Flowchart for STEM

To be clear: you like money, but you will not earn money.
- Poor and middle-income people earn money. Rich people just take it from the people who earn it.
  
  Passive Income has been outpacing earned income for decades. The best job to have is a giant pile of money in a stock account. You barely even have to trade it. Blue Chip stocks are generating double digit returns. All off other people's labor.

30 years ago when I started heading down the computer science path, nothing about it seemed evil.
- Honestly at this point in my software career (~10 years), it's not evil per se, but I don't feel great about essentially existing to help rich people (VCs, PE, etc.) get richer. But I suppose that's a problem that isn't limited to IT.
  
  Certainly not limited to IT. One of my professors from many years was an aerospace engineer¹. He recounts to us the time that he busted his ass on some design for a long time and managed to make some huge cost savings. And then after it was done he realized that all he really did with his extra hard work was help some executives and stockholders get a bit richer. Not long after that he switched to education.
  ¹Not in the defense industry
  
  I kiss ass so I can get rich while my boss gets richer off me. Perhaps I'll work harder with a gun in my back for a bowl of rice a day.
- I've had this thought for a while and I definitely agree that a lot of software I've built is a net negative to society as a whole and the only reason why I get paid as well as I do is because I'm helping rich assholes suck value out of society more efficiently.
  For instance, I've worked on CMSs that automated 90% of the processes for medium-large insurance companies. Sure, it may result in a marginal price reduction for insureds (lol), but it almost certainly has led to fewer staff being hired to the benefit of the overlords. If more and more middle-class white-collar jobs gets replaced by software, that helps put downward pressure on wages. At the end of it all, are the marginally lower prices worth it to society, when everyone has a lower wage or no well paying job forcing them to participate in the gig economy and such?
  It's a depressing thought, and I've been trying to break into research engineering roles or something of the sort to get away from my current role but it's been an uphill task.
  
  In a sane world, automating away tedious work would be an unqualified good. Too bad we live in a capitalist clown world where rich assholes are able to capture 120% of the benefits of automation, leaving regular people to make up the difference.
- Computer science is no more evil than most of the industries on the chart; they all offer ethical jobs as well, they just tend not to pay as well as the evil ones
- I feel like I mostly got away with it without being evil thus far. I ended up working for a foundation and the team I'm in builds internet access (and layer 2 transport) for institutions of higher education. But maybe network engineering isn't really the typical outcome, most of my friends became developers.

Did you try any of these and not like it? Yes -> geology
- Should be a subbranch of "ambivalent towards safety" - How do you like to endanger yourself -> Blowing things up = Chem Eng or Hit things with hammers = Geology
  
  Geologists do sometimes blow stuff up
- Then when you go to grad school you realize you have to like all of them.
- "Do you collect locks?" is also a good one.
  
  I never heard of LockPickingGeologist
- Came here to say I felt under represented lol

accurate, and for the record, EPA, you can take my DCM wash bottle out of my DEAD DEGREASED HANDS
- Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That's stuck in a block of ice in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn't ever been de-iced?
  What if the power goes out for a long period of time and the tBuLi goes for a swim? Or we say you have to de-ice the freezer?
  Haha sounds crazy. And, I wouldn't have to do the shitty quench before disposal. Or work on that project anymore.
  Because you're injured or because PI fires you?
  Haha, yeah :)
  :|
  :)
  :|
  Oh, while you're here, does this still smell like DCM? I can't tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).
  
  Aqua regia isn't even that scary. Try pipetting pure bromine while it shoots itself out from constantly evaporating
  
  Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That's stuck in a block of ice because in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn't ever been de-iced?
  That's just bad management and you shouldn't store tBuLi that long anyway because it'll decompose. You shouldn't put it in freezer either
  Oh, while you're here, does this still smell like DCM? I can't tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).
  just put it on high vacuum
  What are you working with that requires aqua regia to clean NMR tubes? I've only had to use piranha once in a decade, while cleaning things that acetone, DCM, and basic ethanol won't touch, and this was just after moving to another lab
- Look, I'm all for green chemistry, and I'll switch to using safer, more environmentally friendly reagents and solvents the second they are close to the efficacy of the real deal.
  Until then, leave my acetone and heavy-metal catalysts alone!
  
  Acetone is rather green (7 in GSK solvent guide), but I for one haven't used heavy metal catalysts in a year, and more if you don't count palladium
- When I find a solvent on pubchem that has the taste characterized by some mad lad from the 1800s, it makes me want to try it.
  You say THF is spicy water? Now I'm curious. We must confirm this claim.
  I hear ether smells good. We must confirm this claim.
  These fancy new box cutters are safe and cannot cut your hand. We must confirm this claim.

Economics is STEM???
- Economics is science but with resources.
  Economics is like ecology for the financial / resource world.
  
  I'm under the impression that it's half math half psychology of groups.
- Well, whilst it's basically Astrology, it does decorate itself heavily with Mathematics.
  (A more serious answer is: it depends on which part within Economics one is talking about. For example Behavioural Economics does use the Scientific Method).
  
  Econometrics, data science, behavioural economics, game theory, micro and macroeconomics, public policy, all of it uses the scientific method and is empirical.
  Could you clarify which part of economics you believe is not scientific?
- Yes. In the heirarchy of science, it ranks just below literature.
- Having done a degree, yes. It's entirely empirical.
- It falls into both Science and Math
- Not only that, but it apparently doesn't even involve math anymore!
- Hey, if biology qualifies, why not that?

"Frickin' beautiful."

Moment of silence for those who thought environmental science doesn't have maths. (No money is true though.)

After indirect
Do you want to feel like you are in a secret society? Yes -> actuarial sciences

Economics is not real bro
- Yeah but what if we imagine it's real and convince everyone to believe it too. Surely nothing will go wrong!
  
  I'm kind of joking, if you want legit economics check out Mike Hudson and other MMT authors or preferably become a communist. Mainstream economists live to justify rent seeking by the ruling class. They don't distinguish between production and rents and debts etc
- Of course a hexbear tankie would think that. Sincerely hope you're joking, but maybe I shouldn't hope to not get severely disappointed.
  
  That's cool dude, except you worship it like a religion. Did you know your GDP numbers count rents and debts the same as production?
  
  I'm no fan of Hexies but economics - at least as understood by neoliberals - is not real.
- Economics just means studying how we distribute limited goods. It breaks down when goods aren't limited (or rather, we have more of it than we can reasonably use), but we're not quite at that level of post-scarcity for most things. Though we might be close enough to cover the first level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
  Economics as a practical discipline tends to assume capitalism. Economics can still be valid without assuming capitalism. There are tons of non-capitalist modes of distributing limited goods.
  
  The assumption of capitalist-like structures is for a good reason. Because there is literally zero practical evidence that scarcity can exist without them in scalable economies. If you require scalability in the presence of scarcity, you will have markets, you will have currency, you will have competition, you will have investment, and so forth. At best these things can be mediated by centrally planned state capitalism. But pretending like this is not just another brand of harm reduction capitalism is rhetorically counterproductive.
  The overwhelming consensus of the past century regarding Marxist economic theory is that it is incomplete at best because it takes a very naive view of scarcity. Where Marx requires revolution and then a bunch of hand waving, modern revisionism requires harm reduction and the gradual whittling down of scarcity over time. Historical materialism is certainly a pretty useful economic lens, but Marx really goes off the rails in the prescriptive conclusions he draws from that analytical framework.
  
  I mean mainstream economics is a farce. MMT at least approaches sanity. Yeah you need Marxism-Leninism but there aren't many of those economists in Western academia.
  
  Sure, in theory, that is what it should be about. In practice, many economists bias the theories they develop to make sure the conclude in favor of their own ideological biases. Often, metaphors are treated as deep truths while simple facts are treated as superficial and ignored or even obfuscated due to their ideological implications if they were plainly stated @sciencememes

There could be one more to differentiate engineers from architects. Do you like to solve problems (engineer) or create them (architect)? Fun flowchart!

That is literally the path I took to become an Env. Scientist
- Ah, a fellow poor with no hope. How goes it!?
  
  Like this:
  https://open.spotify.com/track/2ZzqEIru1fX11Nzf3SlNiI?si=a3kv-K6FSTamn0F2pN5hdQ
- Same for computer science

It got me

You know it’s a complete and proper list because it excludes that pseudo-science Geology.
- Geology is just a specialized field of chemistry. Biology too for that matter.
  
  Well and chemistry is just applied electron physics

- Geologists all end up pulling oil out of the ground.
  
  Not this one. Environmental scientists end up cleaning up after them.