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> Other friends have CS degrees and don't believe it either. I have three CS degrees. Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything th
by titzer 5y ago
> Other friends have CS degrees and don't believe it either.
I have three CS degrees. Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything through a CS lens, particularly assuming everything is discrete, falls into neat categories, and is not subject to noise.
I had a decade long debate with a friend from Chemical Engineering about whether the Universe was continuous or discrete, and also about whether it was deterministic. I recall confidently stating tons of crap about quantum mechanics, and it turns out I was completely full of shit because I did not understand probability theory or wave functions.
- qorrect 5y ago> the Universe was continuous or discrete It's both and neither at the same time.
- titzer 5y agoAfter many years, I realized that's not even the central question of importance. Rather, is the universe representable with finite information? If so, then its description can be written as a series of digits, and all such series are somewhere in the number π, in fact, and infinitessimally small part π, of which is mind-blowing.
- skytreader 5y agoOut of curiosity, how can one have three CS degrees? Do you mean you went through the (1) undergrad, (2) masters, (3) PhD cycle? > Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything through a CS lens Man, I agree if only because I, too, am guilty of at least having a phase like this. But I think I also observe it in the dev and academic CS community in general. I just don't know if this is a generic intellectual hubris or a type of superiority complex specific to "hackers". Of course my opinion is very biased and maybe even cynical but I'm tending towards the latter. I wonder how that came to be; I can only speak for myself, unfortunately.