[PoachedSausage]

The problem we have is that fewer and fewer people are choosing to pursue hard engineering skills, partly because they're, well, hard and partly because soft skills seem to provide an equal or better living. I have nothing against philosophers, musicians and poets, I spent most of today being entertained by them on the radio, but without the hard skills the comforts of civilisation like running water, electricity and internet will disappear.

[rosser]

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c.

You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical thinking, and I've never seen classes teaching that offered outside the "liberal arts".

[quotemstr]

The bridge designer imagining failure modes for a new bridge design isn't critical thinking, but the liberal arts autoethnography about the colonial etiology of Daft Punk, that's critical thinking?

Reality is the opposite of your assertion: critical thinking is largely dead outside STEM, and that's because only in STEM does reality punish you for indulging sweet-sounding nonsense.

I've also met good developers over the course of over 20 years writing software. Many of them had no degree or an irrelevant degree. I respect them tremendously, but they're exceptions.

The kind of thinking that today's liberal arts departments encourage is contrary to the rigor needed to solve real engineering problems, and it's rare that you find in a single individual both a knack for the cold logic of engineering and the social sensitivity needed to succeed in a world of post-modern, post-logic quicksand.

[rosser]

No, "critical thinking" is evaluating ideas and arguments, including one's own, for flaws. That you conflate it with engineering further suggests that you don't actually know what it is, and continue to over-value the "hard" skills beyond their (admittedly incredible and irreplaceable) worth.

It also tells me we are utterly talking past one another here. I have better things to do with my afternoon than refute yet more straw-men.

[quotemstr]

I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion that the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream.

It's amazing that the academic departments that talk up their critical thinking in the most produce nothing that resembles a workable theory of the world.

Maybe what you wrote was true at one time, but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" in large parts of academia is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say. It's essentially formalized trolling.

That mode of thought has no business getting into the same building as real engineering.

[emmelaich]

Perhaps you're thinking of 'critical theory' and its cousins.

Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.

[quotemstr]

Right. And in many circles these days, critical theory is what passes for critical thinking.

[rosser]

> I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion they the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream.

> ...but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say.

Wow.

[PoachedSausage]

From what I have seen critical thinking, as a natural aptitude is quite rare. You can probably encourage it, but I doubt it can really be taught, even if those in authority wanted it.

[oceanghost]

You've locked onto the exact reason here. The incentives are all wrong.

Learn how to work people like a psychopath manager? Unlimited earning potential. Learn hard skills? Pigeonholed as "too valuable" to promote while being taken advantage of by those psychopaths until you connect enough dots to expose them or are deemed no longer necessary to their evil plan.