STEM-lords™

[ This page is bullshit. Please DO NOT READ IT. ]

It is not uncommon among non-STEM (Normies™) people to view STEM people as narrow-minded, but I believe this is the result of a strong double-standard, and that, in reality, the opposite is true.

Normies™, you see, almost entirely ignore STEM arguments, because they require math - something which causes Normies™ to flinch away and find some excuse to avoid learning.

STEM-Lords™, on the other hand, don't turn away from from Normie™ arguments because they're difficult - they turn away because they've seen what strong arguments look like (falsifiable, statistically significant, reproducible, incentives-aligned, model-based, etc), and they note Normie™ arguments seldom provide the hallmarks of strong evidence.

For instance, a Normie™ might talk about how eliminating price-ceilings on rent would dramatically hurt the poor. The STEM-Lord™ will reference the textbook standard models suggesting that the existence of price-ceilings actually hurt the poor and society at large in the long-run (e.g. deadweight loss, fundamental theorem of welfare economics, etc) and that they should be phased out slowly since people are credit-bound.

The STEM-Lord™ can fully understand the Normie™'s argument as well as the Normie™ understands it themselves after a couple minutes of conversation.

The Normie™ probably sees the STEM-Lord™'s argument as simply "price ceilings cause there to be fewer apartments". This is woefully oversimplified, but to explain the actual argument would require a half-hour crash-course into microeconomics (and probably an aside into welfare economics). It is rare for a Normie™ to be willing to sit through such an explanation, let alone expend the cognitive effort to understand it. Instead, they simply fall into epistemic learned helplessness Siskind.

The result? Over many years of living, STEM-Lords collect a superset of the arguments available to Normies™, and begin to peg non-STEM people as providing less useful information.

But aren't STEM-Lords™ susceptible to overextending their models beyond usefulness?

Sure, but the non-STEM people don't even have models to begin with. They extend their raw biased intuitions far beyond whatever paltry evidence they bring to the table can support. Again, we see a fierce double standard.

But STEM-Lords™ aren't really smarter than the rest of us, right?

Based on their SAT scores, they're probably marginally smarter Number, percentage distribution, and SAT mean scores of high school seniors taking the SAT, by degree-level goal and intended college major: 2017, 2018, and 2019 SAT mean scores, standard deviations, and score ranges for high school seniors, and percentage of the graduating class taking the SAT, by state: 2017:

But, no, I wouldn't say the primary difference between STEM-Lords™ and Normies™ is intelligence. I think, ironically. it's largely about a willingness to be wrong.

I've formally tutored a fair number of people in math and informally tutored a fair number in computer science. The number one problem I see is an unwillingness to Fuck Up™.

In non-STEM classes, if you're reasonably smart you can't Fuck Up™. You can mess up - maybe use less than ideal prose, slightly misinterpret an author, etc. But it is extremely rare to Fuck Up™ so badly that you get a 0 on a paper or even an exam question.

In STEM classes, you Fuck Up™ all the time.

You Fuck Up™ repeatedly until you get it. And then you Fuck Up™ some more until you've practiced enough that you stop.

(Hopefully in class and on homework rather than on exams.)

Unless you don't have the guts. Unless you've intricately tied your ego to being right, and refuse to risk Fucking Up™. Then you just don't try.

I don't mean you don't do homework. You will you're a Good Student™ and Good Students™ do their homework.

I mean it on a much smaller level. You won't just try random things. You won't try different ways of thinking about the problem. You won't pull out your knife and start feeling around inside the body to figure out how it works. Because for all these things you might Fuck Up™.

And that would hurt your ego. It would make you feel like a Bad Student™ like you're Not Smart™. And, God damn it, you'd rather just stumble around eeking out Bs in your math classes that your teacher is compelled to give you, because they can't fail 70% of the class.

STEM-Lords™ internalize an important truth: everyone fucks up. Dumb people, smart people, tall people, short people. Everyone Fucks Up™. In most situations, Fucking Up™ does not actually cause any lasting damage and can teach you a lot, so keep pushing the envelope and don't sweat the Fuck Ups™.

As the old saying goes "Fail Hard. Fail Fast. Fail Often."