Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
obviously.
Yes, I definitely believe that. After spending a great amount of time with people in nuclear engineering, I can definitely say that people in STEM fields are more intelligent on average, no argument.
Social Sciences teach you about the world, physical sciences teach you how to become a professor...
In a lot of schooling, memorization, dedication and type-A vs B personalities determine how hard something really is or how smart the learner really is,
I think a lot of polisci, economics, IR and some business classes are far more intelligence based than a lot of engineering and science courses.
hahah yea, and then they get upset and call me out for seeming arrogant when talking about the contents of my profession; not because I'm arrogant but because they get jealous or frustrated with their inability to comprehend. Sadly these people also run this country.....
Yes. Engineering is a more challenging major, usually requiring more credits and rigorous coursework. At the very least, it requires greater motivation.
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. 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.
The difference between STEM and other fields of study are the underlying skills that you learn (and are able to then apply to everyday life). STEM teaches you to apply a logical approach to everything, how to solve complex problems, and- especially- how to identify the root cause of issues. Effective and proper decision making should be the end result. I don't know many non-STEM individuals (large sample by the way) that think in such a way. For them, it's all about memorizing some soft/subjective/unprovable theory or historical events and trying to make correlations between things, but never truly understanding if causation actually exists.
Intelligence is not a single characteristic; instead there are many individual aptitudes that are independent of each other and that a given individual may possess in any combination. Different fields call upon different aptitudes. STEM fields call upon a particular aptitude called spatial reasoning or structural visualization, whereas abstract fields dealing with intangible ideas such as political science and law call upon inductive reasoning.
STN wrote:
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)..
This thread is similar to an echo chamber where STEM posters will rationalize their thoughts and have fellow disciples congratulate them for the profound insights on the subject.
It is not greater intellect, simply different and certainly more marketable capabilities.
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.
Students in other fields of study don't seem to like to sit around having a circle jerk about how smart they because of their college major. My guess is that the "STEM" majors who do this are toward the bottom of their class and want to feel better about themselves by putting others down.
STEM requires different intellect.
I work with/have worked with engineers throughout my career. If they designed a beautiful woman, they couldn't market or sell the beautiful woman to save their lives. I worked with one guy who was a genius when it came to ray tracing, but could barely order lunch at McDonalds.
I work with a EE, we are peers, but everyone thinks that I am the manager because my coworker only wants to write scripts, doesn't send out email when things are fugged up, and doesnt want to go to any meetings. He lacks social skills ... since I have known him (2 1/2 years) he has been on countless first dates, but fewer than 5, 2nd dates.
Logical Man wrote:
Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
As if there were only one kind of "intellect."
A buddy of mine from ~20 years ago is a weathergirl for a major network in one of the largest TV markets in the country. Last I heard, he was pulling down just shy of seven figures a year.
He couldn't do calculus to save his life.
However, he remembers the names and minor details about seemingly thousands of people. Within seconds of meeting him, people relax and start enjoying themselves. He got us into parties and clubs where we had no business being, talked his way out of speeding tickets and other tight situations, and was the sort of guy that people from three highschools over knew. Don't even get me started about how he could charm women.
Yes-- my grades were always much better than his. But if I were to claim that I had a "greater intellect," it would be pretty stupid.
4runner wrote:
Logical Man wrote:Compared to to psychology, political science, history, international relations, business, management, language, etc?
As if there were only one kind of "intellect."
I am not excluding the concept of multiple intellects. When I say "intellect", I intended it to mean either the magnitude of multiple intellects or the magnitude of one intellect, depending on what your opinion is on that matter.
4runner wrote:
Yes-- my grades were always much better than his. But if I were to claim that I had a "greater intellect," it would be pretty stupid.
Not really - he just has better social skills than you do. Sort of like how Dathan Ritzenhein is a better runner than you, but you may (or may not) be smarter than he is.
Anyone who needs to ask this question should just take some STEM classes. The answer will be immediately obvious.
Critical Thinking wrote:
4runner wrote:Yes-- my grades were always much better than his. But if I were to claim that I had a "greater intellect," it would be pretty stupid.
Not really - he just has better social skills than you do. Sort of like how Dathan Ritzenhein is a better runner than you, but you may (or may not) be smarter than he is.
One day, we were in the next town over and he was speeding. A cop pulled us over and my buddy not only recognized the cop from our little league days but also recalled the names of the cops' two dogs. After a 10 minute conversation about the dogs-- including how one dog just went through surgery-- the cop gave my buddy a warning and sent us on our way.
I was on the same little league team. I had the same contact with the cop and the dogs that my buddy did. However, I did not have the same name-recall and the same ability to recognize someone 8, 9 years down the road.
If those are not intellectual skills, then I am not sure what is.
STEM may be difficult, but if you devote your entire education to it, you end up with only half a mind. The other half withers away into nothing. Most are barely competent even at learning German, French and Russian, the "STEM" foreign languages.
Absolutely. When I entered the school of engineering, the counselor told me the top 10% of high school graduates entered engineering, and I shouldn't expect to be the "hot sh!t" anymore in my classes. I dominated all my classes in high school and college. It didn't matter the subject. Engineers choose what they want to do, because they are smarter than everyone else.
People object to this and say they make more money than engineers. Fine. Kim Kardashian makes more money than most engineers. She's not exactly the shining example of intelligence. Wealth accumulation has a huge "luck" factor. Which is another reason why intelligent engineers don't pursue "lottery" professions. We are pretty much guaranteed to end up in the upper-middle class profession and never need for anything. Even though we'll likely never be "rich", we take that option. We get interesting, fulfilling work, over being sales hacks...even if they are successful.
Almost every engineer I know is upper-middle class and has awesome job security.
Consider all the business jokes that try to make it and end up...well, as jokes. I know a few that have made it big. But, they themselves admit they weren't smart. They were in the right place at the right time.