When you write a dissertation for days in a row, you want to think about anything ...
In continuation of the eternal theme for Russians, “techies vs. humanities ”I will say honestly - techies were lucky an order of magnitude more than humanitarians.
For techies, everything is relatively cool and convenient: a promising career, +/- high-quality education, the president’s sympathy, all kinds of production clusters, prospects in science / technology / innovation, etc. After all, oddly enough, from the point of view of “obtaining scientific knowledge” representatives of the natural sciences work much easier than their socio-humanitarian colleagues. The latter have always been in a difficult situation. And especially today.
For a techie, gaining new knowledge has never been a particular problem: there is an object of observation, there is an observer. And that’s it. Observed objects - nature, surrounding reality or material objects - are absolutely neutral to the observer. If you want, then explore! Yes, excesses sometimes happen: you shouldn’t touch this beautiful stone with your hands, but now you know what radiation sickness is. Or this striped kitty is hungry, in vain you stroked it. But that’s all. We wrote down the data in a notebook, made conclusions, and next time we took measures. Scientific knowledge is ready. The object of study of technicians, I repeat, is completely neutral in relation to the researcher. Today, even excesses are rare.
The real difficulties begin in humanitarian research. Their object of observation (speaking between us) doesn’t really like when they study it for real. Moreover, he does not love it for a long time and will never love. Watch these hands:
We get a humanitarian degree, put on a white coat, take a notebook with a pen and go to study some monkey brought from far away, which is still unknown to science. We put her in a separate room, turn on the video cameras, give her a white sheet of paper, scotch tape and a yellow marker - what will you do with them? We go to the next observation room, make coffee for us and return to watch a movie. Here it begins;)
We see a broken monitor. The room is empty - the monkey is gone. With things given to her. We looked here, and here, and there - there is no monkey. We run out into the corridor, continue the search - empty, no one saw anything. And the colleagues laugh for some reason. Why are you laughing?! Prompt: school joke! We feel tape on our back. Tear off a white sheet from it. On the sheet - with a yellow marker: "IDIOT".
We run further down the corridor, rush, run back, worry, laugh, fear, don't understand anything, fight in hysterics ... While a monkey is sitting in the guards’ room with our coffee and writes in a notebook: “The object is emotional and mentally unstable, it’s better not to allow scientific work with PEOPLE ”;)
The techies were very lucky to be left alone with their neutral reality. But modern historians, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, political economists, etc., have incredibly suffered from their degrading humanitarian education. That even souls don’t mind in their object of study. All their lives they have been wondering: who suddenly broke all the monitors for them?
And in the best case, only at its end they find the inscription on the back with a yellow marker.
I completely agree: Techies are much better off. But:
1. For at least two decades, you ignored the warnings presented by life: In physics lessons in school, when you had at last tuned the oscilloscope to show a sensible picture, your passing class mates, fascinated by the device, twiddled with all knobs, leaving you at the point where you started. You heard or read sentences like: "This statement is true but it is politically very unwise to publish it in this context." You learned that we live in (at least) two worlds simultaneously, one barbaric and one full of harmony and miracles; representatives: Archimedes and the soldier.
2. It's never too late! Even if you complete your second education at the age of 40, you will be very happy for the following three decades or so to have switched. So, don't hesitate! The rich worlds of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and more are waiting to welcome you. ;-)
A techie
Vitaliy Bobrov ,
I think that because we as Techies ignore the humanities and specifically ignore philosophy, we are were we are (and it is not good). Science will not fix the current problems that we are facing, especially inequality. Those who think so do not have an idea of what technology is. The joke is on us for being foolish enough to delude ourselves into thinking that we can solve all problems and not need help from our fellow scholars in the humanities.
I think that you might also want to consider the following anecdote that happened to me. After I finished my bachelor's (some time ago), I wanted to do high energy physics. I went to this recognised university and met with the assistant director of the physics department. I told him my desire to study particle physics and he told me "forget about it more brilliant people than you are in the unemployment list or on Wall Street". Putting aside his excellent recruitment tactics, he had a point (which I don't think it was his intention anyway). It does not matter what you study, it is how you apply it. Not every computer scientist nor every physicist, chemist or engineer is successful.
We need thinkers to solve the world's problems, in all areas, but it is not where we desire, it is where we are needed. I ended up in computer science but my passion and my inspiration to solve problems come from philosophy.
I wish you the best!
For me, trained in both history and psychology, techies seem to only grasp a tiny portion of the world and appear to routinely examine problems, especially where the mind is concerned, through a narrow glass. Without the capacity for abstract thinking wrong conclusions are made. Disparaging abstract thinking they miss the point. In psychology they have reigned describing human beings as merely automatons, excluding themselves, as a consequence of a fixation on quantitative thinking, questionnaires and laboratory experiments which produce the results they expect.
But this is a different kind of techie.
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