It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
What really bothers me is that people implicitly don't consider a lot of STEM work to be "work", e.g.
A: "Lol, you like socialism, even though capitalism created your smartphone?"
B: "Labour created the smartphone. Capitalism just determined who got paid."
A: "Yeah right -- like a bunch of idiot factory workers could design a smart phone!"
...Implicitly ignoring that the people designing the technology are doing work.
That could be driving people away. People who hear about labor being in charge and not realizing that that's them.
Engineering isn't labor though, and I say that as an engineer. The vast majority of engineers in the US do nothing resembling actual design or innovation. They find ways to cut costs, to make products go obsolete, to make workers obsolete, and to sell shit and manipulate people.
Plus their knowledge about history, art, social science etc is extremely limited.
This is a bullshit cope. The average STEM student knows more about history, art, and social science than the average art student knows about math or science. Yes, a lot of engineers are proudly ignorant, but people who can complete a Bachelor's in a hard science or engineering generally have some sort of intellectual curiosity.
As a mechanical engineer who went to university in a pretty conservative area, yeah, it's tough. Because of how Americans like to define "smart" I make sure to tell people (especially when they think I'm "smart" just because of my degree) that engineers are some if the dumbest smart people you'll ever meet. Sure, they can do math and make a CAD model but god forbid they spend 2 seconds thinking about any kind of social issues. While I grew up firmly middle class, both of my parents worked union jobs majority of my life. This kind of working class upbringing is super rare amongst the majority of engineers I've know. They come from landlords and pharmacists and doctors and engineers and just basic petite bugeious backgrounds, and man does it show.
On the bright side I've met some of the other incredibly rare based engineers at the job I started this year, so they do exist.
But, tl;dr: as an engineer, fuck engineers
You hit the nail on the head. The place I'm at used to have an engineers & designers union but it ended up dissolving. There's a few dudes close to my age who were in it but they don't have fond memories for it. Felt like all their union dues just went to subsidize the pension funds and any future for them was getting negotiated away. Which it did though because after it dissolved only guys with ~20+ years in will be getting any pension.
But now it's all completely fucked because everything is so outsourced and leaned down there's no leverage to be gained; let alone a realistic shot of changing other engineers on coming together. And it's only gonna get worse from here.
So yeah. Also fuck engineers.
How many people do you think are in STEM out of a pure love of their field versus a desire for wealth
There's your answer
But seriously, I think the amount of the former is a lot more than people might assume. There are people who want to become an engineer to earn an engineer's salary, or who want to be the next Elon Musk, but outside them, you won't make it very far in science and math without a legitimate love of the material. If you're in it for the money you're wasting time and should just get a business degree or something.
And even among those engineers, aren't they basically in the same boat as doctors? It's not like doctors are massively reactionary just because many of them chose that path for the salary.
From the data I've seen, doctors are kinda just bland liberals
I'm 21 and I still cant decide what I want to do lol
This, big gap between the avergae science/math and engineering/tech people. Switching majors out of comp sci is probably the best decision I ever made
They followed the line without thinking. So much for facts and logic, I guess.
I like to make the distinction between scientists and engineers. I think that because of the sheer amount of money pushed onto engineers, they can often become more reactionary simply because they are sucessful under capitalism (this is of course a generalisation). Another problem is the influence of the defense industry and other morally bankrupt industries at universities, on more than one occassion I've heard people express their desire to build weapons and drones for the defence industry. What the fuck. On the other hand I think that many scientists are more left wing because they see how privitisation of industry and government budget priorities have wreaked havoc for science. As well as this, scientists get paid significantly less than engineers, which is almost certainly a factor (again, somewhat anecdotal). My biggest issue with STEM is the idolotry of Elon Fucking Musk. Musk is one of the biggest pieces of shit in the world and I can't say what I would like to see happen to him.
Engineers, as applied scientists, are also not trained to do the scientific method, they're trained to apply already accepted scientific principles, so it tends to attract a completely different type of person than hard science does.
For applied scientists, they're used to treating science like religion: edicts handed down from on high.
For applied scientists, they’re used to treating science like religion: edicts handed down from on high.
Which is good when you're building a bridge, not so much when you want society to improve a little and get "BUT IT WAS ALWAYS DONE THIS WAY".
As a personal anecdote, spending the first year and half or so of my post-education career as a quality engineer helped radicalize me, one of the major reasons being it's one of the few engineering positions (when done correctly) that encourage questioning the status quo. You are always doing analysis and "5 Whys" and the like to get down to root causes. I eventually went, "what happens if I applied this philosophy to my understanding of society?" And here we are now.
I remember reading something once about how engineers and doctors tend to try to extend their expertise outside of their field and often fall into quackery. They think that because they are good at x then surely they'll be good at y.
I probably do this to some degree since my hobbies extend in all sorts of directions... except I'm a Marxist and believe in the effort at an unrestrained critique of everything.
*does something really dumb showing that they don't know shit about Marxism, actually* - uhh..
Engineers are notorious for spouting total bullshit in Math and Physics. It feels like they make up something like 50% of cranks.
I've been tinkering with CAD and I'm convinced that the mechanical engineers at work just bullshit their designs instead of doing a whole bunch of FEA and minimizing the amount of material for this and that. So much for all that math, physics, engineering mechanics, etc that they took in college.
Well, it's that expectation that competent engineers are good at math and physics that's the problem.
Sure, compared to the average person, an engineer might have an enormous knowledge of those fields, but if you're talking about the cutting edge, you've delved into a completely different subject area. The best engineer in the world isn't necessarily qualified to say shit about real academic mathematics.
So, you have good engineers who know everything they need to know and perform their jobs excellently getting the impression that the're good at math and physics, not just compared to the average person, but compared to mathematicians and physicists, leading them to embarrass themselves when they try and speak with authority.
Engineers are good at specific forms of applied math. Academic mathematics can be so completely different and esoteric that it's really more in line with philosophy than with engineering.
In my experience it's like engineering but for a universe with different and strange properties.
I told myself that when I get bored with making stuff that I'd just pursue math until I fall over dead.
as a mech-e undergrad that is how most of my designs have been made with nobody telling me otherwise, yes
I also slap together code so I think it is a cross discipline approach to 'engineering'.
This is kinda real On Practice hours, but I've always respected purely hands on engineering types, which abound at my employer. Though, I do think they are missing out by not knowing enough backing theory. One must have the synthesis to be complete.But also...
- Design thing
- 3D print
- It broke here... make that part thicker randomly by 1-10mm, depending on scale
- Go to 1 or 2 until done
I've also done some FEA in solidworks and then just went "I'll just make this thicker until the factor of safety is like 10 or something. That should do it".
Really, I think the coursework is meant to give one an intuition about how much to add or remove and where one can. This replaces breaking a whole bunch of stuff to learn the same intuition. You can see the hands-on types doing the latter as amateurs on YouTube. It seems that's how it worked for my electrical coursework even though there are some simple maths that often needs done.
I suppose the classes also make it so you can better understand what to use FEA on and how to understand the results.
I disagree with this in that most engineering companies now have so much change control and documentation required for new designs that it makes it difficult to push "new" bullshit through.
The main capitalism flaw is how engineers are pushed to use "carryover" designs as much as possible and the term carryover gets used too loosely. With exhibit fucking A being the 737MAX. MCAS was a carryover design from the military tanker KC-46. But aside from them not even implementing it properly, it's so disgusting they thought they could use a military bandaid on a civilian product. Military folks are at least aware their equipment will often be optimized with shady design choices that might make them more efficient at striking hospitals. Regular airline passengers deserve to not be subjected to these design choices as just a basic fucking decency. I will forever be salty these Boeing execs will never be extradited to Ethiopia or Indonesia for some real justice.
You are right. Most of the mechanical engineer's work at our place is either making slight mods to enclosures or minor tweaks. It's all calcified, even in our team. There is also a hesitance among the top management to take risks on new projects that the engineering teams all think should happen. Of course, they know better than us.
i do a lot of compsci and bio related work and this is kinda a mood. i know i am way out of my depth when talking about physics and shit. in fact i like my SO so much because he fills my gaps in lol
The same article I read claimed that people in science (excluding computer science) tend to be a bit better about it because they more often have to defend why something is right or wrong, that it's more rigorous, whereas things are more grey in engineering and medicine.
The one thing I can add to this is how it's very common for people who go deep into one field of study to just be utterly lacking in many others. Political Science is an absolute joke at most schools from what I've seen and experienced. I think a lot people, no matter how smart, book or "street" smart they may be have just been spoon fed the two genders of political ideology so hard they either check out or just pick one and don't really care to question much more beyond that.
I've known quite a few comp-sci people here in the bay area that are some of the dopest comrades, and at the same time, I've known two chemical engineers that are basically centrists (moderate dem.) A latter typically hasn't experienced or had to endure the same struggles or issues more working class folks have delt with so it's very easy for them to both check out of politics and never have a real reason to broaden their scope of ideology or beliefs.
You're completely right about capitalism destroying science though, but a lot of folks have no clue there is even an alternative because all they know about socialism or communism or whatever has been taught from right wing propagandists because that makes up the majority of media in a lot of ways. You almost never see comparisons of America to very rich, great social welfare countries like in parts of Europe. The same people will bitch and moan about hardly being able to ever take off time from work, let alone a week or two at one time, and just feel defeated and not realize it doesn't have to be like this and other parts of the world have figured this out a long time ago. Everyone they know does it so the idea is probably not thought about much about how much they are overworked. In a lot of STEM industries it's mandatory to work insane hours for very long periods of time and forgoing relationships or personal happiness.
idk man like theres a lot of people on the left that are anti-science and dont read scientific papers. there are leftists that are anti-nuclear, anti-vax, anti-gmo, anti-cultured meat, etc.
people will legitimately call you evil for advancing human knowledge and these nutjobs are one of the first things you come across when coming to the left. its a turnoff. i also do think it depends on the field. the majority however i think are socdems and see a lot of lefties as anti-science loons.
source: i do the sciences
nuclear is going to transition to fusion rather than fission over the next century. funding for it is of critical importance. the fuel is salt water for fusion and will produce so much energy we will have no clue what to do with it all. its important to fund fission as a stopgap till we get fusion in order to build expertise on nuclear energy.
will produce so much energy we will have no clue what to do with it all.
Looking back at human history, odds are good that we will use it to kill each other.
i'm talking billions of years of renewability here lol. the whole point of fusion is we're basically creating a tiny sun that we can just feed energy in and get double out of it.
It really depends on the field. Conservation Biology or any other environmental aligned field can be pretty radical.
yeah, forgot to mention that. a lot of the bio/chem people that arent oil ghouls are pretty lit.
yep. its a thing that frustrates me to no end. i try to educate them, show them papers and statistics, but they're in a damn cult.
Dogmatist do this, I guess. Become anti-science, that is, because they're worried that it'll taint their sacred knowledge from the one guy or book. J. Moufawad-Paul talks about it with Breht of Rev Left Radio in their episode on Moufawad-Paul's book.
I'm not saying the people you are referring to are these types but the behavior seems similar. That or it's similar to the anti-intellectual behavior on the right. Fear of the unknown maybe?
yeah idk if its just my geographic location or what but all the physics people i know are chill
The Sunrise Movement is officially agnostic on nuclear and de facto hostile. That's actually an extremely worrying stance.
the only one of those things thats "nutjob" territory is being antivaccine, and i have literally never met an antivax leftist.
nuclear, gmo, and meat cultures are all things the world could do just fine without, so having discourse about their value makes sense.
so why are you being a wonk about it? because you dont like that other people dislike:
promoting eating meat when theyve been trying to stop people from doing that for ages, and they feel that taking stem cells is also a violation of an animals rights or whatever (i dont find this a compelling argument so forgive me if its presented poorly)
the idea of having a superfund site in their backyard and consequently think other energy solutions are better, because contrary to what you believe, nuclear waste will never all be contained to a single site the size of a football field (hi, this me. barring massive advances in fusion tech, nuclear will always have issues that i refuse to agree with)
the idea of monsanto brand seed cultures that destroy crop diversity getting a pass because youre busy patting yourself on the back about modifying gene structures to increase grain output (i can see the point here, but it comes down to capitalism doing it wrong tbh, so is there anyone that actually feels this way?)
?
tldr; there are valid criticisms of those things, other people also do sciences and disagree with you on some topics. learn to discuss that without calling other leftists nutjobs or :cope:
with the exception of nuclear waste always being bad, because tainted water tables suck yall, i didnt say that at all.
and even then, i absolutely look forward to fusion tech finally being figured out, assuming we all make it another decade or two, given recent promising things along that front.
im a big fan of both lab grown meat and gmo technology, in premise. so no. inherently bad? not at all.
i dislike these assholes trying to "muh science" the discourse about problematic aspects of things away, and pretending any dissenters are "nutjobs" who hate science
you can argue that we could do just fine without them, but you could argue that we could do just fine without medicine, vaccines, advanced agriculture, and so on.
and no, they are definitely nutjobs. those things will make life better for humans everywhere, unequivocally.
do fine without medicine or agriculture? lololol okay. but no. no "we," as in a modern society, could not.
apparently im a nutjob for not wanting to live in another town with nuclear waste seeping into its water table. because it would just be so much better if i did. 🙄
:O great argument bro do you have any papers on how widespread this is vs. the disruption of other energy methods.
great argument bro, hows that fukushima daiichi treating you?
omg i list one failure and apparently that reports a systemic issue with all nuclear plants i am a very smart nutjob that doesnt understand science. christ, this is exactly the issue im talking about. i'm tired of dealing with you people.
whaa whaa. i dont like that my nuclear do a whoopsie you cant bring that up you nutjob!
fuck off. did you miss the part where i lived in a town with nuclear waste seeping into the water table you absolute twit?
You do realise that producing solar panels and wind turbines creates orders of magnitude more toxic waste than a nuclear power plant, right? Before involving any batteries.
lets also talk about that the official quote for fukushima is 0 dead and 40-50 injured. good luck getting those stats in lithium and rare earth mining.
ok so lets assume the worst, then. the biggest, worst, estimate is 60k deaths from anything related to nuclear, including low level poisoning and stress, which means you lived pretty long but it was cut short by the sickness. we have had nuclear technology for around 80 years. if you include the stats from old-gen nuclear reactors like chernobyl, it is slightly worse than wind, but not as bad as solar. if you consider only the newest gen reactors and technology, it beats out every other energy source. in fact, latest gen nuclear reactors have roughly half the death rate of wind. here's a simple, noncomprehensive diagram from forbes: https://i.imgur.com/4LXeCFD.png.
of course, you could argue that 'oh, since these are new they havent had a long enough time to fail'. actually, there have been dozens of failures of new gen reactors and there are lots of them. however, we have gotten really smart about how reactors fail and when they do they don't hurt people.
do go on about how drinking nuclear waste is super great for my health. by comparison or whatever. maybe with batteries even. such a compelling argument.
im sure those wind turbine blades are just awful. so many tonnes of fiberglass. oh no.
Ideed. Five tonnes of fiberglass that contains water-soluble epoxy that cannot be recycled per blade. All to produce 0.3 MW of power and be thrown away after 20 years.
Compare to a depleted uranium fuel bundle, that weights ~100 tons, produces over 3000 MW of power and lasts around 7 years before it needs to be reprocessed. Because yes, unlike turbine blades, it's recyclable.
neat. wind turbine blade technology can certainly be improved and made less wasteful. nuclear, baring significant advancements in fusion tech, will always pose a serious danger because its waste products will kill you.
but no really do go on acting like im unaware, or that i even advocated for wind tech in the first place.
Being against cultured meat isn't anti-science, it's anti-pointless-effort. We have all the necessary technology to not consume meat (and thereby not consume all the resources breeding animals just to kill them requires).
Cultured meat isn't factory farming. Its growing meat using cells, a process that involves no animals being harmed at all.
Yeah, I know what it is. We already have the ability to not eat meat, so why should we waste all this scientific effort on creating it without an animal involved (oops, except the animal you need to yank the stem cells out of)?
A lot of STEM jobs pay very well and they are loyal to their middle/upper class interests.
I don't believe STEM pays as well as people think, but STEM grad's are often from more well off families to begin with.
On a different note, one of the greatest tragedies of the fall of the USSR is that many students today will never know the experience of being lectured by a Soviet trained physicist -- it's definitely an experience
My Maths teacher was Ex Soviet, We learned Lagrangian functions in the same way the Germans learned fear in the winter of 1942.
I go to a UC school currently, and I know there was a grad student strike pre covid but it seems to have just fizzled out as all the coronavirus stuff kind of took precedence.
Can confirm. And in the private sector, it's even worse. A lot of these people with science degrees also don't even care that much about the science. They let a lot of their curiosity drop by the wayside and just do and learn the minimum a job requires.
I got into engineering tech because I wanted to learn practical skills & how to build cool, functional, shit, and about half the engineers are cool and passionate and the other half are infuriating and have trouble empathizing with people. I wish we had STEAM (science, technology, engineering, ART, and math) instead of STEM because the current stem movement sure produces a lot of bland bullshit.
I think the people seeking the big salaries tend to opt for the non-tech degrees. From this, I would expect the tech folks to be more passionate. I, like a big dummy, opted for the non-tech degree because I thought it was more 'pure'. Then again, I do like all the required science and math classes. I wanted that theory!
Maybe what should happen is a greater synthesis of disciplines in a liberal arts fashion, but in a renaissance man style!
"But that's what a liberal arts education means."
Well... yeah, I guess.Yeah I agree,
I've considered going into a 4 year for the theory but I'm worried that I won't mesh with the student body. My background is in the arts first and engineering second, I just wanted to learn about 3D printing & tech school is cheap. I would love it if more engineers took drawing classes, or classes about the culture/history/beurocracy behind choices made in engineering.
I went as an adult student (mid 20s). It was... alright. It'd probably kill me now though.
STEM people are labor aristocracy, generally, so their politics are often tied to their class interests. Same deal as like with chud plumbers that make 100k/yr or whatever, except with more of an affinity for technocrats.
There are some based people in STEM who just like making shit, or like FOSS people, or whomever
In my experience, people going into STEM treat that as an unfortunate necessity, rather than going "oh boy, time to join the military industrial complex"
Not my friends in highschool who were happy as fuck to become chemical engineers and go to work "making bombs or whatever oil companies need doing"
Yeah, it is a little disheartening when like the majority of the people around me are only like rad libs at best, meanwhile we have to put up with all the bullshit sides of academia caused by capitalism
the TE in STEM is very different from the SM.
TEs are basically as worthless as anyone else. Speaking as someone with a degree in TE.
the TE in STEM is very different from the SM.
Can confirm.
I once tried studying SM in the Engineering building. Bastards confiscated all my whips and ball gags.
