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superborbAfter recent complaints about the HUMANITIES OF IT ALL by someone under f-lock, I am wondering about the balance within fandom. As a teen in fandom, I did feel like a substantial fraction of fandom were also science-y people. Biased, of course, by the fact that I would have sought out those people.
Back then, I was very good at critical reading (of the sort that standardized testing rewards), but because I understood myself to be bad at essay writing, I thought myself definitely not a hums person at all. (Though I loved my AP English teacher so much, I thought I might want to major in English in college. One class disabused me of the notion.) Anyway it was enough that when Erin mentioned that I was good at hums stuff it cued a mini existential crisis...
Of course, this all plays into the false dichotomy of STEM vs hums that I've come to dislike, but at the same time, I dooo think it's worth discussing? Like no, they're not at all orthogonal the way it gets presented sometimes, but there are worldview differences if you're strongly one or the other that are kind of interesting.
Namely, I think my STEM background inclines me strongly to prefer quantitative evidence and distrust anecdata, to argue strongly and dispassionately with friends -- but to divorce the idea from the person. (I'm not saying these are exclusively STEM-y things, just that that is where those parts of me were nurtured.)
Also, poll here for the next 24 h:
Back then, I was very good at critical reading (of the sort that standardized testing rewards), but because I understood myself to be bad at essay writing, I thought myself definitely not a hums person at all. (Though I loved my AP English teacher so much, I thought I might want to major in English in college. One class disabused me of the notion.) Anyway it was enough that when Erin mentioned that I was good at hums stuff it cued a mini existential crisis...
Of course, this all plays into the false dichotomy of STEM vs hums that I've come to dislike, but at the same time, I dooo think it's worth discussing? Like no, they're not at all orthogonal the way it gets presented sometimes, but there are worldview differences if you're strongly one or the other that are kind of interesting.
Namely, I think my STEM background inclines me strongly to prefer quantitative evidence and distrust anecdata, to argue strongly and dispassionately with friends -- but to divorce the idea from the person. (I'm not saying these are exclusively STEM-y things, just that that is where those parts of me were nurtured.)
Also, poll here for the next 24 h:
Would you consider yourself a STEM or humanities person?
— &helena; (@superborb) March 12, 2021
