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"They switch to a philosophy major." This comment seems odd to me, as philosophy is another subject where a failure to sit down and really think about the topi

"They switch to a philosophy major." This comment seems odd to me, as philosophy is another subject where a failure to sit down and really think about the topics at hand will leave you hopelessly lost, if the class is taught to any degree of rigor.

khafra 16y ago
It's possible that the writer meant the more verbose nature of philosophy, as well as the explicit appeals to intuition in much of it, force this kind of "aha" moment more directly than math does. However, I'm willing to bet it was just snark.
shadowpwner 16y ago
I found it odd too, I assumed it was used humorously.
hdctambien 16y ago
Both of the CS majors I knew that switched majors switched to Philosophy. I never asked why. They both were having trouble in the Intro Algorithms class when they bounced. Maybe people that think they are CS/Math people and then find out that they might not be CS/Math people find solace in Philosophy? Maybe what they liked about CS/Math was the logic more than the algorithms.
- Apocryphon 16y ago
  Perhaps that way they can still get into A.I., except without having to learn LISP. I wonder if there are any ex-CS people who similarly go into Linguistics.
  - bane 16y ago
    "I wonder if there are any ex-CS people who similarly go into Linguistics." It's surprisingly common in my personal experience.
- ionfish 16y ago
  Well, if you go to Oxford you can now get both. http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science_and_Philosophy http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science...
cicero 16y ago
I'm thinking Philosophy is not rigorous at all at some schools, and is just a lot of lofty opining. I have no proof or first-hand knowledge of this, but I get this from some people's description of their experiences of Philosophy classes. That may be why some people think it is intellectually inferior to technical subjects. My first degree is in Computer Science (Texas A&M University), and then I studied Philosophy (University of Dallas) many years later. I found the Philosophy we studied (original texts of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Heidegger) to be more difficult than Computer Science for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that these were first-class leading-edge thinkers we were trying to understand. Aristotle is very densely packed with content, and we had to read and re-read passages to penetrate them. (Some think that the writings we have of Aristotle are actually class notes, and may not be a good representation of his lecture style.) The second reason is that even though Computer Science is an abstract subject, code is more concrete and graspable than a philosophical idea because you can compile and execute the code and see if and how it works. Philosophical ideas are either difficult to test (e.g. ethics) or practically impossible to test (metaphysics).
tjmc 16y ago
Indeed. If you can't hack mathematics go study philosophy? Methinks the OP wouldn't have got his precious 'A' from Bertrand Russell.

khafra 16y ago

It's possible that the writer meant the more verbose nature of philosophy, as well as the explicit appeals to intuition in much of it, force this kind of "aha" moment more directly than math does. However, I'm willing to bet it was just snark.

shadowpwner 16y ago

I found it odd too, I assumed it was used humorously.

hdctambien 16y ago

Both of the CS majors I knew that switched majors switched to Philosophy. I never asked why. They both were having trouble in the Intro Algorithms class when they bounced. Maybe people that think they are CS/Math people and then find out that they might not be CS/Math people find solace in Philosophy? Maybe what they liked about CS/Math was the logic more than the algorithms.

Apocryphon 16y ago
Perhaps that way they can still get into A.I., except without having to learn LISP. I wonder if there are any ex-CS people who similarly go into Linguistics.
- bane 16y ago
  "I wonder if there are any ex-CS people who similarly go into Linguistics." It's surprisingly common in my personal experience.
ionfish 16y ago
Well, if you go to Oxford you can now get both. http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science_and_Philosophy http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science...

cicero 16y ago

I'm thinking Philosophy is not rigorous at all at some schools, and is just a lot of lofty opining. I have no proof or first-hand knowledge of this, but I get this from some people's description of their experiences of Philosophy classes. That may be why some people think it is intellectually inferior to technical subjects. My first degree is in Computer Science (Texas A&M University), and then I studied Philosophy (University of Dallas) many years later. I found the Philosophy we studied (original texts of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Heidegger) to be more difficult than Computer Science for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that these were first-class leading-edge thinkers we were trying to understand. Aristotle is very densely packed with content, and we had to read and re-read passages to penetrate them. (Some think that the writings we have of Aristotle are actually class notes, and may not be a good representation of his lecture style.) The second reason is that even though Computer Science is an abstract subject, code is more concrete and graspable than a philosophical idea because you can compile and execute the code and see if and how it works. Philosophical ideas are either difficult to test (e.g. ethics) or practically impossible to test (metaphysics).

tjmc 16y ago

Indeed. If you can't hack mathematics go study philosophy? Methinks the OP wouldn't have got his precious 'A' from Bertrand Russell.