Reddit reviews Mutant Message Down Under, Tenth Anniversary Edition

I studied comp sci, which is an area that has ridiculously good online & free resources available. A college degree is also much less important than a good portfolio/history in CS. Much of my education was supplemented by external pursuits and materials, so I think I'm a decent candidate to speak as a grad in a STEM field that has the least (tie with math?) college requirement.

I do think people in STEM are more likely to use their UG training in a future job though, chiefly because they are more likely to work in that field. This doesn't mean an LA degree doesn't provide a benefit to society at large or help a person live a happier and more satisfied life, but I think it's a difficult argument to make that the murky "critical thinking" skills developed in (hopefully) all higher education are more helpful in a workplace than those same skills cultivated through relevant job knowledge. e.g., I would have had the same broad enrichment in a concrete mathematics class as in an algorithms class, but in an algorithms class I also get an intuition of asymptotic analysis/algorithm that I'll use frequently in a job.

I definitely disagree with the the people you quoted. An argument for non-STEM areas that I don't think has been mentioned is that it isn't easy to change what a person is interested in, or take an uninterested person and keep them motivated. College finds some topic a person can be passionate about and it uses that as leverage to train the person in critical thinking. If you tried to shoehorn a history major into a STEM field I'd assume they'd have a much higher rate of dropping out.

That said, I can understand some of the bias (legitimate or imagined) against some LA areas:

• Subjectivism can foster mistrust and LA has more subjectivism.
  I've seen studies (can't find atm) on discrimination in grading that indicate a teacher will give a different grade if they know the name of the student they're grading.
  I took a fun course on 19th Century Women's Literature in which a professor asked me to rewrite a paper. When I met him to hear his criticisms he withdrew them-- he hadn't read my paper in any depth and his complaints demonstrated he didn't even understand my thesis.
  After a few experiences where it feels like your feedback is based more on your relationship with your professor/their opinions/their prep, than some external Truth, you can get a bit jaded.
  
  
• Weakness in STEM. Mastery in rhetoric.
  Many of the non-STEM people I've known have had very weak math skills / science literacy. Sometimes part of the espoused reasons for choosing their chosen fields was that it didn't require said skills.
  This leads to an asymmetry where someone in LA can write a poignant ethnography about some disenfranchised group, or chronicle someone's struggle with aspect X of society so masterfully it feels like the reader went through it... but it can be detached from reality and devoid of real solutions without ancillary understanding of stats/econ/math/etc.
  Kony 2012 might be an example of a compelling but misleading narrative, more for ignoring history though. Arguments against global warming would be one for the right wing, arguments against vaccines for both sides, arguments for homeopathy for more of the left.
  
  
• Some of the material/topics seem bunk, some of the value is hard to see immediately.
  I've had a friend facilitate a Lit class based on Harry Potter. Before listening to her talk about it I didn't think there was enough depth to warrant such a class, but she convinced me otherwise. Non-STEM people might feel that way about STEM things... like wondering if it's really worth spending millions of $ to study naked mole rats, or worth a PhD for proving that a computers ability to sort a list of numbers has a slightly slower best theoretical time than we thought.
  With STEM most (all?) of these topics can eventually be explained and justified. LA can be a deep rabbit hole that terminates in an unsatisfying "well the important thing is that it got you asking these questions".
  To give an example, I took a blowoff summer class before REU research. The class was about dreams, and one of the core texts was Mutant Message Down Under -- the tale of a woman who was psychically called to Australia to go on a walkabout/spiritual awakening with a magical aboriginal tribe to convey their message of love & nicethings to the rest of the world (as they were leaving Earth, iirc). There were many red flags for me (such as making an international call from Australia with a "quarter". no such currency there), so I looked up the book. The author had been a door-to-door saleswoman who would use similar stories to help sell her products, and had written a book after receiving encouraging feedback. The woman had possibly been in Australia for a few weeks, but certainly none of the events in the book (supposed to be roughly autobiographical) had happened. The proceeds were supposed to go to a made up charity for the aborigines, who were basically misrepresented as Native Americans.
  A group of aboriginal leaders were so offended at the profiteering through misrepresenting their culture that they traveled to the US to confront her. She basically admitted it was made up, but she didn't make good on a promise to publicly clear things up. The book was a NYT bestseller for 31 weeks, a book of the year. Discussed ~25 mins in.
  So STEM has more trust that, even if you don't understand it, there is some substance in it. Non-STEM doesn't have that because of the greater subjectivity. The more steps is takes to demonstrate the value of something the harder it is for people to appreciate it, and that task is just harder for LAs unfortunately.
  
  
• Subjectivity encourages personal opinion. If someone is asked if they understand neural networks they'll probably say "no", but everyone has an opinion on women's/men's/race's issues/good literature/etc. Telling someone they need to study these topics has the implication that their opinion is wrong and that they may be acting unethically... that makes people a bit defensive.
  There is also probably some resistance to the idea of a professor being the one who shapes/decides those opinions. Even if the purported goal of a class is to bring the topics up for discussion and individual introspection, the selection of materials, the grading, and the tone of the course likely will skew towards the professor's beliefs.
  
  
• Wage differences. I don't think it's legitimate, but I can understand why the Magical Capitalism Fairy saying CS gets paid twice what a LA job would can lead someone to think their education was harder/more needed in society.
  
  
• Different camps. There is a regrettable grouping of "sciencey folks" and "artsy folks" in society (lookin' at you C.P. Snow :\ ). Non-STEM people get shit for not having trade skills and STEM people get shit for being dull/uncultured/dispassionate/lacking social skills/etc. I don't mean to overstate this as being a big problem, but it exists to an extent.
  
  
  Again, this is said as someone who thinks non-STEM fields are great. Love talking to history/phil/writing folks. Just a quick-- likely incomplete-- list of things I think anyone who doesn't appreciate non-STEM fields would need to have addressed.

Could it be Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under ?

I studied abroad a few years ago in Melbourne too, and I read Mutant Down Under by Marlo Morgan on the plane and it changed my experience. Hereis a link to the book on Amazon. It's about the Aboriginals, so not specific to Melbourne, but going in I didn't have much knowledge and I feel like it really opened my eyes and allowed me to appreciate the history and culture even more than I would have. It's a short story and really worth the read imo.

Also, if you have any other random questions about studying abroad in Melbourne I'm happy to answer any I can (: