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Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how it would look if there was some magical way to view it on an ROI basis.

Rather than focusing on R&D (science & technology presumably), I'd like to see Western countries start approaching ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc) the same way we treat technology and industry. To me it seems fairly clear that there are distinct differences at the human satisfaction level between different countries/cultures. I have the sense that Western countries are starting to fall behind in some categories, the consequences of which first began showing up in our political discourse/mood, which has now progressed to literally spilling out onto the streets. Rather than our current laissez faire approach to this aspect of life, could treating it as a serious first class intellectual problem yield positive results?

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According to the world happiness report [1] first 20 places are taken by "western" countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2019_Wo...

It would be interesting to know how accurate that estimation is. It would also be interesting to know how many people deeply and unambiguously realize that such studies are speculative estimates (as opposed to facts), and why that is the case.

It is metaphysical-type questions like this that seem to get very little formal attention and funding. I would like to see humanity devote more effort to this type of initiative, and less towards optimizing advertising, making phones thinner, games more addicting, developing technology to send the ultra-wealthy into space, etc.

China once had a large emphasis on humanities, the Imperial Exams used to be primarily tests and essays on classical books, philosophy, and poetry. Science, engineering, and math were not important. It did not turn out well for them.

Imperial exams only normally emphasize humanity.

Like any aristocracy, the ruling class is born and raised to care not the humanity, but their humanity's value to them.

Imperial exams amplify those value and ideology by enforcing a strict caste systems in the classic reading, etc. That's not emphasis on humanity, that's emphasis on human caste.

From a logical perspective, should one conclude from this that effort invested into the humanities is a waste of time? If not, what meaning should one take from it (and, how might we confirm whether that meaning is reasonably optimal from a "social engineering" perspective)?

The explicit mechanics of how society makes optimized decisions on public policy and spending seems like an area that needs improvement. Specific areas of what I refer to are global climate change, rules on wearing masks during pandemics, taxation, etc - the manner in which we currently approach such questions seems extremely sub-optimal to me, to the degree that I sometimes wonder if some approaches may be in part designed to be confusing and dysfunctional.

You said the "humanities", but the examples of research you'd like were from the "social sciences". The humanities deals with fields like comparative literature, poetry, history, Russian language studies, etc. I am personally quite happy my tax dollars do not fund a lot of that, though I know not everyone feels this way.

Psychology and sociology are the fields that study the human happiness or social dynamics issues you referenced, and both funded by the NSF[0], so is it just that you wish they had more funding?

[0] https://www.nsf.gov/about/research_areas.jsp

> You said the "humanities", but the examples of research you'd like were from the "social sciences".

If we're being pedantic, I'd like to point out what I actually said:

>> ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc)

It appears I've made an error in terminology, but I would have anticipated the additional words I included would have rectified my error. Apparently my heuristics failed in this case.

> Psychology and sociology are the fields that study the human happiness or social dynamics issues you referenced, and both funded by the NSF[0], so is it just that you wish they had more funding?

Generally, I would like us to fund anyone who has novel ideas that may offer useful insight into the state of affairs on the planet, which largely derives from human actions and interactions. The quirkiness of specific forum conversations (this one, for example) is one class of interactions where I believe we could learn something useful that may shed light on broader trends we see in society, if we put some serious effort into it.

I'd have to review the specifics of what the NSF is studying and the results, but from an armchair commentator perspective (observing the general state of the world and the quality of public discourse) I wouldn't expect they are producing useful insights - although, it's completely possible they produce excellent results, and are completely being ignored (which should be noticed in a proper review).

I apologize if my comment came across as pedantic, I certainly wasn't trying to be.

The way research in the humanities and social sciences are conducted are fundamentally different, which is why I think the lexical distinction is important in this case. Most social science research applies the scientific method (hypothesis testing etc.), most humanities research does not.

>The quirkiness of specific forum conversations (this one, for example) is one class of interactions where I believe we could learn something useful that may shed light on broader trends we see in society, if we put some serious effort into it.

I agree.

>although, it's completely possible they produce excellent results, and are completely being ignored (which should be noticed in a proper review)

If I had to bet on it I'd say this is the answer, though I'd add that in addition to being ignored the research is being used in ways you and I wouldn't like. I know for example that app/social media development 2005-today relied/rely heavily on psychological research pertaining to addiction, human computer interaction, etc. I'm positive some of that was NSF funded.

What I'm getting at, in not a very effective way, is that I see low hanging fruit everywhere I look, and I don't think I'm the only one. Where I do think I may differ, is that I also sense a strong aversion to discussing this low hanging fruit in extreme detail and unconventional ways.

For example, plenty of people think climate change is a legitimate threat, and that prudent societal responses are hampered by imperfections in democracy, and that beliefs such as racism play a role in voting choices. Nothing very controversial (from an HN perspective) so far I don't think. But an invisible line that I sense cannot be crossed here is the underlying reasons why people "are" "racist", or the degree to which mass heuristic-based theory of mind estimations (~mind reading) like this are even true, or even happening. Introduce this style of thinking and one will surely be rewarded with downvotes, if not stern "culture war guidelines violations" warnings. But one thing you'll never get is any substantial justification or reasoning behind why there are peer-enforced guard rails on things like:

- what can be discussed

- how (from what perspectives) certain things can be discussed

- at what level of detail things can be discussed

I think there is something very interesting going on here, and that there seems to be this strong, almost universal/multi-dimensional aversion to discussing it (the phenomenon) makes me even more curious.

It sounds like you should pursue a PhD ;)

Yeah, I agree with you - those are important questions I wish we had better answers to.

I'm early into a research career though not in these fields and I'm starting to observe that knowing the problems that need solving/questions that need answering is often trivial when compared to actually solving the problems or answering the obvious question. That might be part of the issue here too, just my 2c.

Unfortunately the humanities succumbed to postmodernism long ago. Since then it has been impossible to impose strict tests on veracity as you find in hard sciences.

What do you mean?

I can only guess but art is now considered to be inherently subjective. So you there's no way to make statements like "picasso is better than jackson pollock", or "cubism is not real art".

Going further there are a number of works meant to probe the exact limit of what we're willing to consider art. I recall a couple interesting ones:

1. An artist took a shit in a can and sealed it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit

2. I recall there was an artist who took an existing book and changed the author name to their own, I can't find a link right now though.

Postmodernism teaches (among many things) that truth is not objective. Rather, the epistemological center in postmodernism IS the self. Each self has its own version of truth, rather than truth being perspective-independent.

In literature, for example, this means that authorial intent is supplanted by perspectivalism. That is, each reader interprets a text based on his or her own perspective, and each interpretation is equally valid. This plays out in the political realm most prominently in the supreme court's interpretation of laws (does it matter what the author meant to say or just what we now interpret them to have said?).

So when I say it's impossible for the humanities to impose strict tests on veracity, what I mean is that a strict test would yield true results that are perspective-independent. This is what the scientific method attempts to accomplish, and the hard sciences use this methodology. The humanities, however, have long ceded that it is impossible to arrive at a perspective-independent conclusion and IMO would therefore reject a similarly rigorous approach.

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