If by "soft/social sciences" you mean real substantive disciplines like history, philosophy, civics, and the arts, I agree with you.

Currently "social studies" in school is a bit of a trash bucket into which gets thrown every personal ideology and pet project that some teacher got her feminism or social work or grievance-studies BA in. It's the worst subject in most curricula, even worse than English. The problem is there's plenty of those nonsense degree holders and far too few college graduates who have studied the humanities.

I meant psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, communication, among others.

Those are, despite the "social studies" stigma they might carry, real substantive disciplines which should not only contribute but predominantly shape the technological products and services we build.

What kind of degree are you talking about when you say "social studies"?

I'm referring to "soft sciences" like social work, psychology, sociology, [grievance] studies, poli sci, etc, as opposed to the humanities: history, mathematics, philosophy, classics, fine arts, etc.

> I'm referring to "soft sciences" like social work, psychology, sociology, [grievance] studies, poli sci, etc, as opposed to the humanities

Race/ethnic/gender/subculture (what you seem to call "grievance") studies are humanities (academic disciplines that study human culture) not sciences (soft or otherwise.)

Not sure what you mean by grievance studies but most of those, besides being quite important, fit under the humanities label. Mathematics on the other hand, probably not.

Most of those would be classified as "social sciences", not humanities. It has to do with the methods and philosophies they use. Grievance studies is my nickname for "_____ studies" where the "_____" is the name of some census checkbox.

You're very right.

History, Philosophy and Civics are still in their pristine condition.

However, psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and especially communication have been systematically taken over, and have demanded self-censorship of those fields. When a field self-censors it can no longer be considered to be doing intellectually honest work. So they are dismissed as not Science.

Just what I meant. The problem for public schools is that there are a million grads with degrees in social work, poli sci, pyschology, sociology, grievance studies (womens studies, etc), and other fake sciences, many of them ready and willing to be teachers. People with degrees in history or the classics, by contrast, are almost as hard to find as math and science majors willing to work for public school salaries. (Unions being what they are, you can't offer math and science teachers twice what you offer the "social studies" teachers, despite the fact that they're worth it.)

I honestly think the last thing anyone needs is more sociologists. I would prefer studies oriented around the humanities.

Social sciences don't exactly mean sociology. Economy is a social science, psychology too, anthropology might be considered humanities but it's also a social science...

>I would prefer studies oriented around the humanities.

You don't consider sociologists to be the least bit concerned about human cultures and experiences?

Agreed. STEM has proved incalculably valuable in servicing the lowest (most essential) tiers of Maslow's pyramid, but the higher ones (love through to self-actualization) require more nuanced investigation. As society progresses, people worry less about these tiers, like hunger, and it's not unlikely that the primary concerns of future generations will be emotional/social.

True, but also in the social sciences you need a firm grasp of statistics, science and a keen mind. Perhaps even more so as people, culture are often more complex then designing user interfaces, self-driving cars or facial, voice and gesture recognition apps. How to filter out factors, describe patterns? Statistical methodologies (and the psychological/sociological theories they test or are based on) are crucial tools in understanding dynamics of behavior. The need for social science experts will arrive when people need to solve these problems, like with SEO/SEA, VR, gaming and narrativity - in their multidisciplinary contexts in various companies and industries.

I think the need already exists. But companies are used to getting by (with huge profits) with engineer-driven products and decisions. The extent to which our technological products and services are engineer-oriented is mesmerizing. Steve Jobs once said something about Apple working at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. It was marketing, of course, but I can't even express how much I agree with this.

Regarding the need for a good grasp of statistics in social scientists, I fully agree. But I think it's something that already exists, up to a point at least. I work in software development with many software engineers around, but I also did a PhD with a strong social sciences background. You would be amazed with how much the guys with psychology backgrounds know about stats and methodology (and how much the common STEM guy doesn't).

We don't know about social sciences because it is a heavily politically charged subject.

The most interesting and potentially enlightening experiments are also probably illegal.

That's why it's hard.

And you ALSO need a branch of mathematics, called statistics, and probably many more. You can't simply pour lots of money into it without any hard science and expect useful results.

tl;dr: it's not about quantity, it's about quality and the political landmine of social sciences.

> The most interesting and potentially enlightening experiments are also probably illegal.

I fully agree with your points. However, regarding this one in particular, I would like to add that this shouldn't stop the harnessing of already existing knowledge in the social sciences to better shape the products we build.

I mean, you're totally right; there's a lot of knowledge "locked" in the difficulties related to studying humans. However, we know some stuff about people and their behaviour. A relevant amount of stuff I would say. And that stuff isn't being applied when we create a technical solution to a human problem; the solution is almost solely defined by technical aspects. We don't know much, but we know enough to do better than what we do with technology today, human-wise.

(At least, better than defining "UX work" as pixel-pushing in Photoshop or Illustrator)

> We don't know about social sciences because it is a heavily politically charged subject.

It did not used to be that way. It started to change after WW2 and even stronger after 1967. Social "sciences" were made political because a group of radical influential thinkers were interested in furthering studies that would disprove the role of genetics, biology and darwinism in social studies. Before this shift, social studies were not politicized.

An extreme of a society where everyone mastered the soft skills is a society of master manipulators. Not sure it's an utopia.

soft skills != the soft sciences.