As a former STEM lord who quit Aero eng in their third year because I didn't wanna make weapons for capitalists, they're 100000000% a symptom of our society (but one we will still have to eliminate in a socialist one, but not nearly the same way/magnitude) rather than a something endemic to all societies.

STEM lords as we have them are a result of the same shit that makes incels, that makes reply guys, that makes debate bros, that makes twitter wine moms, etc.

There's a reason most of those things have huge overlaps with each other, and it's the crossroads of what America enshrines as it's values. Ignorance coupled with arrogance. These are problems every society faces but America in particular goes out of it's way to nourish them in it's population in order to fuel it's culture war and consumerism, and as a result it's uniquely effective at educating those traits into it's population, especially in unison.

It's also why even the most educated of them feels confident enough to "share it's expertise" on shit it has absolutely no education or involvement with, etc etc. It's not just the ignorance, it's not just the arrogance, it's the combination and the fact that we naturally select FOR it. It's even celebrated when it fits in the current cultural product, like twitch "celebs" and blue check marks opinions somehow being relevant, conducting interviews, the existence of youtubers, etc etc. The audacity to think that anyone even should hear their take let alone anyone actually wanting to.

It's a uniquely individualist mindset fostered by generations of imperial core cultural reform, as you alluded to in the education/general literacy points.

If you keep those things in mind and look back at scientists like Carl Sagan(a socialist) and listen to the way speak about our society, or look at how soviet scientists and astronauts etc were treated and treated their accomplishments (as done by and for the people, etc) even when they were being celebrated they always fostered the view that it was an accomplishment struggled for by all, that it was shared by them all, and that they were all responsible for it's risks and rewards. That a rich society had to be rich in huge and varying fields and specialties and that the same was true of people to understand each other, even (perhaps even especially) when they hyper-specialized in the thing they did best or enjoyed or did the most good for "the team".

As someone who works in a cushy office occasionally writing code for a living, what you're describing is fundamentally the result of labor aristocracy. The STEMlords are the 'good ones' of the working class that capital dangles like a carrot in front of a donkey to convince the rest of the workers that if they just put their noses to the grindstone a little bit harder they too can play foosball with free beer in an air conditioned office, and they are indoctrinated to play the part and bribed with treats to convince themselves that they deserve it.

I am fully aware that the companies I've worked for are completely fucking worthless in the real world and deliver absolutely nothing of value, and I'm surrounded by people who are thoroughly convinced that whatever widget they're working on is revolutionary and going to transform the world. But they think that way because admitting that you're a lucky bastard who gets paid an obscene wage to refactor an API thirty times in a row instead of doing anything that actually benefits anyone in any material way in complete opposition to everything you've ever been told is a wall of cognitive dissonance to work through and they're bribed heavily not to, so they don't and double down on bazinga-brain shit instead. Their material conditions encourage them to just sit back and enjoy the gravy train, and that along with the propaganda they're exposed to for every second of every day breeds reactionary thought.

I started coming up with some spiel about how to break this down under a less toxic system, but Porkroll already knocked it out of the park so I'll just throw a +1 to his "make engineers dogfood what they make" idea.

As a humble CNC machinist, here's my rambling vulgar producerist take. As much as it is a problem that STEM is glorified and humanities are sidelined or deemed unnecessary, there is a stark class divide within STEM mindset as well. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics - that's all theoretical cubicle work. Sure, it is labor, but it accomplishes nothing on its own. An army of engineers in an architecture firm does not produce a building. No number of scientists is capable of arresting climate change. We've got app stores filled with millions of apps, but all they are capable of doing are reifying the present social relations, and mathematics makes no attempt at mystifying the fact that it is a purely academic pursuit.

In the context of mechanical engineering and production, my proposition is you force people to operate the machines before you allow them to build/set up the machines. Then you force them to build/set up the machines before you allow them to program them. Then you force them to program the machines before you allow them to do the glorified engineering work of processes development and industrial design. Under the present regime of production, there is a deep dichotomy between the technical labor of people who keep the factories churning, and the "enlightened" engineers and designers who go to school, sit in a comfortable office, draw a bunch of lines and arcs on a computer and, in doing so, unwittingly wield tremendous power over the conditions of potentially hundreds of thousands of hours of labor. This is not to equivocate the discipline of engineering with the social status of being a member of the bourgeoisie, but to highlight the consequences of decisions made at this level.

Engineers one way or another must be forced to pull their heads of out of their perfectly spherical, frictionless asses and think about the social and political implications of their designs, and one way to do that is to make them start from the fundamentals. Not just do some 3 month internship along the way to getting an engineering stamp, but actually engaging seriously with the production process, such that they learn how to spot the kind of engineering decisions which result from inexperience, expedience, or penny pinching and develop a genuine disdain for it. A solid education in history, politics, and philosophy can only serve to enrich this disdain.

Edit/addendum: When it comes to "tech work" A.K.A. information technology and software development, the situation is even worse. If it is an engineer's job to methodically weigh the pros and cons of various design decisions in a LIMITED social scope (e.g. will this building collapse on its inhabitants, or will this intersection get pedestrians killed. In short: "will our firm be held liable"), this methodology is almost entirely lacking in the field of computing. Yes, "software engineers" are a thing, but it is a much more vaguely defined dicipline than other engineering fields like mechanical, architectural, and civil engineering. The majority of computer technicians take pride in the notion of being a "code monkey," who moves fast and breaks stuff. For the most part, even the limited social concerns of more mature engineering diciplines are entirely abscent.

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I like to think that I did a good job raising my little brother. He is an engineer and I fed him philosophy and politics and he's a well rounded man.

And he totally loathes stemlords. He is a smart dude (sorry, big bro gotta brag on his behalf, I love him) and he could definitely tell in engineering school that there are the true analytical thinkers and the ones that do rote memorization. It was eye opening and I think compelled him to not be one of them. He's got a very critical eye. When I first explained materialist politics he was like "yeah makes perfect sense"

I consider him left adjacent. He isn't a communist but he is anti capitalist. I will continue my radicalization of him this Christmas.

We can once again thank Reagan for his hard work in ensuring that colleges were viewed as job training facilities

University level education will include a few token classes on broader subjects like history or philosophy but staff and students treats them like something to get over with so you can do the important stuff rather than something of importance.

I'm not sure what other peoples' experiences were like and I'd love to hear about them, but my university (Anglo country, but not the US) had some amazing lecturers for these broader subjects.

I had a sociology course where we learned about the difference between race and ethnicity, as well as how racism refers to institutional power. I had a history of management course where the lecturer spent the entire semester telling us about how unions are cool and good and the many, many, ways in which unions could mess with production. I had a jurisprudence course where we learned about law from the perspective of indigenous peoples and, as the motherfucking cherry on top, Maoist perspectives on international law.

Maybe I'm just extremely lucky, but maybe these cool courses and lecturers are out there if you look for them?

Charge them $8 a day.

the goal of stembros is to automate everything and force everyone into the matrix pods where they will be subjected to endless entertainment by ai overlords. everyone coddled for by mommy ai and forced into an eternal life of endless pleasure in virtual fantasy worlds, completely designed for individual consumption, and completely separate from other human beings

There’s a book about Stalin, it might be stalins world, that talks about how he fucked up and got shock comboed by the post ww2 management classes gettin’ too big for their britches and rejecting a proletarian understanding of their labor.

So once there’s this concentration of knowledge and skill in a tiny class, the proletarian character of the ussr was dissolved and the state itself could only follow, prodded and drug along by outside forces as well.

So don’t do it like that.

The only solution to STEMlords is mandatory empathy training because 80% of them either never learned it or actively unlearned it in order to rationalize their higher salaries and the rampant reactionary attitudes surrounding it in school and workplaces. It doesn't help that it's like 80% white cishet dudes in Western countries.

Also most of them are deeply alienated from healthy human interactions and conversations. They're creatures of weirdly competitive "prestige" environments that are very toxic and cruel. Root it out at the source by creating a society where you can have positive social relationships your entire life.

Comprehensive Ideological education from birth. Yes, even the Soviet Union suffered from some Stemlordism, especially after Stalin, but the average Soviet scientist/engineer was brought up to see Socialism as the best way to organise society.

Also people appreciate the arts if they're regularly exposed to them outside of school. If you've been going to Ballet and looking at archeology digs since age 3 you are going to be far more aware of the worth of arts and history. Communism of course is entirely based on a school of historiography so that makes that easier. Knowing that if your success in politics or the upper echelons of STEM is dependent on political education is also a help.

The Soviet Union was 1 generation away from eliminating capitalist thought outside of what filtered in through Radio Free Europe.

I think these people are a product of an educational system that is set up to produce good employees rather than good citizens.

Bingo. The humanities and the idea of a broad based liberal arts education in general have been ruthlessly attacked for decades. K-12 education programs in art, music, basically anything that isn't STEM and sports have been ruthlessly defunded and dismantled. Gobshite fuckwits like Gates have been pushing STEM STEM STEM STEM STEM for decades while systematically destroying the public education system and forcing all effort in public education to be devoted to a constant cycle of pointless standardized testing.

There's basically a huge, not particularly hidden conspiracy to turn education at all levels in to a factory that produces ignorant coders.

End the neoliberalization of education. Bring back music, painting, drama, etc. all throughout school. More education in literature, history, etc. Philosophy education starting in elementary school. Also, people should be sent "down to the countryside" for a while between highschool and university.

How to deal with them?

Shove them in lockers