Engineers choose what they want to do because their education is labor-intensive and developed economies never run out of jobs for them. It has nothing to do with brains, it's just an economic niche.
Engineers choose what they want to do because their education is labor-intensive and developed economies never run out of jobs for them. It has nothing to do with brains, it's just an economic niche.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Engineers choose what they want to do because their education is labor-intensive and developed economies never run out of jobs for them. It has nothing to do with brains, it's just an economic niche.
Wrong. I have a social circle of about 300 people. The percentage of those people that could "choose" any engineering at all is probably less than 10%.
There is an intellectual threshold that is required for any profession. Engineering is the highest. People that are not that smart that want to appear smart become doctors.
The real intellectual giants are physics and philosophy majors.
They basically weed out the morons, but in general they aren't much smarter. There are just as many intelligent or more intelligent students in philosophy classes and the like.
For example in my one philosophy class there are a bunch of pretty dumb people who would never hack it in chem or physics, but if you take them out the average or top students in that philosophy class are as smart as or smarter than those in a STEM field.
It seems like humanities attract lazier students, not dumber ones. I'm lazy as hell, yet still do decently. And I am definitely more intelligent than my roommate who is a physics and chem double major and the rest of my engineering and math buddies.
DumbingDown wrote:
The completely false choice between so called STEM majors and humanities majors is a travesty of modern education. It is really a very recent development in the history of higher education. Historically, true scientists were classically educated in Latin and Greek, and they didn't see any conflict between studying Aristotle, Plato, theology, and what we would call traditional natural science. In fact, until men like Galileo came along, Aristotle was the basis for the all study of natural science.
It pains me today to hear young people disparage the study of literature and philosophy in favor of engineering. Why they think being a truly educated person does not involve studying the humanities and science is beyond me. It's a sad commentary on the state of the American university, which has for the most part become nothing more than a professional training factory rather than an institution offering a true education. And STEM programs for the most part do not produce scientists that are creative and truly interested in challenging the nature of things.
The choice you're describing is not a "false" choice. On the contrary, it's a choice that does have to be made. Perhaps this was not the case in the past, but presently it is. The problem with looking at the issue the way you do is that you are more or less using the education of several dozen to several hundreds of years ago as a measuring stick.
Within that span of time, very large amounts of progress have been made in almost all scientific fields, and many major discoveries or realizations require more and more in-depth knowledge to understand.
As a very simple example, take a man like Isaac Newton, who had an education very similar to what you consider to be ideal. He was most specialized in mathematics and physics, but also had quite a bit of background (much of it self-taught) in philosophy, chemistry, and religious studies. I don't think anyone can argue that Newton's contributions were absolutely massive, and much of that was probably because of his fairly varied education. However, keep in mind that he also lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since Newton's time, every one of the scientific fields in which he made his discoveries has advanced tremendously (much of it as a direct result of him). New theories are rejected or confirmed by the dozens each year, and typically they build off of each other with increasing complexity.
Because of this, it is no longer possible to get a "Jack-of-All-Trades" education, which is what you describe. You specifically stated in your post that "STEM programs for the most part do not produce scientists that are creative and truly interested in challenging the nature of things." This is not true. A correct statement would be "Fine Arts programs for the most part do not produce scientists that are creative and truly interested in challenging the nature of things." Most STEM programs DO produce scientists that are creative and truly interested in challenging the nature of things. Of course, these individuals are a minority of the population, but that's not a consequence of their education. It's a consequence of their nature, which does not develop solely based on the education. The fact of the matter is that regardless of what you think students should aspire for, a large population of them are simply going to college in order to increase their chances of getting a job in some field that may interest them.
However, for those students who do want to contribute to a scientific field, an STEM-heavy education is almost mandatory. What I mean by this is that presently, for most students of this nature, it is first necessary to understand the advancements of that field up to the present. And because the current theories have become all the more developed and entangled, it takes a substantially greater amount of effort and time to actually understand them. Time spent on completely unrelated material is counterproductive.
For example, several decades ago, the concept of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy barely even existed, yet today, it is one of the most reliable techniques in analytical chemistry (and incidentally, advances are still being made). Because of its popularity, it is a VERY important concept for the vast majority of chemistry students, and the theory behind it is NOT easy to understand. However, in order to successfully understand it, most students need to first be able to understand basic organic chemistry principles, behavior of elementary particles, basic wave theory, magnetism, etc. This takes both time and effort from the professors and the students.
The greatest disservice you could possibly do for an aspiring chemical engineer is to have him/her spend four years in an undergraduate institution only to leave with the relative knowledge possessed by an 18th century chemist. This is what would happen if the vast majority of the student's education were to be dedicated towards subjects completely outside of his/her field. He/she would leave college in a state of complete uselessness, and would first have to catch up on modern theories before being able to contribute at all to the field, or even find a job in it.
This is a consequence of progress. Ideas build on each other, and greater amounts of information must be understood in order to build upon them further.
~~~~~~
Summary:
You CANNOT contribute effectively to a theory you do not understand, and unfortunately for most people, it takes time to understand most modern scientific principles and theories. Because of that, more time has to be spent on the science-based education for scientists. That's just the way it is.
STN wrote:
Logical Man wrote:Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
I'll give a quick input as a professor in the STEM field.
Simply put, most science or engineering disciplines require a different TYPE of intellect, as opposed to more intellect in comparison to other disciplines.
Bingo!
The actual reason people tend to think individuals or students in the STEM fields are more intelligent is because much more work is required to succeed in those fields compared to others. Additionally, much of the work tends to be heavily based on specialized knowledge that requires even MORE work to understand.
Typically, if you attend school and take a few classes in the fine arts disciplines, you'll find that there are quite a few EXTREMELY intelligent students there. However, they will largely be outnumbered by burnouts and morons who, metaphorically speaking, can't reason their way out of a paper bag.
Again, this is because of of the baseline level of effort required in the STEM disciplines. Stupid people who do not like work are systematically doomed to failure in the STEM fields (unless they cheat of course), since almost all evaluations are objectively based on their knowledge. In contrast, most fine arts fields tend to be evaluated subjectively to some degree, which allows the would-be dropouts to survive.
As a consequence, most STEM fields are filled with hard-working and intelligent individuals, somewhat lazy but intelligent individuals, or hard-working but comparatively unintelligent individuals. Most fine arts fields also have these three types of individuals, but also end up filled with the vast majority of students who are both lazy and unintelligent, which tends to give them a poor reputation.
Unfortunately, over the course of several decades, this has created something similar to a feedback loop, where lazy and unintelligent individuals tend to gravitate towards the fine arts disciplines, which forces many professors to lower their standards or risk having huge numbers of failures coupled with poor reviews from students (which the administration tends not to like). The lower standards then prompt even more lazy and unintelligent individuals to enroll in these disciplines, continuing the cycle.
In short, to excel in most non-STEM fields still requires extremely high intelligence, extreme diligence, or some sort of combination of both, which is the exact case with the STEM fields. However, the bar for "just getting by" in non-STEM fields tends to be much lower than for STEM fields.
You are right in describing why it is the way it is. Fair enough. And while it probably has to be that way due to the advances in knowledge, it does come at a price. I have found recent STEM majors to be so specialized that they can not even relate to outside perspectives. And they don't seem to realize when they are crossing into philosophy, or if they do they prefer to just ignore the possibility that philosophy is still relevant in today's world. There are some exceptions of course, but the STEM community often has to indulge myopia for the sake of progress.
DumbingDown wrote:
It pains me today to hear young people disparage the study of literature and philosophy in favor of engineering.
I agree that philosophizing requires a great deal of intellect. But what distinction is to be made between those who only major in philosophy and those who produce profound philosophical ideas?
Logical Man wrote:
Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
Rolls eyes. How sophomoric. This thread has all the sophistication of a middle schooler or rural kids attending public college for the first time.
A lot of philosophers and deep thinkers here, I can see. Who cares about such important questions as how one defines intellect and intelligence? Who cares about different branches of knowledge! Renaissance men? Well rounded men of genius? Reaching toward Perfection? Nah, that's the pipe dream of true seekers of truth and wisdom... Much better to disparage your fellow man to alleviate your own insecurity.
Whoops! I might have spoken too soon. The first posts were sophomoric. But I didn't notice we're at two pages. Some long essays lemme check me out.
*puts reading glasses on*
*fart*
That was the couch. Leather couch.
Enginerd2 wrote:
The real intellectual giants are physics and philosophy majors.
Thank you, but it's math and philosophy. Physicists are usually too specialized for true genius.
Engineers can be smart but they're tier 2 smart people. They are practical hands-on types who can move a bunch of rocks from point A to point B and build something interesting along with electrical service and an access road, compliant with safety regulations and so forth.
Just randomly picking a respectable school, here's Cornell's engineering degree requirements:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/academics/undergraduate/curriculum/requirements.cfmNo math higher than differential equations and linear algebra, then a few basic physics courses. Only the chemistry types are pushed to 3rd-level courses. It's almost like a liberal-arts-of-science major. Competency and hard work are enough to pass those courses.
There are tremendous mathematics involved in statistics. Statistics are used outside the hard sciences: with less rigor and sometimes exponentially more social risk. Additionally, philosophical faculties underpin experimental design matters. It is true engineering, physics, biosciences have incredible depth of complicated esoteric (in a descriptive sense, not a sense of disparaging 0r being ignorant oftheir tremendous importance) systems. We could talk all night about this. It would be impossible to master everything. But you should be grateful for genius outside the STEM. Yes there are a lot of idiots in the non STEM endeavors. This is not an innate feature of the fields. It is a reflection of the tendencies, drives, distractions and motivations of participants in society. The Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Christians--smart ones--have been lamenting and are proof of these problems of society having existed for ages. European intellectuals of the modern era have also lamented such things I can only generally allude to for lack of space, for expedience.
Science can be perverted. Being narrow minded collectively is bad. The machinery must have responsible guidance, not a ghost running it amok. If you are a student of history and humanity you will understand what I am saying. We all collectively contribute to the workings of society. Many people are not conscious of big picture problems: the way our educational system is structured, agency problems, corrupt monopolistic corporations and interests who hurt the public good to preserve and grow themselves. Blind spots in our machinery, the programming, the knowledge systems.
Scientists created the gas chambers. There are stem graduates currently working for reprehensible corporations and they are blissfully unaware. Scientists are responsible for our unparalleled standard of living and they will be needed to play a part in meeting the challenges of tomorrow, battling real evil and doing service to humanity.
Mathematics is not the exclusive harem of STEM. Nor is spatial thinking. Or complex systems, esoteric knowledges, and vast mountains of work. Many don't give esteem to art, film, music, art history, philosophy, humanities, language, ethics, history, psychology, etc because they have not been exposed to high level geniuses. The great work in those fields still remains. With luck, the human if today and tomorrow will, with the help of computer technology, show us what is possible in those fields. There's complexity there that you wouldn't imagine, but there are some of us alive today on that cutting edge.
People like to brag a lot. They can brag about their competence in so many higher realms of mathematics. Or how fast they run... How much money they make or how many instagram followers they have... Which is relevant up to a certain point.
So? What about the realms of human experience? Life?
Suffering?
For all the education any of you can brag about, there are vastly more realms of suffering. Most of us go through life thinking the scale is 0 to 10. We don't even realize how much is "there" til we have the carpet ripped from underneath us. This is why the greatest saints of history have practiced compassionate meditation. Why they embody love, thought, prudence, consideration, and the virtue of ethics.
There are many professionals skilled in multi variate mathematics. But their actions and social behavior demonstrate the moral understanding of children that can barely handle algebra. (Along with countless others in other fields, etcetera, but bear with me)
This is a more specific example than the discussion of human life experience, life force and the plight of misery,
And a bit impious, thus,
but I say it as a rhetorical device to provoke additional thought.
What does this have to with intelligence? You're talking about experiences. OK, someone who has experienced great suffering knows something that a sheltered math professor might not. So what? That is irrelevant. We're talking about mental prowess, ability to learn, speed & ease of understanding, ability to digest complex ideas, ability to solve complex problems & create new solutions. This is what is meant by intelligence. Expertise in a STEM field requires, but then further fosters this type of thinking. What does this have to do with suffering?
NO. It's the same.The depth and breath differ. 1) Physics/Enginneering have an incredible depth, 2) Chem/Bio/Life Sciences have depth and complextity, 3) Business, Law and Liberal Arts require a very wide breadth of understanding.
1) STEM require the ability to abstract thinking. That is not required
by social sciences, history etc.
2) Languages require use of a different part of the brain. Most people
who naturally gravitate towards the natural sciences are not particular
talented when it comes to (foreign) languages.
3) Sociology and other fields are often either common sense or quasi-intellectual babble (example queer-"theory"). Exceptions do exist.
4) History and political science address major global questions, but would benefit from input from evolutionary biology.
5) it is often claimed that writers, painters, musicians are the creative class.
They certainly are creative, but so are mathematicians, physicists
and engineers. It is a major misconception that they are not.
Logical Man wrote:
DumbingDown wrote:It pains me today to hear young people disparage the study of literature and philosophy in favor of engineering.
I agree that philosophizing requires a great deal of intellect. But what distinction is to be made between those who only major in philosophy and those who produce profound philosophical ideas?
The whole point of education, in the Greek tradition, is to produce a virtuous citizen. Several of Plato's dialogues deal directly with this issue, and the Socratic position is that virtue and ignorance are incompatible.
So, the point of majoring in philosophy is not to make rare geniuses who can produce original philosophical ideas. It is to educate young men and women to be better citizens of the polis.
But let me be clear. I am not advocating undergraduates major in philosophy at the expense of science. Quite the contrary. They should get a solid educational foundation in all the disciplines before they choose to specialize. Of course, most college graduates never work deeply in their undergraduate majors. They go on to careers in business, the military, law enforcement, etc... The country would be better off if the vast majority of college students were first and foremost educated to be better citizens.
This thread serves as proof that engineers struggle to produce a concise and cogent argument to support the assertion that their field contains the "smartest" individuals. Don't confuse subject matter expertise with intelligence.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Enginerd2 wrote:The real intellectual giants are physics and philosophy majors.
Thank you, but it's math and philosophy. Physicists are usually too specialized for true genius.
Engineers can be smart but they're tier 2 smart people. They are practical hands-on types who can move a bunch of rocks from point A to point B and build something interesting along with electrical service and an access road, compliant with safety regulations and so forth.
Just randomly picking a respectable school, here's Cornell's engineering degree requirements:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/academics/undergraduate/curriculum/requirements.cfmNo math higher than differential equations and linear algebra, then a few basic physics courses. Only the chemistry types are pushed to 3rd-level courses. It's almost like a liberal-arts-of-science major. Competency and hard work are enough to pass those courses.
Of course competence and hard work are enough to pass undergrad coursework. I don't think there's a single major that requires more than a 120 IQ in undergrad (unless at Cal Tech or something), which still puts you in the top 10-15%. If you want to specialize more, you get your PhD or MS, or crush your undergrad and get a job in research. You're also ignoring the fact that you'll sometimes learn more advanced math as you need it in upper level courses (and WTF is a "3rd-level course"?).
To answer the original questions, yes, hard sciences and engineering do require a greater intellect to graduate from a similarly rated program/school compared to other majors. It's just a fact, get over it. It doesn't make us better people, no one is saying so.
But let me give you an example of why it's so much different than other majors. Every single exam I took during my ME classes I was allowed to use a 5x7 note card. On that note card I could write as small as I could, every single equation or problem example I wanted from any source. The text book, previous exams, wherever. Everyone in the class would literally fill both sides with everything you could think of. These things looked like some madman's work of art. On top of that you could use a calculator capable of performing any function you'd possibly need.
And the test's were still really, really difficult. What you had to do was take all that stuff you wrote on that card and process it in a way you've never had to do before you sat down to take that test. So it wasn't about memorizing a set of equations, but it was about processing several concepts simultaneously in a new way for the first time with the clock ticking. And if you didn't understand those concepts, it wasn't like you could BS your way to a "B". You'd flat out fail. There's no making it up as you go along.
So yeah, that requires significant intellect. And this comes from someone that was always told I was the "smart kid". And I barely got out of college with a degree. Granted it was at a top 10 program, but I doubt it's much different at lower tier engineering schools.
Thb hust wrote:
What does this have to with intelligence? You're talking about experiences. OK, someone who has experienced great suffering knows something that a sheltered math professor might not. So what? That is irrelevant. We're talking about mental prowess, ability to learn, speed & ease of understanding, ability to digest complex ideas, ability to solve complex problems & create new solutions. This is what is meant by intelligence. Expertise in a STEM field requires, but then further fosters this type of thinking. What does this have to do with suffering?
wooosh