Why STEM is objectively superior to non STEM degrees.

I think what they mean is that we all end up in the same place in the end. dead. It won't matter whether we had design careers or science ones anymore.
or to put it bluntly, shut the **** up and let people live their lives.

If we're having a debate, it's better to use formal language - it's more precise, without ambiguity.

Not quite. It's a definition we must both agree on before we make our first chess moves. If your references to a particular word or phrase does not correspond to my references, and these ambiguities are not cleared up, then it is impossible to make any progress in terms of persuading the other or learning from the debate.



I refer to "functioning society" as economically and socially well developed, with basic human needs met. It's not a rigorous definition by any means, but if we were to search for one then it's best to look at literature within sociology/economics about satisfying human needs and wants as well as capturing other concepts like social mobility, etc.

Utility in an economics sense isn't that subjective.



It depends what we're referring to, if it's the course content then only specialist jobs. If it's analytical/transferable skills developed then graduate jobs as a whole. A scientific mind is always valuable.



That's an interesting statement, analytical in the sense that you're interpreting data in a scientific way? I'm sure philosophy, English language/literature, etc can be analytical too - but it's a different kind of analysis.



I've been having this back-and-forth with Princepie and we still haven't come up with a rigorous definition of STEM. I've personally defined it as anything highly scientific in its analytical methods. Personally, I'd group Social Science as a subset of Science, but less empirical because the complexity is higher and it's harder to isolate variables.



It's back to the utility concept again. I go by "if we didn't have these people performing these roles, would we be more or less able to satisfy peoples wants/needs in pursuit of happiness?" If the degree subject had a chronic shortage, would there be an issue for future generations?

The junior doctors employment contracts case illustrate that society clearly does need doctors (many of whom feel dissuaded), many of them, who need to study Medicine. If we reached a true breaking point where there's only as many doctors per capita as Sub Saharan Africa, then greater numbers of people would suffer and die.

By extension, Medicine degrees are "superior" in the sense that if it were scrapped, human civilisation becomes less sustainable/worse for all.



The problem with sciences like these is that it's really hard to avoid biases, isolate the variables, and interpret the data correctly.

Education does improve employment propects in professional jobs, STEM providing an easy route into careers that express a clear preference/requirement for it, which increases income/job-security. I suppose it's hard to determine whether STEM specifically has a meaningful difference.

Human happiness in itself is tricky, there are some things that provide a lot of hedonistic happiness but in the long term causes overall suffering, like binge eating unhealthy food. I still think it's one of the better indices to use when we're talking about whether it's worth making the investment in science education.

If not "better" in the easily measurable indices, STEM degrees creates excellent (critical) minds, which in itself is quite the achievement.

That's an interesting statement, analytical in the sense that you're interpreting data in a scientific way? I'm sure philosophy, English language/literature, etc can be analytical too - but it's a different kind of analysis.

STEM focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It's very empirical and analytical, based on real world - and theoretical, thought - experiments and observations.

Social Science is STEM-lite, a hazy science of human behaviour that doesn't fit neatly in to Science vs Humanities. It's still empirical and analytical and based on logic, it just happens to be a little less clear what the findings mean. It has to be interpreted.

Humanities involves itself with creative and cultural studies, like Art or Drama or History or Philosophy or Languages.

EDIT - I noticed I made a mistake, I should have split up Business from Social Science, my bad.

you might be interested to learn that logic is a humanities subject

Formal logic is taught in some mathematics courses and (afaik) all computer science courses as well as philosophy ya know

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and math is taught by politics courses, doesn't mean math is a social science

and math is taught by politics courses, doesn't mean math is a social science

i really don't think it's that obvious that logic is a 'humanities subject'. arguably it's a branch of mathematics (or the other way around). i mean all science is philosophy but that doesn't mean we say it's humanities...

well if all science is philosophy, and philosophy is humanities, then surely all science is humanities.

but that wasn't the point i was making. i consider logic to be philosophy used by mathematicians rather than vice versa because i think that figuring out which logical system is correct is a purely philosophical activity, and that historically, apart from a few exceptions (boole, fuzzy logic) all the major advances in logic have either been made by philosophers or by mathematicians working on things that would today be called philosophy.

You could quite easily argue that any subject is a subfield of philosophy...

well if all science is philosophy, and philosophy is humanities, then surely all science is humanities.

but that wasn't the point i was making. i consider logic to be philosophy used by mathematicians rather than vice versa because i think that figuring out which logical system is correct is a purely philosophical activity, and that historically, apart from a few exceptions (boole, fuzzy logic) all the major advances in logic have either been made by philosophers or by mathematicians working on things that would today be called philosophy.