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Useless Knowledge?

Author: Youngjin Kang

Date: 2022

One thing I have learned throughout my academic years is that there is no such thing as "useless knowledge"; it is only the circumstance which puts certain types of knowledge into a temporary state of coma.

In today's job market, people who majored in literature when they were in college generally have much lower chances of landing on a job than, say, those who majored in STEM subjects such as math, science, and engineering. Yet, can we really say that studying literature is intrinsically useless by any means, just because it is not in sync with today's market demand?

What if somebody suddenly invents a revolutionary AI robot that is capable of replacing all existing industrial tools and can only be programmed by writing source code in the form of literature instead of programming languages? I daresay this is probably not going to happen any time soon, but if we ever get a chance to see that happen, the vast majority of software engineers who are more fluent in speaking C++ than plain English will be screwed.

Job recruiters will start asking if whichever candidate they are looking forward to hire as an intern possesses "+10 years of professional experience in classical literature", or has "either a Bachelor's or Master's degree in creative writing". Teenagers and young adults will be labelled as delusional dreamers whenever they say they want to become a programmer. The ability to code will be regarded as such an embarrassingly juvenile skillset, that it will even be disadvantageous for a job applicant to list it in one's resume.