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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Australia's conservative government announced plans Friday to double university fees for humanities students, in a bid to push people into more useful, "job-relevant" courses like maths and science.
Under the proposal—which critics panned as an "ideological assault"—the cost of degrees like history or cultural studies will rise up to 113 percent to around US$29,000, while other courses such as nursing and information technology will become cheaper.
Education Minister Dan Tehan—an arts graduate with two advanced degrees in international relations—said the government wanted to corral young people towards "jobs of the future" to boost the country's economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
"If you are wanting to do philosophy, which will be great for your critical thinking, also think about doing IT," Tehan said.
The plan would help pay for an additional 39,000 university places by 2023 and for cost cuts for courses like science, agriculture, maths and languages.
[...] "I'm an arts graduate and so is the minister for education so I'm not sure you can draw the conclusion that we're completely unemployable," said opposition lawmaker Tanya Plibersek.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2020, @03:12AM (39 children)
Nah, Humanities cannot comprehend STEM. It involves math. Of all the flavors only the economists learned that is their kryptonite, so they learned to write their philosophies in formulae and went on to conquer the world. Their colleagues in anthropology and philosophy deeply resent them for it and never invite them to the wine & cheese soirees.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @03:35AM (38 children)
Because is inconceivable that, for example, a human brain can be educated to speak and think in two languages.
Even as a joke it's lame
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @04:04AM (23 children)
Postmodernism dominates the (in)humanities, simultaniously holding subjective and objective views of reality is about as mutually exclusive as you can get. Unless of course, you could claim that the subjective appraisal is entirely socially constructed. That logic would reduce postmodernism to a self-devouring fallacy if only logic were applicable... alas. And how far would you get with postmodern physics or postmodern math when your incorrect answers are subjectively correct?
May you test pilot the first postmodernist designed rocketship!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @04:26AM
To answer your question, postmodern science would eventually come to this:
From https://www.concordia.ca/news/stories/2019/09/20/3-concordia-researchers-collaborate-to-engage-indigenous-knowledges-in-the-study-of-physics.html [concordia.ca] :
"3 Concordia researchers collaborate to engage Indigenous knowledges in the study of physics
A New Frontiers in Research Fund grant will support interdisciplinary approaches to decolonizing science"
Read the whole thing for a good laugh. I especially like the phrase used to refer to indigenous "ways of knowing."
Physicist could learn a lot about light by listening to these indigenous elders.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday June 22 2020, @06:05AM (20 children)
So, you do not understand post-modernism. Just 'fess up, and say it, bro! No shame! It's hard shit! But, it ain't wrong.
Short version: All facts are theory laden. There is no such thing as "objective reality". Postmodernism begins from the work of sociologists like Emile Durkheim, and later work by Whorf-Sapir, and is based largely on Saussure's linguistics. If you do not understand any of what I have mentioned, you have no standing to critique Post-modernism. In fact, you might objectively be a regressive fascist asshole. But who am I to say, in the post-modern realm of relativism? Well, I am one to say you are wrong, because you do not understand, which is the first requirement of being wrong. Confess! Confess! No one expects the Post-modernist Inquisition!!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 22 2020, @01:33PM (11 children)
More of this from you and less trolling, please. We have a serious problem with ignorants like Phoenix who don't know science OR humanities, but think they do, and throw around words they don't understand in ways they have no business to. This is the best thing you bring to the table, you know: you DO have some serious humanities brainpower.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:22PM (4 children)
A contradiction in terms given the proliferation and oversubscription of questionable humanities qualifications. This being aristarchus; I, for one, commend you for your charity.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 23 2020, @12:39AM (3 children)
Do yourself a favor and go search for Ari's journal entries on moral philosophy. That is what he's capable of when he stops dicking around and starts posting seriously.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @11:37AM (2 children)
The only moral imperative aristarchus displays is the consistent presentation of himself as a pretentious fraud.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:30PM (1 child)
So you haven't actually seen what he's capable of when he stops fooling around and gets serious then. Okay.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:09PM
An individual who consistently argues in bad faith cannot lay claim to moral foundation, hence the avoidance and childish insults when challenged. If forewarned is forearmed, an opponent who understands concepts like bricolage can simply respond; the walrus is me and not thee! Denuded of defenses there is not a soul on earth who can make good faith arguments in support of bad faith ideas. Who is seriously going to argue scientific knowledge is a form of social control when that very argument is now endlessly repeated as vapid dogma by brainwashed, zombie-like humanities graduates? Why would the public be funding courses increasingly based on "lived experience" rather than scientific analysis? The proposal that people do not understand postmodern influences on academia, much like the core conceits of postmodernism itself, is entirely without merit.
No, aristarchus is not "capable" because there is no reasoned argument to be advanced in support of nonsensical subjects. Defunding the humanities is not some right wing attack on academic freedom but a long overdue reevaluation. The educational institutions themselves are ultimately responsible, as Camile Pagila pointed out a decade ago:
(Score: 1, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 23 2020, @05:22AM (5 children)
Hmm, we have a serious problem with ignorants like Azuma Hazuki who don't know science OR humanities, but think they do, and throw around words they don't understand in ways they have no business to. Also, they are absolutely, totally sure they know best how you should live your life and what you should believe in. In other words, not only are they ignorant lesbian dilettantes, but they're conceited moral authoritarians too.
So don't dare cross them or they might call you hurtful names.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:29PM (4 children)
I'm sorry, Phoenix, did I get under your skin last time by deconstructing your entire worldview? And you respond, I notice, by going in whole-hog for the worst the site has to offer. Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. Thanks for proving my point for me. Another one radicalized...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:11PM (1 child)
Tooting my own horn
Been trying to tell everyone about this wolf in sheep's clothing for a while. Given how many users shift around their ideology, pretend to be things they are not, and generally display odd inconsistencies I 100% think SN has paid agents specifically here to radicalize the already fringe element of "fuck beta" people.
I am not sure which is more troubling, shills or real people being so nuts.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:33AM
hi Herbert. (i know your name's Bob but i think of you as Herbert). i don't like to think of myself as a wolf in sheep's clothing. i feel more like a mind flayer in cthulhu's clothing. or maybe cthulhu in mind flayer's clothing. anyway, i'm bad, thinking wrongthink all the time, constantly painting outside the lines. i just keep upsetting decent people like you with my schemes to raise R'lyeh from the depths.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:21AM (1 child)
you don't get under my skin at all. you are the most brilliant thinker who has ever lived. more amazing is you're self-taught! the rest of us stupidly earned graduate degrees in the stuff at top universities, but we can't hold a candle to you. so i hang on your every word like dropt manna. i pray your profound wisdom will light the darkness of my base ignorance.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 25 2020, @01:30PM
I don't think of myself like that, Phoenix. But I do know you've walled yourself up in your own pride thanks to getting your (to be fair, well above-average) efforts to improve yourself deconstructed. Your problem is that you've stalled out and started falling for some destructive tropes, and your own pride is preventing you from seeing that or fixing it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:33PM
Reality is only a matter of subjective opinion in the hypothetical. The insistence in claiming access to hidden knowledge that nobody else can comprehend is the province of cult leaders and entirely at odds with observable reality where the bulk of humanities papers remain uncited. Sokal and many others have aptly demonstrated the lack of academic rigor within the hallowed circle jerks of postmodernist word salads championed by cerebral narcissists and outright pseudo-intellectual, Mensa-cramming buffoons such as yourself. Finally I offer you the confession you ceremoniously demanded, I believe you are full of shit. A subjective claim that is also objectively if metaphorically true.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:26AM (6 children)
That's the first time I've heard somebody claim Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, started post-modernism. His suggestion of using criminality as a measure of a society's progress was the first time somebody thought of using empiricism instead of postulates, like those who came before him had done. His was a positive, constructive theory. Post-modernists only de-construct.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 23 2020, @07:06AM (4 children)
There always is a first time for everything, mon ami!
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203792834 [taylorfrancis.com]
No post-structuralism or Deconstruction without a structuralist, promoting "social facts", in the first place, eh?
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], such as it is.
Quite the list of usual suspects, including Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, and Michel Foucault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @09:20AM
No collective without collectivism, Giovanni Gentile was indebted to the works of Marx and Hegel, eh?
Thanks for clearing that up.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 24 2020, @01:16PM (2 children)
Pfft. Please. They're all French
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:16PM (1 child)
And you are not? Nobody's perfect!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:10AM
especially the French.
i kid, i kid.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @07:10AM
His underlying idea was that of "institutions." Institutions under his view are social constructs of customs, beliefs, behaviors that are important to and instituted by the collectivism of society. Once you understand society and institutions in that way, it isn't that far of a step to apply that idea to constructs like morality, human nature, science, language, and social progress. And, once you do that, you get postmodernism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @07:46PM
Please do tell how you've managed to access a noumenon, so as to know this objective reality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Monday June 22 2020, @04:13AM (13 children)
Math IS in the humanities. God knows engineers cannot do math correctly. Or creatively. Or even competent applications thereof. Do you even know who I am? Do you know of Pythagoras, my fellow Samian? Have you not heard of Descartes, he of the coordinates? Not to mention, Proclus, Kurt Friedrich Gödel, George Lakoff, Russell and Whitehead? Best not to project your post-modern preconceptions about the disciplines onto the whole of human knowing, um'kay?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @04:30AM (8 children)
Unfortunately, it's the kind of "math" that claims there are 72 genders.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday June 22 2020, @04:45AM
And you believe this is incorrect, why? Point made. We are coming for you, incel, with only one of two genders.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @04:48AM (3 children)
I swear, it is like Nazi science, when they held the 1936 Olympic Games to prove scientifically Teutonic superiority. And Jesse Owens, American, handed them their asses. Black Lives Matter, in American anti-Fascist history. Now please take your "two genders" crap and stuff it up your unscientific ass. Careful, you may enjoy it, as Lindsey Graham does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @05:07AM (2 children)
To be fair, the Teutonic superiority has always been intellectual rather than physical, as evidenced by how America and the Soviet Union divided the scientists of defeated Germany amongst themselves after the war. Jesse could run, but he could never design a rocket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:07AM
And Werner von Braun could never conjugate English verbs. Or run very fast. But he was good at sucking up to pro-Nazi American Military. Hwo, boy, dayam!
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 22 2020, @07:27AM
A quote from Ice Station Zebra:
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 22 2020, @01:35PM (2 children)
Don't confuse gender with sex with sexuality, and don't confuse what nature "intends" (scare quotes because nature is not a conscious decision-making agent) with what actually happens. Even Kinsey knew enough to have a sliding scale of sexual orientation rather than three static straight/bi/gay points.
Though I have to wonder, what is it with the number 72 specifically when people get triggered about gender identity?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)
Different AC, but most people who parrot 72 do so as a meme. They've long forgotten where the 72 came from. Suffice to say, to actually get there, most have to include "genders" that include more than just gender, multiple phrasing for the same "gender," and unprincipled divisions. In reality, what happened is that the originators mixed up two different memes in their head to get there, "there are 76 genders" and "there are only two genders." Yes, that is right. The mythical 72 number is literally just made of those two getting mixed up. And in case you go looking for it, no one claimed there are exactly 76 genders either. That meme arose from a completely different misunderstanding and wasn't a categorization claim made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @08:41PM
72 virgins, 72 genders [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 22 2020, @05:07AM (3 children)
My maths professor always described maths as "the queen of the humanities and the servant of the sciences". Although that maths department was in the science faculty, they are also to be found in the humanities faculties (or schools, as some universities now call them).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:44AM (2 children)
Fido, speaks the truth, my favorite Dostevtsky character! If only Aloysha would tell us about the Grand Inquisitor! But, Americans, such merchantile fuckfaces, such British derivative atomistic individuals! Except the English Libertarians were all pedophilic upper class twits. And Americans built a movement on this perversion? Colour me surprised!
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 22 2020, @07:37AM (1 child)
I wasn't expecting the Grand Inquisitor...
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @01:08PM
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! In fact, those who do, are often thrown into prison, and asked to recant reason and science, and subjected to the dish-drying RACK and the Comfy Chair! Confess! Confess! Confess!
"I confess!!!" Not you, Phoenix666! We'll come in again.