Question
Is Peter Thiel right when he said in a speech at Harvard Business School that discouraging students from pursuing humanities majors will encourage technological progress? Is this really a solution? Is it feasible?
Answer
No. Knowledge is not a zero-sum game. A brain gained by the liberal arts is not a brain drained from engineering. Pursued with honesty and intellectual rigor, the humanities and liberal arts can vastly deepen and enrich the practice of technology. In fact, I'd argue that a nation without a strong liberal arts tradition can only do small-minded dreck technology or dangerously overweening technology, and will produce nothing of significance.
That said, the humanities and liberal arts in America are a politicized, shallow joke, within which humbug rules and young college students are taught to parrot a few pompous arguments in postmodernese, which allows them to graduate with a false sense of confidence and security in their ability to think.
Most cannot.
With respect to this joke, Thiel is right. The solution isn't to give up but improve the liberal arts tradition. Pathetic though it is, compared to dead-white-male 16th century thought, it is still better than the godawful liberal arts tradition in countries like India, which actually have been following Thiel style thinking for decades, with terrible consequences for the quality of public discourse and the resulting environment for technology.
That said, the humanities and liberal arts in America are a politicized, shallow joke, within which humbug rules and young college students are taught to parrot a few pompous arguments in postmodernese, which allows them to graduate with a false sense of confidence and security in their ability to think.
Most cannot.
With respect to this joke, Thiel is right. The solution isn't to give up but improve the liberal arts tradition. Pathetic though it is, compared to dead-white-male 16th century thought, it is still better than the godawful liberal arts tradition in countries like India, which actually have been following Thiel style thinking for decades, with terrible consequences for the quality of public discourse and the resulting environment for technology.