Can't Be Much Too It, Eh?

Update: I just noticed the typo in my title to this post. It was obviously influenced by Tam emailing me about Sarah Palin's overuse of the word "too."

Tam has a great post that may be of special interest to readers who are software engineers or have special, hard-won expertise in fields that many people think has nothing to it that any normal person doesn't already know.

I definitely agree with her that "the more you learn about a field, the more you see it expand before you into something deep and rich with detail." I mean, even with a little exposure to the field of supply chain management, I had to admit that it's a complex subject with many intricacies that is perhaps not even as overwhelmingly boring as I thought.

Lately, one thing I have noticed people dismissing (online) as empty, meaningless, "nothing to it" is feminist critique/theory, to the point that they do not seem to recognize that there are actual various highly developed viewpoints that do not make only obvious claims. Indeed, many of the claims are rather non-intuitive, as evidenced by the fact that those ignorant of the field make assumptions about it that are laughably untrue (for instance, positing that women in general being in favor of some policy makes it inherently impossible that it is an anti-feminist position, as though women cannot be major supporters of the patriarchy). It's like they reject out of hand the idea that there is anything to the field whatsoever. One might be deepy opposed to feminist theory, but I believe one has to admit the fact that such a theory actually exists, and is not just a few slogans thrown together.

Of course, a lot of people confuse quantitative or methodological rigor with "having something to it." I even see this within the market research field, where qualitative research (interviews, focus groups) can be seen as kind of fuzzy and meaningless, and people (managers, primarily) can have difficulty even accepting that there is such a thing as high vs. low quality research, I assume because they believe that it's all just crap anyway. Sociologists and anthropologists, the qualitative market researcher feels your pain.

I do have to point out the irony, however, of Tam's friend thinking software engineering is full of shit, since the guy is (as I understand it) into various new-agey things like tarot to the extent that he believes that they truly tap into some kind of objective reality. It's hard to take him seriously as a bullshit meter.