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...
I've head this comment before, but from my own speech I don't find this to be true at all. It usually means I'm saying something I perceive to be more vulnerable or direct than any party to the conversation has been to that point - not at all that I was being deceptive before that point or after.
> vulnerable or direct than any party to the conversation has been to that point
You seem to be sort of acknowledging the contradiction in this one. If the conversation is guarded (self-protecting vulnerability) or indirect, then it isn't being frank.
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.
"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"
Unfortunately, virtually all CS programs have become Software Engineering programs save for their names. The actually thinking and theory behind it is often more of a side note as educational institutions focus on teaching students how to use specific tools that are popular at the time, leading to many people having a good idea of these specific tools, but no idea on their actual design implications or how anybody actually realized how to do these things.
Sadly, if you want to learn proper theory (what I consider to be CS) you have to get lucky and find a mathematics program that has electives so you can focus on things like discrete mathematics and information theory.
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.
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.
A physics or chemistry student is learning about empiricism on lab courses, and about how other scientists came-out with their advances. But more importantly, they are mostly studying science itself, not how use it to create practical stuff.
I don't disagree with your comment, and I don't think your comment disagrees with mine. I was agreeing with dahart that a computer science undergrad curriculum is mostly not about doing computer science, but then pointing that that is true for all sciences.
Most of the computer science curriculum is explicitly engineering. Even the courses we call theory are about how how to engineer better, more like what a mechanical engineer does when studying thermodynamics than what a physicist does when studying the same subject.
I do agree that none of them are doing science, but one is studying science itself, the other is studying a slightly different thing.
STEM and humanities sit hand in hand nowadays. STEM to turn needs into realities, humanities to effectively manage relationships/expectations across every level of stakeholders.
engineering is math too, math is eating everything, oh noes!
but not really, that's software after all. engineering is applied math, so largely software modeling, whereas CS is theoretical work. abstract problems, pure solutions.
It's applied math and applied science. The science informs how to apply the math, since the math is a model of natural phenomena. In fact, most of the math came to engineering via the science.
No, math is math, engineering is engineering, and science is science.
Engineering and science are not math, even though they use math, and engineering is not science, even though it uses science. They are all very different disciplines.
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.
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.
I ran across an interesting (fictional) variation of this viewpoint once where Satan was cast as the unsung hero of a resistance movement, fighting on behalf of human beings against a tyrannical God. Unfortunately, the resistance lost—and the "history" espoused by most major religions is basically just propaganda on behalf of the winning side. (IIRC this was mentioned offhand as background data for one character at some point in the Empire of Man series by David Weber & John Ringo.)
I have no personal stake in this one way or the other, but it's an interesting thought-experiment. If that version of events were true, would anyone be able to tell? Is it really any less plausible than the "official" version?
There's a piece of Lord of the Rings fanfic around that inverts it in the same way -- Mordor was really a democratic scientific place and they just wanted to understand how magic really worked, but were defeated by the autocratic kings of the rest of the world who wanted to keep magic to themselves. The standard history is propaganda, etc.
I think that's like a double negative. Which would imply that Scientology actually IS science, which is ridiculous of course. I think "science" in the title only means "not science" when conveyed in the language you're currently using.
neuroscience is physiological, but it deals with the study of neurons and neuronal systems rather than the output of behaviors. I always thought neurology was more of a medical field application of neuroscience.
