they do.
mangxema
I
You claim not to be putting words into my mounth, but then you go right ahead and do it anyway.
Did you miss the part where I tried to explain why I personally think it is so important to receive a liberal arts education, instead of a highly specialized one, at the bachelor degree level?
I am not trying to put words in your mouth! My original response was to your boast about papers ('Could you write....western religions?') and was influenced by your other snippy comments about how poor the education of engineers is. If your point is about understanding other people, I suppose that is a fair point, especially in an increasingly global economy, but that was not brought up until later in the conversation.
Well, obviously... If you had enough of a technical education to be somewhat competent in some field AND had enough of a liberal arts degree to satisfy you, you would need two full degrees! Or maybe one and a half at the least. I don't know about you, but I didn't have the luxury of chilling in college reading books for years. That is an expensive way to read.
Well, I kinda doubt that based on my personal experience. In my dorm/apartment, my roommates consisted of an avid reader studying electrical, a chemical engineer who would read up on all kinds of history topics whenever he could manage the time, and an international affairs major who slept most of the day and spent his few waking hours watching '80's TV shows a la the A-Team and Quantum Leap. And there are other people I could reference, but my apartment is a nice example.
Oh, I know. But at the end of the day, I like knowing that I can actually do something useful and beneficial to society.
So lots of people don't read books. Is that engineering's fault? We surely don't make up that big of a proportion of the population
(If I sound defensive, it may be worth noting that I'm an architecture student, and one who's just spent all day drawing technical details.
That's fine. The only thing I saw of them when i was at school is they'd sitting around and draw a whole lot. As I said, my knowledge on the subject was limited.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Fair enough, and it's probably accurate to say that the majority of work undertaken by a students is design-centric, but in a work situation the balance is far more towards technical work. And, honestly, technical work is mostly drawing; it lacks anything approaching the mathematical weight of engineering, which is more or less the reason that it's held to be distinct from engineering proper, but it's still necessary technical work.
The whole field is in a sort of limbo between engineering and arts, both as a profession and in education- in no other course can you be lectured about bending moments in steel beams one day and the ideal of proportionality in Classical aesthetics the next, and have both be considered vital components of your education.
In the old days, we used to joke about "Basket Weaving" and other rinkydink courses taken by Football players at Michigan or Alabama, but the bottom line is whether you can find serious employment with your degree? Is there a job market for your talents and education? New niches are being created all the time.
And while liberal arts degrees are looked down upon, they're really intended to teach you how to think. Something we could use more of these days.
And while liberal arts degrees are looked down upon, they're really intended to teach you how to think. Something we could use more of these days.
Mise
isle of lucy
This can be taken in so many different ways, I'm not sure where to begin.
1. Are you trying to suggest that scientists and engineers don't think?
2. ...that they don't know how to think?
3. ...that they aren't taught how to think?
4. ...that they already know how to think -- which is why they are taking sci/eng courses instead?
5. Are you saying that liberal arts degrees brainwash people into thinking certain things or in a certain way?
6. Are you saying that liberal arts degrees intend to teach you how to think, but fail to do so? (Perhaps because they're taught by people who have taken liberal arts degrees themselves, rather than sci/eng degrees?)
Just to be clear, scientists and engineers are taught to reduce problems to their base constituents, by identifying and stripping out all unnecessary parts of a problem, and focusing only on those parts that substantially constitute the problem. This kind of thinking can be applied to physical systems and biological processes, and it can be applied to political arguments, economics and sociology, business and worklife, and pretty much everywhere else. This isn't the only way that they are taught to think, but it's an important way that is often missed by people who don't have the kind of broad academic teaching you gain on a science or engineering degree.
I think an historical divide for politics was between economists & sociologists. The e's would figure out how things work best on paper, and the s's would realise that the paper didn't mean anything because of the human factor.
With behaviour economics becoming more prominent, I think you'll find that economists become more moderate. People who support 'far right' economic theory only know the older economic theory, it seems. And as sociologists work more with psychologists, you'll probably find more moderation there, as well.
Engineering strikes me as a type of field that can't stand weak correlations that give results.
With behaviour economics becoming more prominent, I think you'll find that economists become more moderate. People who support 'far right' economic theory only know the older economic theory, it seems. And as sociologists work more with psychologists, you'll probably find more moderation there, as well.
Engineering strikes me as a type of field that can't stand weak correlations that give results.
Mise
isle of lucy
Are you saying that sociology or modern economics is predicated on weak correlations? Because I think that's an unfair categorisation of the two fields. Also, what do you mean by "weak correlation" in this context? Do you mean that the distance of each datapoint from the regression line is very large, or that Y is a very weak function of X in realistic units? I don't know much about sociology, but economics focuses on what happens "at the margin", so it's important to be clear on this point.
Shaihulud
Deity
It is a flexible degree where you are free to complete any of the science majors. Myself I majored in physics and maths, especially solid state devices and photonics which I thought were prospective... Couldn't get a proper job for quite some time. Nowadays I just introducd myself at interviews as a science graduate.
The Political Science graduate in me says that if a degree requires fewer credits of traditional or conventional university classes than I took, then yes it's a mickey mouse degree. The network engineer and veteran of a fairly science/engineering-heavy base curriculum for that Bach of Science degree hardly cares either way, except to note that sometimes all employers are looking for in a 4-yr degree is the knowledge that the person can read and write better than the minimums required by a high school diploma.
Well, I mean 'weak' relatively. In engineering, I'd imagine that principles that involve an r < 0.9 to be not utilized. It's a 'cause & effect' discipline, and if any component of a system isn't working, it's replaced.
Sociology is certainly more fuzzy. Direct experimentation is impossible. Correlations are going to be weaker. Humans are reactive to policies, and so the predictions from before a policy are affected by the popularisation of a policy. etc.
I'm not saying it's a dynamite statement, but just an intuition. Old economics used to be about optimization with homo economicus. Behavioural economics looks at how people will actually react, and then can be used to inform policy. Old economics could say a policy failed because people are stupid. New economics says that people are people.
