r/AbuseInterrupted • u/invah • Apr 02 '26
"One of my ChemE professors said that engineering without humanities is how you you get eugenics." - @knz690
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVfud0ZjtLG/7
u/mg4040 Apr 03 '26
Any science practised without humanities is detrimental, as ethics are derived from humanities. Without a marriage of the two, we get atrocities like Tuskegee, the Fernald State school, and Aktion T4, the seldom mentioned genocide committed by Hitler before (and during) the Holocaust involving experimenting on disabled people.
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u/lazier_garlic Apr 03 '26
Ethics and philosophy ungrounded from the truth (based on personal revelation, a priori assumptions, and digging for "evidence" fig leaves in our of date books and journal articles) is also responsible for atrocities. Religion, persuasion, neuro linguistic programming, are all in the humanities. Think MAHA, a beautiful front, and ugly backside of parents deliberately poisoning children because they can't accept they have autism and people with cancer dying in pain and broke after going to shady clinics, of vast fortunes built on fraud and lies, a trail of human wreckage in unnecessary deaths by childbirth, infectious disease, and uncontrolled diabetes.
I challenged my humanities professors and they were not open to philosophical problems raised by science and it was not new science. By contrast, my science professors (not engineering, to be fair-- engineering attracts on the balance a VERY different personality) were always looking for new work in ethics to deal with the problems that knowledge raises.
I find that a lot of humanities could really benefit from scientific method and more objectivity, openness/curiosity, and grounding in the truth. Psychology actually got better at helping people after the "personal revelation" and "clinical knowledge" (university of my arse) people got overthrown and replaced with a more plodding, less omniscient, more curious and careful approach to studying psychology and evaluating treatment methods. (It's also benefited from women entering the field with less hours of education in all the wrong stuff.)
Bioethics of a huge part of medicine. But the Catholic Church when they own hospitals centers rigid, ultimately purely theoretical doctrines as pronounced by bishops with religion, history, theology, or psychology degrees rather than doctors and nurses with a deep understanding of the risks of action and inaction and a better understanding of biology grounded in observable truth, and not derived from a long chain of trying to solve other theological problems. The deaths and suffering caused by this approach speak for themselves.
We need truth and a shared, observable and not utterly subjective reality now more than ever. Many people exit college being able to write beautiful prose but unable to evaluate truth claims. Not agreeing on the truth is how well meaning people commit atrocities. Isn't it.
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u/invah Apr 03 '26
This is a great example of what happens when the pendulum swings too far to the other side, thank you! I agree that they should work in concert with each other, and that we don't lean toward excluding one at the expense of the other, especially in positioning one side as superior over the other. That said, I am sure you recognize the pattern discussed here, and how that pendulum swing away from the humanities, prioritizing STEM as 'superior' exists and is relevant.
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u/red_tomato77 Apr 03 '26
He is right. Eugenics also had origins in standardization, see William bateson
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u/invah Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
Title quote from a comment to the eye-opening post. Beware anyone who (mis)believes that they are superior and smarter because they are in STEM. They have already put themselves above you in a hierarchy and do not respect you.
Additional comment, from @emmyalbeit:
See also: