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Comment by jules

6 years ago

If your country has "democratic" in the name it's probably not democratic. If your major has "science" in the name it's probably not science. If your company has "don't be evil" in its motto...

64 comments

jules

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Waterluvian  6 years ago

Any man who must say, "I am the king" is no true king.

armada651  6 years ago

So Computer Science is Engineering?

  • gambler  6 years ago

    It's a thing of its own. Used to be called informatics in some countries. Much better name, IMO. There are large parts of computer science that have nothing to do with computers. They're about information and can be applied outside of computers.

    I'm with Alan Kay when he says "computer science" used to be an aspiration and eventually became a misnomer. Same with software engineering.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY

    (Doesn't mean CS and SE are always "worse" than science and engineering. But they are currently very different.)

    • taco_emoji  6 years ago

      "We need to do away with the myth that computer science is about computers. Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools, it is about how we use them and what we find out when we do."

      - Michael R. Fellows, Ian Parberry (1993) "SIGACT trying to get children excited about CS"

      1 reply →

  • dahart  6 years ago

    > So Computer Science is Engineering?

    Mostly, yes, especially as an undergrad. A science forms and tests hypotheses, usually about natural phenomena. I only had a few classes in CS where we tested any hypotheses or performed any real experiments. Most of it was design and learn by rote, and not experimentation.

    Theoretic Computer Science is pretty sciencey but is testing things engineers built and often testing using math rather than experiment. Algorithms and data structures use the result of some science, but don’t teach or perform much science normally. Graphics involves a lot of cross-discipline physics and math, but in practice is teaching techniques and APIs, and doing very little scientific experimentation.

    Machine learning may be bringing more science into computer science. People are certainly running lots of experiments in ML today trying to figure out how neural networks behave. A lot of it is still engineering too, of course, but there is some science in there.

    • scott_s  6 years ago

      I think you were unfortunately downvoted. I think you're mostly accurate, but I think all sciences at the undergrad level don't teach how to do science. They teach about science. Yes, I know that there are labs, but that's rarely the emphasis. A physics and chemistry student is mostly learning things that other people have discovered and figured out. It's not until the graduate level that someone actually starts doing science as opposed to learning about science. And a lot of that is necessary: in order to be a productive scientist in any discipline, there is a lot of background material you need to understand first. The bar of entry to adding to our scientific knowledge is very high.

      But, I think it would be good to include more philosophy of science - what does it mean to do science - at the undergrad level.

      3 replies →

  • tjalfi  6 years ago

    There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion. - Hal Abelson

  • zjaffee  6 years ago

    There are certain aspects of computer science that are engineering (i.e. concerned with the building of machines and structures), other that are a part of formal science, others that are a part of experimental science, ect.

api  6 years ago

So we should start a country called the Totalitarian Empire of Evil and it would be a utopia? I'm in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNhhz1yYk2U

  • velcrovan  6 years ago

    I think the Satanists actually have this mindset. Seems like I'm frequently seeing headlines about them doing good works and stuff.

    • virmundi  6 years ago

      Most Satanists do not believe in Satan. They do not worship the individual, directly, named Satan who is found in the Christian religion. Satanists look at Satan, especially Milton's Satan as a literary figure who embodies individualism and free thought. To that end, they are edgy Libertarians.

      3 replies →

_Schizotypy  6 years ago

So what is neuroscience then

TheForumTroll  6 years ago

>If your country has "democratic" in the name

"The United Democratic States of North America not including Canada" would be quite the name.