Brussels terror attacks

[Trismegistus]

Dear god that is worse than I thought.
What benefit does this do for society? How would this help or effect the economy on any national level at all? Why did you go for the equivalent of a liberal arts degree compared to an advanced trade such as industrial engineering?

I would say he is interested in what is a human whereas industrial engineering wants to know how to teach a human with a specific intention perform closer to a perpetual machine with perfect efficiency. Why is one better than the other? Are you suggesting that each nation individually should perfect it's economies? If so, to do what? Have an infinity of war?

[Argentis]

Dear god that is worse than I thought.
What benefit does this do for society? How would this help or effect the economy on any national level at all? Why did you go for the equivalent of a liberal arts degree compared to an advanced trade such as industrial engineering?

I would say he is interested in what is a human whereas industrial engineering wants to know how to teach a human with a specific intention perform closer to a perpetual machine with perfect efficiency. Why is one better than the other? Are you suggesting that each nation individually should perfect it's economies? If so, to do what? Have an infinity of war?

What he is suggesting is that art is useless. Basically he is suggesting that the professions that follow are useless (non-exhaustive list):
- Professor of literature, art, philosophy, etc.
- Artist of any kind, painter, sculptor, and even video game designers if you consider video games as art.
- Film and literary critics.
- Liberal Arts scholars.
Oh and probably psychatrist, people who work in social studies and all. After all they are completely unproductive for our society right? Only material things matter? Oh and I probably forgot though I don't like those professions myself as an atheist but pastors, imams, priests, monks, nuns, and pretty much anyone having dedicated his/her life to a god. Got a feeling An_Infinity_of_War is religious for some reason.
What about historians? They don't provide any material and productive things too?

In conclusion and in case you haven't noted the irony, you seem to have a very reductive vision of the world.

[An_Infinity_of_War]

Now you are just putting words in my mouth by saying I lump certain liberal arts in that category. I lump your degree with useless arts such as social justice studies: Absolutely useless outside a personal or niche level. If it allows you to achieve personal perfection then feel free to do it. It just offers very little to the herd in general. Economics and business management would have made a better degree with your degree as a minor is what I am getting at.

Not all liberal arts are useless. Just better off as being used as a minor degree or as a personal hobby. Not everyone should go into psychology, but everyone should not major in philosophy unless they can actually teach it. We would not have these problems under National Socialism; as you'd be better prepared to benefit your society more.

[Strakknuva225]

Posting on these forums is very helpful to society as a whole.

[Argentis]

Now you are just putting words in my mouth by saying I lump certain liberal arts in that category. I lump your degree with useless arts such as social justice studies: Absolutely useless outside a personal or niche level. If it allows you to achieve personal perfection then feel free to do it. It just offers very little to the herd in general. Economics and business management would have made a better degree with your degree as a minor is what I am getting at.

Not all liberal arts are useless. Just better off as being used as a minor degree or as a personal hobby. Not everyone should go into psychology, but everyone should not major in philosophy unless they can actually teach it. We would not have these problems under National Socialism; as you'd be better prepared to benefit your society more.

So helping to improve our understanding of video games which could lead to understanding how it impacts our society and ourselves as well as helping game developers do a better job is useless?
Moreover as I guess you've never studied any human sciences you probably don't understand how interwoven all those different sciences are with literature taking notions from psychology and other studies for example.
Concerning your point on philosophy, how is that relevant? If it is useless then what's the point of teaching it? And if your point is that most philosophy majors don't end up teachers; well not everyone studying in engeneering end up as engineers (some dropout, others go in different fields and some even end up as engineering teachers).

Oh and National Socialism how in hell is it relevant here?

[saltmummy]

I agree with some of those to varying degrees.

- Professor of literature, art, philosophy, etc.

I guess, sure.

- Artist of any kind, painter, sculptor, and even video game designers if you consider video games as art.

Keeps us from killing ourselves out of boredom/depression or killing each other (sort of) out of boredom or irritation.

- Film and literary critics.

No, I don't need some puffed up ******** telling me what I should think about books or movies, especially when a good portion of them don't know a god damn thing about the medium they are critiquing.

- Liberal Arts scholars.

*shrugs* particularly knowledgeable people in their field. Sometimes.

Oh and probably psychatrist.

Ha, lol, no. I don't need an overpayed, puffed up ******** pretending to listen to my problems. Thats what friends and family are for, and I don't have to pay them anything.

One thing you left out Argentis, was mathematics. Math is classified as a "liberal art" and while the very dumbest of us claimed back in highschool; "Why do I need to learn this? I'm never going to use it," the truth is quite the opposite. Mathematics is in everything we do. We wouldn't have the precision machinery we have without mathematics, and those machines could not be nearly as precise as they are without it. From "1+1" to "e=mc2," this "art" is integrated into everything we need. Even when we were hacking each other apart with swords and dying of common diseases, weapons had to meet certain standards of length and weight, quotas had to be met in most manufacturing jobs, and you can't know how much firewood your going to need to reduce that corpse pile to ash unless you know how many bodies the dead carts dragged out of the city today. You can eyeball it sure, but why risk it when you can be precise and burn the whole pile in one go? Even if you think your work today doesn't need maths, your wrong. The business end of things needs it, how are you going to know what your bottom line is if you can't calculate your income against your expenses?

Im glad to see that salem forums gets into these kinds of intellectual discussions.

[Reviresco]

Oh and probably psychatrist.

Ha, lol, no. I don't need an overpayed, puffed up ******** pretending to listen to my problems. Thats what friends and family are for, and I don't have to pay them anything.

Well, that's nice for you, but not everyone has such a social support network. There are many psychological conditions for which lack of social support is either one of greatest predictors, or the greatest. Hell, there are even long-term bereavement disorders, resulting from a major loss in the social support network.

Many cases of PTSD result from abuse suffered from those who should constitute a social support network, leading not only to a lack of social support, but a lack of the trust and sense of self-worth almost prerequisite for creating a new one from scratch.

Hardships are also suffered by children/relatives of individuals with "cluster B" personality disorders. As a mental health professional, you are typically taught to avoid familiarity with patients who fit the criteria for borderline or histrionic personality disorder, yet these people, particularly those with BDP, have individuals in their social support network to whom they are often extremely damaging. What options does a child of someone with borderline personality disorder likely have? They typically actively isolate vulnerable people (usually children) from other sources of social support.

Also, many personality disorders have been shown to have significant heritability. One of the problems suffered by people with, for example, antisocial personality disorder, is that they may be born with a genetic proclivity toward callous-unemotional traits, then go on to receive terribly neglectful and abusive parenting from antisocial relatives, or warehoused in grossly underfunded state programs. If they are raised by relatives, they often change schools very rapidly compared to other children. Substance dependency is much more likely for all parties, also.

I'm just throwing out examples.

[Argentis]

Oh and probably psychatrist.

Ha, lol, no. I don't need an overpayed, puffed up ******** pretending to listen to my problems. Thats what friends and family are for, and I don't have to pay them anything.

Well, that's nice for you, but not everyone has such a social support network. There are many psychological conditions for which lack of social support is either one of greatest predictors, or the greatest. Hell, there are even long-term bereavement disorders, resulting from a major loss in the social support network.

Many cases of PTSD result from abuse suffered from those who should constitute a social support network, leading not only to a lack of social support, but a lack of the trust and sense of self-worth almost prerequisite for creating a new one from scratch.

Hardships are also suffered by children/relatives of individuals with "cluster B" personality disorders. As a mental health professional, you are typically taught to avoid familiarity with patients who fit the criteria for borderline or histrionic personality disorder, yet these people, particularly those with BDP, have individuals in their social support network to whom they are often extremely damaging. What options does a child of someone with borderline personality disorder likely have? They typically actively isolate vulnerable people (usually children) from other sources of social support.

Also, many personality disorders have been shown to have significant heritability. One of the problems suffered by people with, for example, antisocial personality disorder, is that they may be born with a genetic proclivity toward callous-unemotional traits, then go on to receive terribly neglectful and abusive parenting from antisocial relatives, or warehoused in grossly underfunded state programs. If they are raised by relatives, they often change schools very rapidly compared to other children. Substance dependency is much more likely for all parties, also.

I'm just throwing out examples.

Yep saltmummy, you confounded psychiatrist with psychanalist. While most psychiatrist have to some degree knowledge of psychanalysis, psychanalysts have only knowledge of psychanalysis (kinda). Basically a psychiatrist is a medical doctor specialised in mental health issues and can make use of psychanalysis in order to treat those issues, while a psychanalyst only has a Master's Degree in Psychanalysis and sometimes even only a Bachelor of Arts (at least in France that's how it works but I doubt it's that different in other parts of the world). As much as you wish to disregard health issues they are none the less quite important with some of them being life threatening (like depression which is a REAL disease).

As for film and literary critics (the professionals one, I'm not talking about youtubers or other amateurs) they are actually very knowledgable of their medium to the point where the vast majority of the people don't understand them because of how specialized they are. A good analogy would be a theoritical physician with 5 PhDs trying to explain how gravity works (at least in theory) to a highschooler without dumbing it down. Film and literary critics are not for the target audience of the film, they are for the film makers. The fact that you don't understand what they are doing doesn't affect their relevance.

As for mathematics it might be part of the liberat art that you guys are talking about. Personally I'm talking about Human Sciences which regroups Literature, Film and Game Studies, Social Studies, Philosophy, History, etc.
But I think you touch an important point which the difference between theoritical sciences and applied sciences. Most human sciences are theoritical, a treaty on the History of the Theatre from the 16th to the 18th century won't have any concrete application on our society, the same as knowing that there exists little particles which seems to form gravity which are called Higgs Boson (or whatever I'm not a specialist). It's then applied science (or art) that comes into play and an engineer might get the idea to use those Bosons to make an anti-gravity field while an artist might be inspired by reading the treaty of History and write a wonderful play that is represented worldwide and end religious fanatism (optimism much).

Anyway.

[Flame]

...damn.




..where can i find a sunto?

[saltmummy]

Yep saltmummy, you confounded psychiatrist with psychanalist. While most psychiatrist have to some degree knowledge of psychanalysis, psychanalysts have only knowledge of psychanalysis (kinda). Basically a psychiatrist is a medical doctor specialised in mental health issues and can make use of psychanalysis in order to treat those issues, while a psychanalyst only has a Master's Degree in Psychanalysis and sometimes even only a Bachelor of Arts (at least in France that's how it works but I doubt it's that different in other parts of the world). As much as you wish to disregard health issues they are none the less quite important with some of them being life threatening (like depression which is a REAL disease).

My disregard for psychology doesn't come from a wish to disregard the health issues, it's from years of being bounced around between specialists claiming to be psychologists who all wanted my parents to believe there was something wrong with me and wanted to charge money just to talk. Sure I have my problems, but not nearly as many as they wanted me to believe. I know full well about depression as well, having gone through it while my parents were being divorced, and the death/near death of family members fairly recently. I have no doubt that it exists and is a problem, and the thoughts of while I was going through it are still fairly fresh in my mind. You got me there when I got psychiatrist mixed up with psychanalist though.

Film and literary critics are not for the target audience of the film, they are for the film makers.

You are right. If the public was in charge of this kind of stuff, we would probably end up with movies like the ones in idiocracy that are just films of stationary farting asses for a couple hours. I guess I was thinking of this in terms of video game reviews, which for the most part are written by people who play the games, good and bad, for about ten minutes before writing their reviews. Can't really do that with a movie though.

It's then applied science (or art) that comes into play and an engineer might get the idea to use those Bosons to make an anti-gravity field while an artist might be inspired by reading the treaty of History and write a wonderful play that is represented worldwide and end religious fanatism (optimism much).

Would be nice, we can still dream though.
I think Higgs boson is right, but I'm not a specialist either.

not everyone has such a social support network.

Me neither.