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in fact, the author attempt to tear down an argument completely of his own invention: 'But then I read Bock’s rationale, and that’s when I nearly lose a mouthf

by gr3yh47 12y ago

in fact, the author attempt to tear down an argument completely of his own invention: 'But then I read Bock’s rationale, and that’s when I nearly lose a mouthful of Cheerios: Unlike English—and presumably other non-STEM fields—computer science “signals a rigor in your thinking,” an ability “to think in a formal and logical and structured way.” He said what?' from this the author decided to read that ONLY CS majors can learn logical thinking, but Bock's statement was really that CS inherently signals this because CS is entirely predicated on this type of thinking no matter where you learn it. I'm getting sick of these whiny stupid articles popping up on the front page, like there is a decline of logic in the site votership itself. The amazon tantrum yesterday and now this eesh

dllthomas 12y ago
"like there is a decline of logic in the site votership itself" I assume it's all the English majors.
- gr3yh47 12y ago
  xD
vehementi 12y ago
This would be a legitimate critique if Bock were saying "Here's how I screen through 100,000 resumes". Your interpretation would serve as a good heuristic. But that's not what we're talking about: he implied that, all things being equal, he would hire a B student majoring in CS over an A student majoring in English because of "signalling" when comparing two candidates he had to choose from.
- tomp 12y ago
  But that's exactly what "signalling" means - and Bock has decided (presumably based on experience and statistics) that the positive signal of CS is and B student is stronger than the positive signal of A student of English.
- dkuntz2 12y ago
  Define "all things being equal", because unless the CS major and English major have both taken exactly the same courses (in which case, why aren't they both double CS/English majors?), things aren't equal. If you've got your two students, and they're both applying for a software development position, wouldn't you rather have the person who's taken formal CS courses? Even if the English major has worked on some software projects on the side, the CS major probably has some experience with data structures and algorithms, and being able to think about those. I'm not saying an English major can't do the same things, or that because someone studied CS they're better than anyone else. What I'm trying to get at is that your average B student who studied CS is probably a better candidate for a technical position than your average A student who studied English.
- gefh 12y ago
  I'm assuming this is about engineering hires. If they both interviewed well they'd both get hired. Of course, getting past the resume screening is not equally likely, but I'd expect an English major applying for an engineering role to have something more than their not-entirely-relevant degree on the resume to make up for it.
nnq 12y ago
How true and ironical. The author manages to prove exactly his inability to think logically by misunderstanding what Block was saying. And then he goes on being reactive instead of providing any meaningful arguments, even against his straw man... I see this mode of thinking very often in people that I call "mud-minds" (shortly, people incapable of clear, cold, abstract and detached thinking, or at least incapable of performing thinking in a way that exhibits all these 4 attributes simultaneously, without loosing their intuition while they do this), even the well educated ones with probably high IQs: they totally fail to understand the real meaning of a message, and attack strawman ideas or follow dead-end reasoning paths, even if they do this with great skill and intelligence and the arguments they use may actually be very logical. The sad thing is that seeing someone with a CS and math background think this way destroys my hope that exposing children early on to technical, abstract and logical thinking can prevent them from becoming "mud-minds". This even makes me pessimistic about humanity's future :(

by gr3yh47 12y ago

dllthomas 12y ago

"like there is a decline of logic in the site votership itself" I assume it's all the English majors.

gr3yh47 12y ago
xD

vehementi 12y ago

This would be a legitimate critique if Bock were saying "Here's how I screen through 100,000 resumes". Your interpretation would serve as a good heuristic. But that's not what we're talking about: he implied that, all things being equal, he would hire a B student majoring in CS over an A student majoring in English because of "signalling" when comparing two candidates he had to choose from.

tomp 12y ago
But that's exactly what "signalling" means - and Bock has decided (presumably based on experience and statistics) that the positive signal of CS is and B student is stronger than the positive signal of A student of English.
dkuntz2 12y ago
Define "all things being equal", because unless the CS major and English major have both taken exactly the same courses (in which case, why aren't they both double CS/English majors?), things aren't equal. If you've got your two students, and they're both applying for a software development position, wouldn't you rather have the person who's taken formal CS courses? Even if the English major has worked on some software projects on the side, the CS major probably has some experience with data structures and algorithms, and being able to think about those. I'm not saying an English major can't do the same things, or that because someone studied CS they're better than anyone else. What I'm trying to get at is that your average B student who studied CS is probably a better candidate for a technical position than your average A student who studied English.
gefh 12y ago
I'm assuming this is about engineering hires. If they both interviewed well they'd both get hired. Of course, getting past the resume screening is not equally likely, but I'd expect an English major applying for an engineering role to have something more than their not-entirely-relevant degree on the resume to make up for it.

nnq 12y ago

How true and ironical. The author manages to prove exactly his inability to think logically by misunderstanding what Block was saying. And then he goes on being reactive instead of providing any meaningful arguments, even against his straw man... I see this mode of thinking very often in people that I call "mud-minds" (shortly, people incapable of clear, cold, abstract and detached thinking, or at least incapable of performing thinking in a way that exhibits all these 4 attributes simultaneously, without loosing their intuition while they do this), even the well educated ones with probably high IQs: they totally fail to understand the real meaning of a message, and attack strawman ideas or follow dead-end reasoning paths, even if they do this with great skill and intelligence and the arguments they use may actually be very logical. The sad thing is that seeing someone with a CS and math background think this way destroys my hope that exposing children early on to technical, abstract and logical thinking can prevent them from becoming "mud-minds". This even makes me pessimistic about humanity's future :(