My father was an engineer; my mother was a programmer. In them – and in many others – I observed something that's worthy of note.

Most people think that the work that they do is important; and in many cases they are right. But then many make a completely illegitimate claim that only what they do is important. I have seen this attitude in many engineers, doctors, businessmen,
military people and construction workers.

There was one situation on the Internet when someone came on the forums bagging artists. He said that they were arrogant, then he wrote, “Can they program Visual Basic? Can they program Java?” My question is, who is being arrogant? He was applying
the standards of his profession as a universal measure of legitimacy. The correct response to someone like that is, “Can you fly an F-15? Argue a case before a court? Perform open-heart surgery?”

In many cases I have seen some people proclaiming certain professions as being illegitimate. In one extreme case someone said that whenever he saw a computer he wanted to smash it with a sledgehammer. Much more common of course is denigration of the
creative professions as well as of helping professions and social studies. Many people do not see the merit of these professions and see them as useless. Others even claim that they are evil or parasitical.

What I see in such situations is something similar to Pol Potism. Pol Pot decided that anyone who was not a manual laborer or a farmer was a parasite, and he killed off the entire propertied and educated class of Combodia. The laborers and the farmers
did not benefit very much from that policy. They wound up in labor camps where they were not being treated much better than the propertied class. Eventually even the Communists had had it with Pol Pot and drove him out.

With these professions and pursuits that some see as being illegitimate, the correct question to ask is, “Then why are they there?” There will be a reason for anything, and any workable solution will require finding what that reason is. With creative
professions, probably the best argument is showing the person some good art. And with social sciences, the correct response is that it is necessary to study everything in order to come up with informed solutions. The more you understand such issues, the
better you can address them.

Responsibility presupposes knowledge. Without knowledge people do not understand the world well enough to know the consequences of their actions. They do things that they think are responsible but aren't. They poison the air and the oceans. They drive
around with signs that say “My son beat up your honor student.” They stand in the way of progress toward better technologies. Many of them really thing that they are being responsible. They are not. It is only when they get the right knowledge that
they can in fact act in a truly responsible manner.

Most of these people are not malevolent, but many are quite confused. Their greatest area of confusion is that, while they are in favor of economic prosperity, they are against learning and science. They need to be confronted about that. They need to be
reminded just how much they owe to science. Without science, they would not have their trucks and their flat-screen TVs. So that when climate science comes up with very well-founded understanding of global warming, these people need to give that the
correct respect.

With social sciences, they are as legitimate as any other kind of science. That does not however mean that everything that has come out of them was right. I have a lot to say about for example personality psychology. I will do so later in this book. For
now, back to the narrative.

Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatbiography

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