
Tech suffers from lack of humanities, says Mozilla head - kiyanwang
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/12/tech-humanities-misinformation-philosophy-psychology-graduates-mozilla-head-mitchell-baker
======
xvedejas
I once attended a small scientific conference with a couple hundred attendees
total. Over the two days of the conference there were many technical
presentations to the full group, but two of the final presentations were non-
technical. One presentation was from a science ethicist, who I believe was a
professor at an Ivy-league school.

It pained me to be in the audience for the ethicist's talk and following Q&A
session. She was unable to provide any framework for thinking about ethics
which the scientists present did not already have. The scientists asked direct
questions about how to approach specific ethical issues they saw in their own
work, and her responses were all along the lines of "well, the important thing
is that you think hard about it."

She displayed no ability to teach the scientists much, and no willingness to
dive into discussion of their issues. Her presentation was a lot of the sort
of thing that this article is trying to do: shaming STEM folks for their
mistakes, and claiming the humanities is the cure-all. Let me make a claim: if
the humanities are really a solution for problems created by STEM, all you
should need to do is demonstrate the case. Technical and scientific crowds
understand problems, and will jump on real solutions.

(Aside: of the STEM undergraduate programs I'm aware of in the US, they all
require somewhere between 20% and 50% of classes to be in the humanities or
social sciences)

~~~
tclancy
Clearly she didn’t discuss the danger of extrapolating a trend line from a
single datapoint.

~~~
xvedejas
I make no claim as to whether competent science ethicists exist. Clearly this
anecdote is a good example of what professors of humanities should try to
avoid if they aim to fix problems in STEM.

------
Nasrudith
They keep on insisting this is the case but they never give reasons why and
spend all of their time on the offensive. Cynically it looks like they want in
on the action and are trying to extort what they want via character attacks
instead of any merit. Like courting lobbyists. All while giving vague and
unsubstantiated hype. Nobody needs such parasitic manipulators.

Even the example is a terrible one as it shows a lack of technical knowledge
and hype susceptibility. Machine learning is vulnerable to all about spurious
correlations - that isn't lack of humanities but not understanding how to
apply statistics and the limitations of the tools. Despite what statistics say
Nicolas Cage doesn't drown people.

[http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=359](http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=359)

That said a good understanding of history can act as a very good guide.
Humanities may have their uses but their promoters never seem to be honest.

------
newtothebay
Humanities knowledge is just a tool which may and may not be used for good.
FAANG already hires tons of humanities and social science PhDs to understand
user behaviors. Whether that's used for good or ill depends on what the
corporations are incentivized to do, not on the number of humanities grads
employed.

(I'm speaking as a social science PhD employed at FAANG.)

~~~
freshhawk
So the problem of the blindspots in STEM focused people and the fact that his
leads them to just unthinkingly doing what they are told to do ... isn't a
problem? Because it depends on what they are being told to do?

I don't buy that, more humanities knowledge distributed among everyone is
clearly needed, because our system ensures that the people at the top are more
likely to use that knowledge for ill and the lower ranks knowing what is going
on can be a check on that.

~~~
Fricken
Many of the people who go into STEM do so because they want to deal with the
task put in front of them without it being complicated. They don't want to
deal with a bunch of icky emotions, and they don't want to trip themselves up
asking murky existential questions about why they're doing what they do. This
is a condition of temperament, you can run them through a gristle mill of
humanities classes, it doesn't mean they'll internalize it if it isn't what
they're inclined towards. You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can't
make it think.

~~~
121789
I think your characterization of people who go into STEM is detracting from
what could be an otherwise compelling argument. There are stronger reasons why
people choose STEM. I agree that adding a few ethics classes won't change
ethical behavior outcomes for those who would have chosen STEM programs
anyway.

~~~
dorchadas
I'm not as certain. I went into college full-on STEMLord type person.
Humanities was useless, STEM was the only way forward, etc etc. Graduated much
the opposite, wanting to see more people appreciate the Humanities and
incorporate them into their work and such.

And it all happened because I took some interesting humanities courses, and
had some fun teachers. My two philosophy ones -- a general introduction, then
a Philosophy of Science course taught by a person who had actually gotten
their undergraduate in biophysics -- really led to some interesting
discussion, and got me reading deeper and more across the humanities. Now,
that's _most_ of my reading, it seems.

------
jekrb
A co-worker (and a great friend) of mine gave a lecture at University of
Nebraska–Lincoln, on bridging the gap between the liberal arts and the tech
industry.

He talks about the value that liberal arts can provide the tech industry. In
my opinion he is also giving rhetoric against this notion that you are tied to
working in the same field that you studied at school, and that you have to
follow the "correct" path that other people tell you is "marketable" for your
career.

We both studied liberal arts, and we both work together in tech. He got his
PhD in Classical literature, and works on the strategy team. I am in my final
semester for getting a BA in Philosophy, and I'm on the engineering team.

If you listen to the lecture, around the 28min mark he says "I asked him, do
you regret majoring in Philosophy?" My response is still the same now as it
was when he asked me. I don't regret it, and I don't regret choosing it over
computer science or a related major. I believe having the philosophy
background helps me live a better life, and helps me do my job well.

Ask certain academics in the philosophy department what exactly philosophy is,
and they'll tell you something like: "the systematic testing of our rational
beliefs about the world." This to me, is where philosophy and software
engineering intersect.

Link to the lecture:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-wNv9FHLqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-wNv9FHLqM)

~~~
121789
Well of course you don't regret majoring in philosophy, because your outcome
is good (you are employed). I wonder what the other folks who had much more
difficulty getting jobs would recommend.

The lack of humanities seems to be mainly due to competitive factors and
employers reducing risk. Assuming all other factors are equal, if you had only
one spot to hire an entry-level software engineer, who would you take the risk
on? The CS major or the philosophy major?

~~~
tarboreus
If that's all the information you had, you probably shouldn't be making a
hiring decision anyway.

~~~
121789
Could you elaborate? At no point did I say the education was the only
information available, only that other factors are equal between the
candidates.

------
growlist
I'm not sure whether this is aimed at the Zuckerbergs of this world, or an
attempt to shoehorn (yet more) leftist viewpoints into tech. Personally I'm
just going to continue ploughing my autistic tech furrow until the entryists
hopefully move on.

------
sprash
When their real goal is to "tackle misinformation" they should abolish any
thinking prevalent in the humanities.

If you want pure objective truth you need logic and evidence. Basically the
tools that are employed by Math, Physics and Engineers. The concepts of
Classical Positivism are over 100 years old and are still the best thing we
got to find out the truth.

In order to "tackle misinformation" humanities have zero solutions to offer.
Any mediocre engineer would be better.

~~~
7952
A lot of the world's problems are just too complex and interconnected to have
an accessible source of definitive truth. For example anything to do with
pollution or major construction projects. You have to balance competing
demands that are absurdly tangential, that should be a false dichotomy. But
those are the choices that have to be made all the time and there is no
analysis that can give you the answer.

Science and engineering strip out complexity to reach something simple enough
to be modelled. It is naïve to believe that every problem can be treated like
this.

~~~
sprash
> It is naïve to believe that every problem can be treated like this.

Is it really? I can make abstract models of all kinds of things and still get
accurate predictions. The movement of single atoms in a gas is very "complex".
Still thermodynamics can make precise prediction about pressure, temperature
and volume of that gas.

Of course you always have to check if your model is accurate and if the
abstraction does not take a very important part of reality in consideration.

How are humanities helping me with that?

~~~
7952
A scientific predication is not enough to make a decision in these kind of
cases.

For example, consider the building of a wind farm...

* The site is on the migration path of a species of endangered goose. You can model the number likely to be killed.

* Climate change is a problem. You can model the effect on the atmosphere of CO2 emissions.

* The turbines will be visible from a beauty spot and could effect tourism. You can model where the turbines are visible.

* People think that turbines are really ugly. You can quantity this with a questionnaire.

Lots of scientific predication and analysis going on here. But none of that
tells you what you should _actually do_ about these issues. It doesn't tell
you how many geese you are allowed to kill to reduce CO2 Any more than science
can be tell you what flavor of ice cream to eat. It is a question of morality,
geography, asthetics, sociology and politics. Why wouldn't you want to
understand those things?

~~~
sprash
If I know all of the above mentioned quantifiable objective variables with a
reasonable accuracy I can make a much more informed decision.

Again, why do I need humanities for that decision? What are the solutions they
have to offer? How can they do anything else than to say "You have to do it
that way, because we say so"?

If they say "this solution is morally right, ascetically beautiful,
sociologically correct and politically desirable" aren't they imposing their
own subjective unverifiable "truths" onto others?

~~~
myco_logic
Just as having an in depth understanding of mathematics, physics, or
engineering helps us to make more informed decisions, so too do the
humanities. Fields of study such as philosophy, sociology, or aesthetics do
not attempt to establish, as you put it, _subjective unverifiable "truths"_
(to do so would be quite infeasible in the first place). Instead they allow
for discussion and aggregation of information and reasoned opinions, so that a
comprehensive understanding of the field and its many schools of thought may
be reached.

Coming back to the wind farm, even once we have the objective variables, the
decision we make will be based on factors of morality, geography, aesthetics,
sociology and politics. By having a broad understanding of these fields and
the various paradigms contained within them, we can produce a more informed
decision than if these aspect were ignored completely.

------
jstewartmobile
A) Tech already hires psychologists to optimize mark fleecing.

B) This is rich, coming from an exec at a "nonprofit" that gets most of its
money from Google.

C) Spend more time around humanities professors--no less ruthless than the
engineers, but they can pull quotes from Foucault and Derrida to justify their
own assholery. A less enlightened engineer would just have to accept that
about himself.

------
pochamago
Mozilla has been on a role lately of making statements that make me skeptical
about the future of their browser. I just don't feel like every software I use
needs to have a robust social policy behind it. I'm happy to just use
something that works well

~~~
archagon
How about just one? Just _one_ browser with a robust social policy? Would that
be so bad for the world?

------
bem94
This is such an important point. Engineering does so much to shape society and
the lives of individuals. But we give zero training to new engineers in these
issues. Worse, so many engineers I speak to are willfully ignorant or
disdainful of the humanities. Engineers mustn't loose sight of who we work
for: humanity.

~~~
chr1
What part of the humanities do you think would be helpful to engineers?

I so far hadn't seen anything that would be useful enough to make me not
disdainfull of humanities, but i would be happy to be proven wrong.

~~~
tarboreus
Ideally the humanities forces you to think about values and the why of things,
not just the how. Not all goals are worth achieving...you can "change the
world" and make it a worse place.

More practically, the humanities teaches persuasion and rhetoric, in writing
and in speaking, as well as reading between the lines when reading or
listening. I work with engineers...kind of am one myself, though I was trained
as a humanist...and I see them dashing themselves on those rocks on a weekly
basis.

------
caseysoftware
> _" Technology companies need to diversify their hiring practices to include
> more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology if they want to
> tackle the problem of misinformation online, the head of one of the biggest
> internet charities has warned."_

If it's misinformation, shouldn't intelligent people of any background be able
to identify and flag it?

> _" we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who
> have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about
> the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."_

Oh. Because it's not about truth or critical thinking but frameworks and
vocabulary.

~~~
pjc50
> If it's misinformation, shouldn't intelligent people of any background be
> able to identify and flag it?

Evidently not. Smart people from all sorts of backgrounds can fall for all
sorts of scams, especially the ones tailored to them.

------
TheJoYo
Ah yes, we should tell engineers they need a behavior adjustment. This doesn't
happen enough.

~~~
stcredzero
As a veteran programmer, I'd say that on average, engineers in the Bay Area do
need an attitude adjustment. There are a lot of awesome people here, and bad
behavior is an exception, but I've seen more douchey entitled behavior from
Bay Area programmers than I have in the entire rest of my professional career.

Another thing I seen too often from programmers, is a disdainful, even
disgusted attitude when faced with negative feedback. The first reaction
should be to try and understand where the feedback is coming from, not to
disdain it. What I've seen too often, is a defensive retreat behind the idea
that the feedback is coming from an idiot. The thing to remember about online
idiots, is that a) most people aren't them, most of the time and b) even when
someone is that, they are usually far different in real life.

~~~
tomjen3
The feedback typically comes from people who think they are smarter than the
engineers, or who have more social capital and so are used to be looked up to
and respected. As such they get pissy when nerds question them.

Nerds tend to accept good solid feedback when a good reason is given; nerds
rightly disregard feedback that is about pleasing peoples egos. Really smart
nerds do strike a balance, but egos should be considered a flaw, and worked
around as any other flaw.

~~~
stcredzero
_The feedback typically comes from people who think they are smarter than the
engineers_

I know exactly the kind of feedback of which you speak. I once hired a tester
to test a 2D game with Asteroids movement mechanics. His feedback: "Where are
the brakes? It doesn't go where I point it." Well, that's sort of the point of
the Asteroids movement mechanic, and my tester didn't even bother to
understand the point.

 _Nerds tend to accept good solid feedback when a good reason is given;_

In my experience, not always. I've had a number of experiences where I explain
my background as a fellow programmer, and I'm doing my level best at
explaining in depth how I perceive a design as a user and why I'm reacting,
and all too often, instead of getting clarifying questions or a reflection-
back, I immediately get the start of some 'splainin. Conclusion jumped to
after no iterations, and apparently after only a simple pattern-match. One
time, I'd started explaining my reactions as a user, then got back a reply
about the codebase. There were lots of changes to the UX, yet the major
"plusses" for the change were from the POV of the programmer, and as a user,
I'm left wondering, "What's in it for me?"

 _Really smart nerds do strike a balance, but egos should be considered a
flaw, and worked around as any other flaw._

Most nerds never get past the point of only considering the egos of others to
be a flaw.

------
fromthestart
Ah, yes, need more humanities to combat wrongthink.

------
cpeterso
For examples of the consequences of big data and ML, check out mathematician
Cathy O'Neill's book "Weapons of Math Destruction". She posits that the
problematic systems share three key features: they are opaque, unregulated and
difficult to contest, and at the same time scalable, thereby amplifying any
inherent biases to affect increasingly larger populations.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction)

------
SamReidHughes
There are plenty of ways you could improve a random engineer. One for many
guys would be to have played a team sport, or been in a marching band. Or
something else outside the scholastic bubble.

Another would be mandatory physical education in college.

------
toomuchtodo
I’d also posit it would be helpful for larger tech firms and most accelerators
to have an ethecist on staff, to help with the “could we vs should we”
evaluation.

~~~
Presquare
I'm willing to accept this if we only hire people who are on the opposite side
of the ideological spectrum to whoever is suggesting this.

If you are a conservative, we will hire progressives to decide what is ethical
and isn't ethical.

If you are a progressive, we will hire conservatives to decide what is and
what isn't ethical.

~~~
xvedejas
I'm all for heterodoxy, but what about people who are just not ideological?
Who do we pair them up with?

~~~
bwbw223
Both..?

------
nyberg
I just find it interesting how they seem to find AI to be the issue half of
the time when it just reflects what it's shown. The example near the end just
reflects their internal process give or take mistakes in the initial design
and method used.

------
cmehdy
It's not just the metaphorical "tech" that suffers, it's also the candidates
themselves. When you have empathy and you prefer thinking about your impact
(on customers, on the environment, on current culture, etc), what is open to
you is a long and arduous road. Applying to companies, the choice is limited.
Creating products, there's extra inertia. Acquiring experience with these
constraints is also mentally draining at times. Self-image can also take a
hit, when your beliefs have you refuse easy ways towards prestige or money.
You might walk with your head held high, but not necessarily have the savings
or the opportunities that your friends have. There's a social cost to "doing
the right thing" that not everyone is willing or able to pay.

It takes a bit of luck to find the right places and projects, but to anyone
out there facing similar struggles: continue believing in yourself. The system
will come around eventually..

------
stcredzero
In the US, there is a big problem with trying to get more balance in the STEM
fields by introducing humanities education, in that the humanities in higher
education are massively skewed to the left.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind](https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind)

Conservatives may understand human nature better than liberals:

[https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/haidt-
co...](https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/haidt-
conservatives-understand-human-nature-better-than-liberals/)

