I am a [redacted personal info]. Can confirm STEM professionals can be quite reactionary. They commonly view themselves as progressive; but it’s an Andrew Yang technocratic sort of progress which does nothing to abolish the real exploitative conditions. They still believe that capitalist technological progress will save humanity, not realizing it will always mean increased profits and exploitation and nothing more.
Basically, the average software developer is Reddit personified. Those people exist, they aren’t bots. They’re roaming at your local Trader Joe’s and Best Buy.
I’m still unlearning some of this ideology that I picked up from that crowd.
Did you ever find an inability to communicate with some STEM folks about media or entertainment in a meaningful way?
I was talking to someone with a coding/econ background and he was telling me how the ending of this one movie was very deep. I asked him how? And he asked what did I mean, it was just deep.
They are a good friend so I don't think it's due to social anxiety, though it could be. I was taken aback by the lack of depth. Then I remembered growing up chatting with friends in high school about different single player games we liked and the depth of the conversation was similar. We'd stay that the story was great, or awesome, cool, etc. and never have much substance to our claims. We'd reference a scene or a part, maybe a sequence of events but that would be it.
It is common for STEM folks to have a reductive world view. I think part of this is due to capitalist alienation. Whereas great thinkers of the past were polymaths dabbling in many different studies, today there is an intense drive to specialize into a particular trade or study, and therefore to identify strongly with it, due to the capitalist division of labor. We don't think of ourselves principally as humans or thinkers, but as doctors or attorneys or physicists — and increasingly, even these broad vocations are insufficient as an identity, and one must further qualify that they are a pediatric opthalmologist or a family law attorney or a condensed matter physicist.
Just as it is flawed for STEM folks to reduce everyone else to their own simple categories, we too must reject simple categorization, viewing this group as a monolith. To do so is to tacitly accept their own worldview. Don't appeal to their identity as a developer, or a gamer, or a scientist. Talk to them as humans with their own distinct experiences. They will constantly fall back on the fact that they "are" a Windows loyalist, or a gamer, or a Democrat, and invoke these things as explanations for their opinions and behaviors. Don't let it stop there, ask more questions and make them explain themselves as a human and not some illusory identity.
I was talking to someone with a coding/econ background and he was telling me how the ending of this one movie was very deep. I asked him how? And he asked what did I mean, it was just deep.
The optimistic interpretation is not that they are essentially shallow, but that they lack the ability to communicate or even understand their own thoughts clearly. It takes practice to think, and even more practice to think in a self-aware manner. These are prerequisites for the kind of deep conversation you might have wanted from them.
My wife is extremely analytical with media and has really forced me to think a lot more about various pieces of media I see.
This has resulted in me seeing modern slop for what it is, and really annoying coworkers when they say how good X is and I was laughing out loud at the badness of X the night before.
The thing that frustrates me most about that crowd is that they are totally blind to their own privilege. Many of them are raised by parents who worked for the military industrial complex and were given computers and education in STEM fields from a very young age. I'm talking tutors, extracurricular activities, better teachers, smaller class sizes, charter schools, the works. The apartment complex I grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost no kids had computers in their house, and if they did, it was just so their parents could like do email or something once a month. Meanwhile every STEM guy I know had a dad who was giving him HTML and C++ textbooks at like the age of 8. And these guys get this massive head start, and they think they were just smarter than everyone else and that the working class are just a bunch of willfully ignorant people playing with their own shit all day. Nobody is growing up in poverty taking care of younger siblings or aging grandparents, no no no, we just all decided to be lazy for no reason.
I am a [redacted personal info]. Can confirm STEM professionals can be quite reactionary. They commonly view themselves as progressive; but it’s an Andrew Yang technocratic sort of progress which does nothing to abolish the real exploitative conditions. They still believe that capitalist technological progress will save humanity, not realizing it will always mean increased profits and exploitation and nothing more.
Basically, the average software developer is Reddit personified. Those people exist, they aren’t bots. They’re roaming at your local Trader Joe’s and Best Buy.
I’m still unlearning some of this ideology that I picked up from that crowd.
Can also confirm. Lack of emotional intelligence or humanities education is a helluva combo as well.
deleted by creator
I left the country, so probably not anymore
deleted by creator
Did you ever find an inability to communicate with some STEM folks about media or entertainment in a meaningful way?
I was talking to someone with a coding/econ background and he was telling me how the ending of this one movie was very deep. I asked him how? And he asked what did I mean, it was just deep.
They are a good friend so I don't think it's due to social anxiety, though it could be. I was taken aback by the lack of depth. Then I remembered growing up chatting with friends in high school about different single player games we liked and the depth of the conversation was similar. We'd stay that the story was great, or awesome, cool, etc. and never have much substance to our claims. We'd reference a scene or a part, maybe a sequence of events but that would be it.
It is common for STEM folks to have a reductive world view. I think part of this is due to capitalist alienation. Whereas great thinkers of the past were polymaths dabbling in many different studies, today there is an intense drive to specialize into a particular trade or study, and therefore to identify strongly with it, due to the capitalist division of labor. We don't think of ourselves principally as humans or thinkers, but as doctors or attorneys or physicists — and increasingly, even these broad vocations are insufficient as an identity, and one must further qualify that they are a pediatric opthalmologist or a family law attorney or a condensed matter physicist.
Just as it is flawed for STEM folks to reduce everyone else to their own simple categories, we too must reject simple categorization, viewing this group as a monolith. To do so is to tacitly accept their own worldview. Don't appeal to their identity as a developer, or a gamer, or a scientist. Talk to them as humans with their own distinct experiences. They will constantly fall back on the fact that they "are" a Windows loyalist, or a gamer, or a Democrat, and invoke these things as explanations for their opinions and behaviors. Don't let it stop there, ask more questions and make them explain themselves as a human and not some illusory identity.
The optimistic interpretation is not that they are essentially shallow, but that they lack the ability to communicate or even understand their own thoughts clearly. It takes practice to think, and even more practice to think in a self-aware manner. These are prerequisites for the kind of deep conversation you might have wanted from them.
My wife is extremely analytical with media and has really forced me to think a lot more about various pieces of media I see.
This has resulted in me seeing modern slop for what it is, and really annoying coworkers when they say how good X is and I was laughing out loud at the badness of X the night before.
The thing that frustrates me most about that crowd is that they are totally blind to their own privilege. Many of them are raised by parents who worked for the military industrial complex and were given computers and education in STEM fields from a very young age. I'm talking tutors, extracurricular activities, better teachers, smaller class sizes, charter schools, the works. The apartment complex I grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost no kids had computers in their house, and if they did, it was just so their parents could like do email or something once a month. Meanwhile every STEM guy I know had a dad who was giving him HTML and C++ textbooks at like the age of 8. And these guys get this massive head start, and they think they were just smarter than everyone else and that the working class are just a bunch of willfully ignorant people playing with their own shit all day. Nobody is growing up in poverty taking care of younger siblings or aging grandparents, no no no, we just all decided to be lazy for no reason.
relevant comic
I saw that image a good while ago and made the mistake of not saving it. This time I did. Thanks!