Jürgen HubertFeb 11, 2025

Looking at how #LLM are promoted by their fans, I've come to the conclusion:

Pretty much everyone from a #STEM background - myself definitely included! - owes the #Humanities a huge apology.

I mean, I get it. When I was a young student of physics, it was easy for me to sneer at philosophy students and whatnot. After all, _we_ dealt with hard, measurable facts, while _those_ people dealt with some weird thought constructs that had no relevancy to the real world - right?

But this is the end result - #TechBro culture and a vast portion of our entire economy using digital bullshit generators instead of critical thinking, and using this to lead us into a fascist future where either Truth or Facts have become meaningless.

Mea culpa.

Show threadGuerric HachéFeb 21, 2025
@juergen_hubert As someone who studied humanities (philosophy, minors in language and history) but with a lifelong interest in STEM, I think it's critical that everyone be thoroughly educated with a foundational understanding of *both* humanities and natural sciences.
Show threadGuerric HachéFeb 21, 2025

@juergen_hubert We see a ton of problems from people with STEM tunnel vision play out in society, I suspect due to the close alignment of corporate interests with a lot of the STEM processes used in industry.

But I've seen cases where humanities tunnel vision causes trouble, sometimes by robbing people of the techniques to unpick misinformation, sometimes by lulling people into a sense that the material world is a mere inert thing that humans act upon, without structures or dynamism of its own.

Show threadGuerric Haché
@juergen_hubert I will never forget the argument I had with a political science grad who insisted that vaccines only prevented disease because Big Pharma's advertising campaigns were so powerful they reshaped our brains to function with vaccines in order to uphold their profit motive, and that we should all denounce and refuse vaccination so that our collective conscious would return us to a pre-industrial state where we are naturally immune to pathogens.
Feb 21, 2025 at 3:58pmWeb
Show threadGuerric HachéFeb 21, 2025

@juergen_hubert That being said, most of our most pressing social problems right now can be associated with STEM tunnel vision that neglects or denies the conversations and work that happens in humanities, so I think putting the focus there right now is worthwhile.

Fundamentally, I think processes that have split "humanities" and "STEM" into a binary are a root problem we need to address, and that interdisciplinarity and broad foundational education are critical for our collective well-being.