The rationale behind discrediting Liberal Arts

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
An individual star athelete is probably more valuable to society than an average qualified engineer or scientist, true.

What "value" does any athelete add to society?

That the market is willing to compensate a star athelete, or any "star" entertainer, which is what a star athelete is, does not equate to actually adding anything to society.

After all, using the market as a standard (one of the arguments used commonly against a Liberal Arts education), someone who is very good at the arts, be it music, film, acting, the plastic arts, fashion, whatever, is far more valuable than any scientist or engineer who is also not a businessperson, because they are compensated at much higher rates. Britney Spears has earned in her short "career" much more money than your average good engineer will earn in a lifetime.

Is Spears > engineers???

[Patroklos]

Not at my school

Then except for a few ivy league exceptions, you probobly go to a ****ty school anyways and thus all your undergrads are inferior to most institutions PE majors.

An individual star athelete is probably more valuable to society than an average qualified engineer or scientist, true.

Doubtful. I bet the most rookie lineman of the Clevland Browns makes many times the salary of the average engineer.

Yet another reason the revolution can't come soon enough.

Agreed.

[Patroklos]

What "value" does any athelete add to society?

When these guys talk about value they mean salary, it is basically all they have to base their arguement on (which isn't even true), even though they all denied it mattered to a man in the first thread on this subject.

[Elok]

Well, back at washcoll my last roommate was one of five, count 'em, five physics majors at the whole school. And he was a double major, Physics and English. I don't think we could have supported our massive English program on taxing the Physics department's grants. Not to mention Philosophy, Art, Music, Drama...

[Patroklos]

If your not a research school you really don't receive any grants for the sciences. Most schools are not really research schools

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap


What "value" does any athelete add to society?

Entertainment. Humanity as a whole is more interested in sunday's soccer match than curing AIDS, or whatever those scientist and engineer geeks may be up to, and thus values the athlete more.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Entertainment. Humanity as a whole is more interested in sunday's soccer match than curing AIDS, or whatever those scientist and engineer geeks may be up to, and thus values the athlete more.

Quiet, you! Now get back to harvesting those stem cells; the sniper we've had on your window is starting to fall asleep from boredom. No wonder type one diabetes isn't cured yet, if a .50cal bullet is all it takes to scare you off...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Entertainment. Humanity as a whole is more interested in sunday's soccer match than curing AIDS, or whatever those scientist and engineer geeks may be up to, and thus values the athlete more.

Certainly people are more willing to spend their own resources on entertaining themselves than ending disease for others, which is why society will compensate star entertainers so well, but the 'value' this entertainment adds to society as a whole is at best transiatory.

I don't view the market as a particulalrly good judge of what is "good", just an excellent judge of what is popular.

[Elok]

Grr, now that somebody pointed it out, your sig bothers me. It's spelled "pernicious."

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap
Certainly people are more willing to spend their own resources on entertaining themselves than ending disease for others, which is why society will compensate star entertainers so well, but the 'value' this entertainment adds to society as a whole is at best transiatory.

I don't view the market as a particulalrly good judge of what is "good", just an excellent judge of what is popular.

I might argue that the value of something to someone is, by definition, what that someone is willing to pay for it.

But more helpfully, if you feel the market is an inadequate judge of value to society, what would make for a better one? In my experience, the alternatives suggested usually boil down to the opinion of this or that bespectacled intellectual, who's probably bearded and french on top of it.

[Patroklos]

In my experience, the alternatives suggested usually boil down to the opinion of this or that bespectacled intellectual, who's probably bearded and french on top of it.

As well as a liberal arts major, so hardly worth listening to. TO THE CAMPS WITH YOU!!!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Then except for a few ivy league exceptions, you probobly go to a ****ty school anyways and thus all your undergrads are inferior to most institutions PE majors.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

I might argue that the value of something to someone is, by definition, what that someone is willing to pay for it.

But more helpfully, if you feel the market is an inadequate judge of value to society, what would make for a better one? In my experience, the alternatives suggested usually boil down to the opinion of this or that bespectacled intellectual, who's probably bearded and french on top of it.

The market is a tool for more effectively using, distributing, and expanding wealth. That is it. If you hold wealth to be the most important "value" out there, then fine, the market is the best method to judge what has value and what doesn't. The thing is, deciding that wealth is the highest value is in itself an opinion. The persons who came up with the opinion were probably not bespectacled Frenchmen, but that does not make their opinion any better.

Which comes back to the inherent worth of Liberal Arts, which is what allows individuals to come up with the rationales and arguments for why something like wealth should be considered the highest value, or why something else should.

Scientists and engineers gives us the tools to use, the Liberal Arts give us the reasons and aims with which we will use those tools.

[Last Conformist]

@GePap: If I was unfriendly, I'd call that a typical example of a liberal arts guy covering up an inability to answer substantively with an excess of high-sounding verbiage.

Any idiot can find a way to judge value to society. Unfortunately, most of those ways will amount to "ask this guy". Equating value with salary has important advantages in that salaries are measurable things that can be established without interrupting any frog consumption.

So, do you have an alternative method of judgement that's actually useful for anything?

[Kuciwalker]

Scientists and engineers gives us the tools to use, the Liberal Arts give us the reasons and aims with which we will use those tools.

We've already established that physicists are statistically more likely to be world leaders than liberal arts majors.