[HN Gopher] The Two Cultures
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       The Two Cultures
        
       Author : raviksharma
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2023-05-11 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | ugh7 wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | ZunarJ5 wrote:
       | This is starting to trend in the opposite direction, however I
       | find the problem is more along these lines:
       | https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic...
        
       | prottog wrote:
       | Since the Industrial Revolution, scientific progress has far
       | outstripped progress in the humanities. We've gotten very good at
       | answering the how, but not the why (or why not).
        
         | PeterWhittaker wrote:
         | I guess that depends on your POV: I'm pretty much a
         | reductionist, so I find the various hypotheses re where the
         | universe and life come from to be quite compelling.
         | 
         | There is no why, really.
         | 
         | The more interesting question revolves around should, from an
         | ethical/moral perspective. The analytic tradition so favoured
         | in the UK since Hume has been shown to be cracked (read, e.g.,
         | The Women Are Up To Something). Since WWII, progress has been
         | made on that question, but Hume's acolytes still cling dearly
         | to mind, perhaps because of that same reductionism.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | The humanities were discarded for entertainment and marketing,
         | and the criticism of entertainment and marketing, ultimately
         | based on predicting/motivating sales and attempting to explain
         | when those sales predictions turn out to be wrong.
        
       | pitched wrote:
       | > So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the
       | majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about
       | as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have
       | had.
       | 
       | This is a very nice way to try and explain Dilbert-style Pointy
       | Haired Bosses.
        
         | hammyhavoc wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | > Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company
       | how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
       | The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking
       | something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a
       | work of Shakespeare's?
       | 
       | But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking
       | someone to _explain_ a very specific thing (one particular
       | physical law), and in the other you 're asking if they have been
       | _exposed_ to any example from a large set of things (any of
       | Shakespeare 's plays). If he'd asked "how many of you have
       | _heard_ of the Second Law of Thermodynamics ", or if he'd asked
       | "how many of you can describe the plot of Coriolanus" the
       | questions would be closer to equivalent.
       | 
       | Nitpicky, but relevant in the sense that it's not a fair example
       | as originally stated.
        
         | M3L0NM4N wrote:
         | I don't think that's nitpicky, I think that's a very clear
         | flaw.
        
         | jameshart wrote:
         | I think Snow is assuming that given that audience (academics
         | educated in the traditional humanities) that if someone affirms
         | they have 'read' something they can be assumed to also know
         | what that thing was about.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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