

The only thing that can stop this asteroid is your liberal arts degree - msurel
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/4/22lacher.html

======
eavc
As someone with a philosophy degree and many years of formal training in
classical music, I give this piece a hearty thumbs up.

While the author clearly values the liberal arts (um, it's McSweeney's),
there's something to be said for actually getting things done in the world. A
lot, actually.

What the author is parodying is less the degree itself but more the miles wide
and inches deep approach to education and life that many intelligent people
are fond of taking.

I've been guilty of this, and satire is usually born of familiarity, so I
assume the author has been as well. The point is, recognize that pursuit of
education as amusement and status symbol is a hobby done for you and none
other, and if you want to make some kind of impact outside of your own head,
you're going to either have to get deeper and more focused or get more
pragmatic.

~~~
CoreDumpling
As someone with a computer science degree and several years working experience
in software development, I feel an urge to play devil's advocate here.

In terms of "getting things done in the world," how is making iPhone fart apps
any more of a contribution than, say, publishing a screed in a tabloid? I'm
trying not to set up a straw man here, so I'm deliberately choosing lowest
common denominator activities.

I don't think it's fair for us technical folk to rest on our laurels simply
because we have mastery over some very specific kind of knowledge that has a
great deal of useful applications. We have to get out there and get real
things done, too.

------
williamjames
The term liberal arts denotes a curriculum that imparts general knowledge and
develops the student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike
the professional, vocational, technical curricula emphasizing specialization.
The contemporary liberal arts comprise studying literature, languages,
philosophy, history, mathematics, and science. In classical antiquity, the
liberal arts denoted the education proper to a free man (Latin: liberus,
“free”), unlike the education proper to a slave.

~~~
jfornear
The modern liberal arts student avoids math and science like the plague.

~~~
AmericanOP
In practice, the belief that a liberal arts education has equal value to a BS
degree is anti-science.

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hga
The less polite original title: " _The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid
Is Your Liberal Arts Degree_ ".

Unfair since plenty of those with liberal arts degrees contribute to society
in a way we geeks value, but still amusing.

~~~
olefoo
There are a fair number of geeks who were liberal arts majors in their earlier
years. It's not a crippling setback. In fact it can be an asset when you need
to communicate densely abstract technical topics to those of a decidedly
nontechnical background.

I've met a fair number of philosophy and language majors who are programmers,
web designers or system administrators. And a number of them have much greater
mental flexibility than someone who got a four year CS degree for the job
prospects but have never demonstrated any great degree of intellectual
curiosity.

~~~
_delirium
Some "technical" content comes from those backgrounds as well, which sometimes
turns out to be useful. I'm in AI, and people sometimes run into pitfalls that
a stronger background in some other area would've let them see much further
ahead of time. Sometimes a solution that seems like it might work is one that
you'd immediately spot holes in (or at least likely points of difficulty) if
you were familiar with philosophical logic, or semantics of language, or
something else of that sort.

------
duncanj
Don't you understand? We're not really learning how to critique The Bell Jar
from a absurdorealist point of view, we're learning how to use our minds!

------
Tichy
The irony is that usually there are no asteroids headed for earth, so it is
debatable how useful the astronauts and nuclear warhead constructors are.

~~~
rbanffy
Keep in mind we seldom really need them, but, when we do, we need them really,
really bad.

~~~
DrSprout
Actually, by most accounts we did fine without them for 200,000 years.

~~~
rbanffy
We did just fine without them for a good couple dozen million years.

It's just that we won't be able to do without them forever ;-)

In fact, I like to tall my son the dinosaurs only died because they had
neither rockets nor nukes.

~~~
Tichy
You realize that Armageddon was just a Hollywood movie, right? :-) I am not
sure if the same thing would be feasible in the real world, with current
technology.

Nor am I convinced that we will eventually be able to escape our dieing sun,
but I keep my fingers crossed.

~~~
rbanffy
Unless we have a good couple years of advanced notice so we can gently push it
in another direction, nukes are the best option. If you spread the thing wide
enough, less of it will hit you. If the pieces are small enough, chances are
few of them will do any damage.

It won't do much good if the thing is the size of a state, but mountain-sized
rocks seem manageable this way.

------
cousin_it
How I'd answer if I had a liberal arts degree: "If I make up a hypothetical
situation where you wouldn't fit in, does it prove you're worthless?"

------
jarek
Just to confirm... the typo in the title of this submission _is_ on purpose,
right?

~~~
borism
what typo?

~~~
jojopotato
Asteriod is the typo in the submission. Either that or there is some joke I am
not getting.

------
balding_n_tired
Ah, Grinnell, alma mater of Robert Noyce.

Actually, I'm not sure what the point is. The fantasies with which
underemployed recent BAs make the 40 hours pass? A take-off on the brand of
thriller in which Joe Normal gets sucked into international (or
interplanetary) intrigue and danger? Revenge for the balderdash the author was
forced to write last year?

But wasn't the lead in _The Eiger Sanction_ an art history professor who did
CIA hits in the off-season to support his Picasso habit? Yeah, Clint
Eastwood's a bit long in the tooth, but I'd back him against Bruce Willis for
asteroid destruction any day of the week. (Cf. _Space Cowboys_<liberal arts
mode>, another profound exploration of the human spirit</liberal arts mode>.)

------
wooster
I'd just like to point out that Harvey Mudd College is a liberal arts college.
As is Pomona College, where I got my (BA) degree in Computer Science.

So, yeah, the post is funny, but some of us have both a liberal arts degree
and an ability to do utilitarian things.

------
callahad
There's a flaw in assuming that an undergraduate liberal arts education is
terminal. For instance, "between 1986 and 1995, more people earning PhD
degrees in the earth sciences graduated from Carleton (50) than any other
four-year college."

And that's from a tiny liberal arts school with a total population of ~2,000
students.

~~~
celoyd
There’s a lot of fuzziness about what “liberal arts” actually means. To me it
means something like a general education including both sciences and the
humanities. In this sense there’s nothing the least surprising about getting a
liberal arts education and a degree in the earth sciences. But I see it in a
lot of contexts where it seems to mean fluffy humanities and only fluffy
humanities.

------
acg
The real issue is the separation of Arts from Science. The best artists are
scientists and the best scientists are artists. Was Da Vinci any more into
liberal arts than science.

Anyone who specialises in a single viewpoint and is unable to compromise
probably isn't a candidate for saving the earth.

------
Semiapies
Way too many people taking this far too seriously as an attack on liberal
arts. It's just absurd humor and could be flipped for equally funny effect -
some movie astronaut/action hero in a tense meeting of academics who all
consider his input weirdly vital.

~~~
ajuc
Of course it's joke, but when I tried to think of situation that would be
analogical in importance and where astronaut/engineer would be so much worse
fit than liberal arts, I couldn't.

That probably just tells my imagination is limited.

But not everybody has to be able to save the world when it comes to that.
Singers and writers are useful, and they wouldn't fit in to asteroid scenario,
neither.

~~~
Semiapies
Or loads of "geeks" who know barely more than a layman about astrophysics.

------
baddox
What are the odds of actually stopping an asteroid? I suspect that asteroids
small enough to be escaped by evacuation wouldn't be detected soon enough, and
I highly doubt if we could do anything to divert or destroy a larger asteroid.

------
TotlolRon
This is total bs. The ONLY thing that can stop an astroid is Bruce Willis. And
aerosmith.

------
pw0ncakes
The same joke over and over.

~~~
ovi256
It's still true.

~~~
pw0ncakes
What's true about it? That, within certain contrived scenarios involving
existential threats to humankind, humanities knowledge becomes useless?

Science and technology are important, and deserve more respect and funding
than they get in this society, but not to the detriment of all else.

~~~
jlc
I think the standard (and weak) joke about the uselessness of humanities
degrees is to some extent a red herring. The real subject of satire here are
technophilic power fantasies, such as _The Core_, _Impact_, _Asteroid_, etc.,
etc.

~~~
Semiapies
The real red herring is the idea that this is satire with a message and not
just _a joke_.

------
mattmanser
Do we really need physicists? What have they done apart from give us ever
increasing ways of destroying ourselves. Has quantum theory brought happiness
to the world? Love? Peace? Has it helped you feel more connected to your
neighbours, to the person on the bus or tube? Has it had any meaningful
positive effect at all on the human condition?

Or is it and its ilk of science degrees merely a relentless march to the day
that the whole world disappears in one of two ways, self-annihilation or self-
exile in VR?

And even if we survive somehow, what about once the relentless march of
science is over, when there are no more secrets to uncover? What next? Is that
the end of meaningful life as this author thinks?

Or is there perhaps something more to life than finding the next equation?
Perhaps we will put aside the toys of technology and start reflecting on
ourselves.

Maybe by doing a liberal arts degree.

~~~
philwelch
Pretty much everyone I love is alive and healthy today because of science. I
myself am alive and healthy today because of science.

~~~
sketerpot
Hell, you can even start pointing at _particular_ bits of science. For
example, there would be mass famine without the Haber-Bosch process for
ammonia synthesis.

~~~
evgen
Of course, without this process producing a lot of available nitrogen to use
in making explosives during the first half of the 20th century we would
probably also have avoided two world wars. Occasional famines and a lower
upper-limit on human population or millions dead from guns and bombs...
interesting set of choices.

~~~
AngryParsley
Number of people people killed in major wars in the 20th century (moderately
pessimistic estimate): 100,000,000

Number of people in the 20th century saved from starvation by green
revolution: 1,000,000,000

Average life expectancy in 1900: 35 years

Average life expectancy in 2000: 65 years

Sources:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug>

Net 900,000,000 lives saved? I'll take that deal any day.

~~~
evgen
You don't get to claim the entirety of the green revolution here, and most of
those 1 billion would not have been born in the first place if the Harber-
Bosch process did not exist. If we are going to go to that particular level of
sophistry then I would add the four generations of descendants from WWI deaths
and three generations of WWII/Stalin-induced famines/Great Leap forward
deaths, etc. Playing alternate history speculation is interesting, but trying
to project any particular distance beyond the immediate point in question is a
fools errand.

~~~
AngryParsley
No, 1 billion already-alive humans would have starved to death if not for the
green revolution. Malnutrition plays a role in over half of all deaths
_today_. It was even more commonplace before fertilizers and high-yield crop
strains.

------
fizx
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>

~~~
eavc
The irony of this is incredible. You're reaching to label this as an example
of confirmation bias. What's the term for trying to make data fit a
preconceived idea, again?

------
yetanotherlogin
Few things are more tedious than reading science majors endlessly, smugly
belittle arts subjects. "Oh ho ho, something I don't understand and haven't
done and probably couldn't do, they must be idiots, let's constantly mock
them". I saw quite enough of that on slashdot so was very disappointed to see
this sort of bilge get so many upvotes here. Thankfully some of the comments,
at least, show a more nuanced grasp of reality.

~~~
silverlake
While studying engineering, I took lots of upper-level classes in history,
philosophy, polysci, etc. I aced those classes without much effort. To really
"learn to think", you have to push yourself to think about more complex and
abstract ideas. Advanced math pushes your brain to its limits. Most liberal
arts fields have very low levels of complexity. In most cases, it's just read
& regurgitate. In adv. classes you might follow a few levels of indirection.
This is trivial for scientists, but difficult for most others.

~~~
yetanotherlogin
> In most cases, it's just read & regurgitate.

You embody what I am talking about so perfectly here I can only assume this
was a clever piece of satire.

