[carbonguy]

> What is the relation of this to studying humanities?

A fair question! Put briefly, I would say that studying the humanities would make one more aware of/able to comprehend situations involving others and their motivations (which is... most of them), with the example I gave being one situation that I figured would be more familiar to the crowd here at Hackernews.

> It just seems like another common example of people taking things they consider good and relating them to humanities.

It seems like that because it is like that :) In other words, I DO consider it good to have a broader view of situations that otherwise might be considered narrowly "technical" because I believe that understanding the human element as part of the situation helps me understand the situation (whatever it may be) way better. I relate it to "the humanities" because it IS related to the humanities.

[terminalshort]

This argument, which I find very typical of arguments in favor of humanities education, kind of drives me nuts. It's very nebulous in terms of how these benefits are actually related to humanities classes. I place very little value on degrees in general, but at least I can sometimes see very clearly how other engineers I work with sometimes know useful things that I don't know from CS classes because they are directly related to the subject matter at hand. But nothing you are mentioning here is at all like that.

Yes, of course it is beneficial to be "more aware of/able to comprehend situations involving others and their motivations," but there isn't a class on that and I see no relation between social skills and education (at any level or field of study). I would take a HS dropout sales guy over a phd in humanities any day in terms of this particular skill.