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ChristianKl comments on Open thread for December 24-31, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: NancyLebovitz 24 December 2013 08:58AM

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Comment author: DaFranker 08 January 2014 05:22:54PM 1 point [-]

My initial thought was what I replied above. Then when I re-read, I thought I was wrong and had misinterpreted, so I started writing a reply echoing your question: "What makes those things more 'helpful'?"

But in the second article, it's about those careers being more useful towards romance. The paragraph break seems to indicate a slight change of context, so I assume now that that's what this helpful referred to.

So I think a proper decomposition of this gives us:

  • English majors are more useful towards achieving romance.
  • STEM careers are, generally speaking at least as helpful (probably more, but that's not the point) towards benefiting society.
  • Humanities are perceived more as blatantly benevolent.
  • STEM careers are often perceived as a useless waste of time.
  • Medicine is a glaring exception to the above; Medicine is seen as very benevolent as an abstract, or as students, but in tangibles the nurses and MDs are often seen as cold and "just doing their job". Their overall impact and benefits for society varies, but the contributions of a single nurse are arguably much lesser than the contributions of one researcher developing new drugs.
Comment author: ChristianKl 08 January 2014 05:40:44PM 1 point [-]

I started writing a reply echoing your question: "What makes those things more 'helpful'?"

I don't think you missed the first part of my question "If that's the claim". I can certainly think up a vague definition of helpful that applies, but what to I gain by using that label? I can surely better label than helpful if I want to speak about behavior that society generally associates with femininity.

But in the second article, it's about those careers being more useful towards romance. The paragraph break seems to indicate a slight change of context, so I assume now that that's what this helpful referred to.

The issue is basically that you either agree that the first post is wrong and non-STEM careers get picked for a different reason than being perceived as being helpful or that there a way to see non-STEM subjects as more "publicly visible prosocial behavior".

It's bad to try to be to vague to be wrong.

Comment author: DaFranker 09 January 2014 01:25:26PM 0 points [-]

The issue is basically that you either agree that the first post is wrong and non-STEM careers get picked for a different reason than being perceived as being helpful or that there a way to see non-STEM subjects as more "publicly visible prosocial behavior".

Yes.

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