Psychology typically breaks "symbols" down into "data" and "ideas". Data is more detail-oriented and includes professions like accountants, lawyers, real estate brokers, and office clerks. Ideas is more abstract and includes professions like artists, therapists, academics, and journalists.
My impression is that "ideas" correlates heavily with the big 5 trait of Openness (which has both an intellectual and a creative aspect) whereas "data" more specifically correlates with the big 5 trait of Concientiousness (which has an orderliness aspect that seems relevant here).
The BLS does not break down careers according to the four Fundamental Interest Domains (FIDs) of people, things, data, and ideas. Indeed, there is scare little academic research I have found that explains exactly what each of these constructs are. However, the BLS does use the RIASEC model (whichcan be found here: https://www.onetonline.org/) , which can be roughly mapped to the FIDs in fairly intuitive ways.
I agree that the level of abstract thinking has not increased all that much, and I agree that many people who are more data-oriented are ending up in jobs that benefit from being more ideas-oriented. My own profession of software engineering is a good example of this.
Seems the trend that I've observed over the last 4 decades: "...we are letting concrete thinkers get college degrees in the hope that they will qualify for jobs that in fact require abstract thinking."
Also, the shift from thing work to symbol work is dramatic, but isn't the shift even more dramatic in social relationships as well? Much less of our non-work time is passed with real people. We're on our "phones" instead of interacting as thing humans. We interact using apps and screens filled with pixels produced by linear algebra. Impossible to look into each other's eyes on Zoom.
The people who work with things are increasingly in China, India, and other developing nations. This frees up US citizens' time to focus on social media and social justice initiatives. This, of course, has an unpleasant ending.
one of the selling points of wokeness for the women dominated field of admin is that it gives institutional justification to abandon both concrete and abstract thinking
If we make a split on IQ we find that your "concrete" people that are above average are also very abstract and symbolic. Often very much more abstract and symbolic than some who you view as top level abstract and symbolic thinkers. These are the people who can take one look at a transmission or or other complicated systems and know how it works, in detail.
The "concrete" people work in a world where your beliefs about how things work are actually tested against reality, and if you are wrong it doesn't work. Abstract thinkers outside the STEM area appear not to be actually challenged by reality and can go along believing and publishing nonsense from "intelligent design" to "Modern Monetary Theory" and the claims of "critical theory", where N principal variable problems are viewed in N-X dimensions giving reality independent results. This is why the real sciences consider reproducibility important for true understand and the social sciences and religions don't.
Re: "we are letting concrete thinkers get college degrees in the hope that they will qualify for jobs that in fact require abstract thinking."
England has broad apprenticeship programs, which should enable concrete thinkers to achieve skills and a credential for jobs working with things. Roughly fifteen percent of youths attempt this path. However, the failure rate in apprenticeship programs is roughly forty percent. Thus, parallel to the *mismatch* of concrete thinkers and college (the path to jobs that require abstract thinking), there is major attrition in alternative apprenticeship programs for concrete thinkers. It seems that there are either inadequate institutions or substantial "hard case" demographic or cultural issues in preparing youths for entry to labor markets.
See Matthew Bursnall, Vahé Nafilyan, and Stefan Speckesser, "An analysis of the duration and achievement of apprenticeships in England" (Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2017):
"For the cohort of all 516,880 intermediate and advanced apprenticeships starting in England in
2011/12, we find that one third were withdrawn and a further 10 per cent were not completed within
I should note that England's apprenticeship programs include an academic component (courses in numeracy and literacy). Might this academic component be a cause of the high attrition rate?
Robert Reich foresaw a similar classification in The Work of Nations written more than 30 years ago. I haven't gone back to look at this book in many years but you make me think to reopen it.
"Abstracting thinking" is not monolithic. It can be taught more specifically in different areas. I came of age in an era where demand for abstract-thinking computer programmers far exceeded supply. But it turned out that people who couldn't really program could do wondrous things with Excel -- lots of people could think abstractly enough. Our schools don't even try to teach things like "how to see how advertising manipulates you" or "How newsworthiness (e.g. viral videos) warp our sense of reality", or "prior probabilities and new information", or "cognitive distortions and how to combat them". Abstract thinking might help to learn any of those things, but modest amounts might often be good enough.
Any further insight on what “working with symbols” looks like? Is it simply everything other than working in a world that doesn’t relate to tangible objects or interacting with actual people? I’m just not sure I completely get the concept. Is it working primarily in the world of representations or abstractions of things?
I’m a lawyer and I feel like I spend my whole day working with people. But maybe I’m just feeling that way because I prefer to work in the world of abstractions.
Additional thoughts: Working with quantitative abstractions may feel much like working with "things."
And note the way computers re-thing-ify concepts. We "download" documents or move them to the wastebasket. I move data from one cell to another on a spreadsheet.
Psychology typically breaks "symbols" down into "data" and "ideas". Data is more detail-oriented and includes professions like accountants, lawyers, real estate brokers, and office clerks. Ideas is more abstract and includes professions like artists, therapists, academics, and journalists.
My impression is that "ideas" correlates heavily with the big 5 trait of Openness (which has both an intellectual and a creative aspect) whereas "data" more specifically correlates with the big 5 trait of Concientiousness (which has an orderliness aspect that seems relevant here).
The BLS does not break down careers according to the four Fundamental Interest Domains (FIDs) of people, things, data, and ideas. Indeed, there is scare little academic research I have found that explains exactly what each of these constructs are. However, the BLS does use the RIASEC model (whichcan be found here: https://www.onetonline.org/) , which can be roughly mapped to the FIDs in fairly intuitive ways.
I agree that the level of abstract thinking has not increased all that much, and I agree that many people who are more data-oriented are ending up in jobs that benefit from being more ideas-oriented. My own profession of software engineering is a good example of this.
Seems the trend that I've observed over the last 4 decades: "...we are letting concrete thinkers get college degrees in the hope that they will qualify for jobs that in fact require abstract thinking."
Also, the shift from thing work to symbol work is dramatic, but isn't the shift even more dramatic in social relationships as well? Much less of our non-work time is passed with real people. We're on our "phones" instead of interacting as thing humans. We interact using apps and screens filled with pixels produced by linear algebra. Impossible to look into each other's eyes on Zoom.
The people who work with things are increasingly in China, India, and other developing nations. This frees up US citizens' time to focus on social media and social justice initiatives. This, of course, has an unpleasant ending.
one of the selling points of wokeness for the women dominated field of admin is that it gives institutional justification to abandon both concrete and abstract thinking
If we make a split on IQ we find that your "concrete" people that are above average are also very abstract and symbolic. Often very much more abstract and symbolic than some who you view as top level abstract and symbolic thinkers. These are the people who can take one look at a transmission or or other complicated systems and know how it works, in detail.
The "concrete" people work in a world where your beliefs about how things work are actually tested against reality, and if you are wrong it doesn't work. Abstract thinkers outside the STEM area appear not to be actually challenged by reality and can go along believing and publishing nonsense from "intelligent design" to "Modern Monetary Theory" and the claims of "critical theory", where N principal variable problems are viewed in N-X dimensions giving reality independent results. This is why the real sciences consider reproducibility important for true understand and the social sciences and religions don't.
Re: "we are letting concrete thinkers get college degrees in the hope that they will qualify for jobs that in fact require abstract thinking."
England has broad apprenticeship programs, which should enable concrete thinkers to achieve skills and a credential for jobs working with things. Roughly fifteen percent of youths attempt this path. However, the failure rate in apprenticeship programs is roughly forty percent. Thus, parallel to the *mismatch* of concrete thinkers and college (the path to jobs that require abstract thinking), there is major attrition in alternative apprenticeship programs for concrete thinkers. It seems that there are either inadequate institutions or substantial "hard case" demographic or cultural issues in preparing youths for entry to labor markets.
See Matthew Bursnall, Vahé Nafilyan, and Stefan Speckesser, "An analysis of the duration and achievement of apprenticeships in England" (Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2017):
"For the cohort of all 516,880 intermediate and advanced apprenticeships starting in England in
2011/12, we find that one third were withdrawn and a further 10 per cent were not completed within
36 months."
Here is a link to the study:
https://cver.lse.ac.uk/textonly/cver/pubs/cverbrf004.pdf
I should note that England's apprenticeship programs include an academic component (courses in numeracy and literacy). Might this academic component be a cause of the high attrition rate?
Robert Reich foresaw a similar classification in The Work of Nations written more than 30 years ago. I haven't gone back to look at this book in many years but you make me think to reopen it.
"Abstracting thinking" is not monolithic. It can be taught more specifically in different areas. I came of age in an era where demand for abstract-thinking computer programmers far exceeded supply. But it turned out that people who couldn't really program could do wondrous things with Excel -- lots of people could think abstractly enough. Our schools don't even try to teach things like "how to see how advertising manipulates you" or "How newsworthiness (e.g. viral videos) warp our sense of reality", or "prior probabilities and new information", or "cognitive distortions and how to combat them". Abstract thinking might help to learn any of those things, but modest amounts might often be good enough.
Any further insight on what “working with symbols” looks like? Is it simply everything other than working in a world that doesn’t relate to tangible objects or interacting with actual people? I’m just not sure I completely get the concept. Is it working primarily in the world of representations or abstractions of things?
I’m a lawyer and I feel like I spend my whole day working with people. But maybe I’m just feeling that way because I prefer to work in the world of abstractions.
I like the conceptualization.
Additional thoughts: Working with quantitative abstractions may feel much like working with "things."
And note the way computers re-thing-ify concepts. We "download" documents or move them to the wastebasket. I move data from one cell to another on a spreadsheet.
Did Robert Reich write this post? 😂