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United States22883 Posts
On May 01 2009 16:03 fight_or_flight wrote:
btw, I think these endless debates with no resolution are a good example of why hard science is more difficult than arts. In a debate like this, everyone has an "opinion" and is never really truly right or wrong. However, if a program doesn't compile or your space shuttle explodes, there is clearly an objective "opinion" telling you that you are just flat out wrong. So as far as a Bachelors degree goes (and probably higher degrees as well), one is clearly harder than the other.
In the grand scheme of things however, I think that science fields are actually easier than other fields, for precisely the reason that makes them harder academically. That is, you have no objective source telling you whether you are right or wrong, yet there is only one objective truth.
Truth can fall into 4 categories: evident and provable, not evident and provable, evident but not provable, and not evident and not provable. Scientific truths are provable. The arts are not provable. The reason science seems harder is because it forces an individual to come to terms with truth itself through experiments. People are so biased, however, that it can be nearly impossible for them to accept truth, even when it is evident.
What I'm saying is that unless truth is forced upon people there is very very little chance they will actually find and accept it. Thats why theology isn't usually taught at universities, because there is so little that forces people to come to a correct conclusion that it cannot even be discussed. Political science or sociology on the other hand at least has polls and statistics that forces at least some amount of truth on people (numbers are objective and true).
However we know how religion threads turn out, and indeed it is the "hardest" field there is.
Start studying epistemology. Upper level math/physics fall out of the realm of experimentation and proving, and "numbers are objective and true" is just a completely false statement. I can take a set of data and run regression analyses until it "proves" anything. Polls are one of the worst forms of quant work in poli sci/economics.
Nothing is value-free. Not even the natural sciences. Strangely, their professional scholars usually do a better job of admitting this than many quants in the social sciences.
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United States22883 Posts
On May 01 2009 15:29 fight_or_flight wrote:
I think a lot of engineering/physics/cs majors are just bitter because to do well it consumes their lives.
It goes both ways. Social science members are often bitter because they're insecure about what they do.
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United States22883 Posts
On May 01 2009 11:43 L wrote:
Break down the material in a major enough and you'll find the core components of it. This is what the LSAT did for law, and law is considered one of the most highly analogous degrees to political science. This is a public misconception. If I were heading to law, public policy or philosophy would be my first choices.
The fact that constitutional law and political science classes have a nearly 100% direct overlap in material at points is pretty indicative of this. It's not indicative of anything, except that you want to look at specific points where they seem most similar. The same could be down for economic theory and calculus, for example. Reading Arendt, studying game theory or examining the House isn't going to help you be a lawyer at all. Now, it may help you be a better politician, which is the eventual goal for many prospective lawyers, but the two don't directly feed into each other.
The material is delivered in a slightly different manner, but I can tell you first hand that the examinations in both are nearly identical when compared with those from physics, engineering, biochemisty, computer science, medicine, physiology or anatomy. Ok, so which part of AR/LR/RC is more suited to people studying political science than people studying physics? The games may actually be more conceivable to many engineers and programmers than to poli sci majors.
You're making an enormous inference by relating test scores by major to quality of degree program. The % of poli sci students who take the test is extremely high, largely because they think poli sci -> lawyer -> politics, and many are dumb as fuck, whereas only a small % of people in natural sciences transition to law school.
you aren't actually dealing with my original assertion because to do so from this angle requires you to say that there is a complete lack of ability to compare between the different forms of material, which I've already debunked. From the original statement of axioms it follows directly that some majors are harder than others; if that is so, while it might be difficult to accurately measure the level of difficulty , there will be a discrepancy. In cases where the discrepancy between the materials is large, the difficulty above mentioned is alleviated and we can make a fairly accurate statement regarding the relative difficulties. I "dealt" with your original assertion over and over again, by agreeing that it's more difficult to earn a degree in some fields than others. This was in my very first post. You're incredibly argumentative considering I only contended one sentence out of your entire post.
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On May 01 2009 21:04 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2009 16:03 fight_or_flight wrote:
btw, I think these endless debates with no resolution are a good example of why hard science is more difficult than arts. In a debate like this, everyone has an "opinion" and is never really truly right or wrong. However, if a program doesn't compile or your space shuttle explodes, there is clearly an objective "opinion" telling you that you are just flat out wrong. So as far as a Bachelors degree goes (and probably higher degrees as well), one is clearly harder than the other.
In the grand scheme of things however, I think that science fields are actually easier than other fields, for precisely the reason that makes them harder academically. That is, you have no objective source telling you whether you are right or wrong, yet there is only one objective truth.
Truth can fall into 4 categories: evident and provable, not evident and provable, evident but not provable, and not evident and not provable. Scientific truths are provable. The arts are not provable. The reason science seems harder is because it forces an individual to come to terms with truth itself through experiments. People are so biased, however, that it can be nearly impossible for them to accept truth, even when it is evident.
What I'm saying is that unless truth is forced upon people there is very very little chance they will actually find and accept it. Thats why theology isn't usually taught at universities, because there is so little that forces people to come to a correct conclusion that it cannot even be discussed. Political science or sociology on the other hand at least has polls and statistics that forces at least some amount of truth on people (numbers are objective and true).
However we know how religion threads turn out, and indeed it is the "hardest" field there is. Start studying epistemology. Upper level math/physics fall out of the realm of experimentation and proving, and "numbers are objective and true" is just a completely false statement. I can take a set of data and run regression analyses until it "proves" anything. Polls are one of the worst forms of quant work in poli sci/economics. Nothing is value-free. Not even the natural sciences. Strangely, their professional scholars usually do a better job of admitting this than many quants in the social sciences.
I'm curious as to why you think "upper level physics" falls out of the realm of experimentation. As far as I know string theory (and related fields) is the only area of research that has experienced a real dissociation from experiment, and even in that case the goal is still to ultimately produce experimentally verifiable predictions. String theory will never be considered a significant success until it has accomplished this.
Numbers are never true in the most absolute sense of the word, but they are often useful. One of the goals of science is to acquire data in such a manner that the numbers are as objective as possible. Polls are, as you say, a terrible method of objectively gathering data, but they're also a really poor example of a science experiment, so I'm not sure why you bring them up.
I think the goal of something like political science is similar to the goal of a "hard" science. It's just that as of right now, hard science is much more successful in realizing that goal. Hard science is subjective, but I suspect political science is considerably more subjective with its current methods. Consequently, it's difficult to create a challenging undergraduate curriculum at this point in its evolution.
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Theoretical physics works like this:
1.Create a theory on how something works.(This step doesn't happen that often)
2.Write down all of the conclusions which could be derived from that. (Usually this step is what most do and takes the most time)
3.Try to get someone else to experimentally verify these.
Experimental physicists do just act based on what the theorists have concluded.
It is only applied physicists who do experiments first and then do the theories but that is a lighter kind of physics and the theories are all about why the experiments do not agree with the theoretical basis for them. What they then create is the useful physics since they find the correction terms to make the theories agree with reality even in suboptimal conditions.
And the problem with string theory is that they haven't gotten to any conclusions at all, the theories are so weak that you can neither verify nor dismiss them, kinda like god.
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On May 01 2009 11:46 Bill307 wrote:
Hell, I'll be the first to admit that my major, CS, was far, FAR easier than the Engineering majors at my institution. I don't care if my material was easier or harder than theirs, or what our grad school opportunities were like. In the end, the Engineering students I knew spent a LOT more time busting their asses than I ever did: I would have to lack all common sense to say their major was not harder than mine.
I literally slept for less than seven nights during the last three weeks of my 3B term
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It's not indicative of anything, except that you want to look at specific points where they seem most similar. The same could be down for economic theory and calculus, for example. Reading Arendt, studying game theory or examining the House isn't going to help you be a lawyer at all. Now, it may help you be a better politician, which is the eventual goal for many prospective lawyers, but the two don't directly feed into each other. If you did law, you'd know you're incredibly wrong on all those points. While particular material might not be as relevant, the ability to deal with the type of material is incredibly important. Law and social sciences have an incredible synergy to the point of social science evidence being used in the highest courts as determinative evidence, which points to the fact that their material is structurally related.
Ok, so which part of AR/LR/RC is more suited to people studying political science than people studying physics? The games may actually be more conceivable to many engineers and programmers than to poli sci majors.
You're making an enormous inference by relating test scores by major to quality of degree program. The % of poli sci students who take the test is extremely high, largely because they think poli sci -> lawyer -> politics, and many are dumb as fuck, whereas only a small % of people in natural sciences transition to law school.
What part of of the AR/LR and RC sections are more suited to studying political science? Uh, no part, they ARE the parts. Material in Poli Sci requires basic skills to digest, and these three are fairly big amongst them. I mean, if you want, you can ignore the LSAT and then just pick out any form of predictive testing for academic results. While none of them are determinative, most provide significant correlation and predictive value. If there IS a predictive value, you CAN make an objective reference to the relative difference in the skill requirement for different tasks, including something on the order of complexity as an undergraduate degree.
Seriously does it MATTER that poli sci students taking the LSAT are, as a group, objectively less able than students from natural science? Not really. What DOES matter is the fact that you COULD apply the test to both populations and pull out an objective difference in skill sets. The only issue would be skill sets which aren't tested for, but that's a temporary problem, because all skill sets can be designed for if given enough time.
This is the everest/hill example proven: there CAN be a determination of the difference, but it might be more difficult to find it in this case. This led some people to believe that both majors are 'equal' in difficulty, which as i posited earlier is a ridiculous and counter-intuitive assertion which must be proven, not the other way around.
I "dealt" with your original assertion over and over again, by agreeing that it's more difficult to earn a degree in some fields than others. This was in my very first post. You're incredibly argumentative considering I only contended one sentence out of your entire post.
1) No, you didn't deal with it.
2) Maybe the fact that you called me an asshat due to the fact that you were too fucking lazy to go read where this blog came from made me somewhat combative. Besides, the same could be said for you.
Edit: seriously go look at your first reply and my first post. You had an issue with the concept of field while i had already stated my argument was specifically about the undergraduate degree. You conceded the definitional argument which was your only one in your initial reply too. You AGREE with me on the only point i made. Then you went and got uncivil and you likely can't walk away because you have a wounded ego now.
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science and engineering is on the whole more difficult than anything liberal arts or business. but you can take the smartest math kids and they won't be good at theater, advertising, or communications. so maybe to them it's the other way around.
but in general i think it's pretty clear that science is harder because you either know it or you don't, while in business you can bs and get away with it.
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Engineering is to understand and be able to handle the math and pure science involved in designing real world structures and machines. Learning material and being able to recite it in a courtroom is hard but learning material to use as a basis of ideas is much harder. Creativity in engineering is after they students graduate when they have to become innovative to solve problems.
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United States22883 Posts
On May 02 2009 03:09 L wrote:
Then you went and got uncivil and you likely can't walk away because you have a wounded ego now.
Read your posts; you've been argumentative this entire time. I'm sorry if you thought the term 'asshat' was uncivil. I thought it was ridiculous enough that you'd dismiss it.
Material in Poli Sci requires basic skills to digest, and these three are fairly big amongst them. The point is that it's not unique in requiring these skills. You make it sound as if they score worse against people who are untrained for the same material, when most collegiate fields require rigorous training in reasoning and analytical processes.
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Read your posts I just gave you a brief history of our exchange, yet you believe I haven't read my posts. You brush off the first explicit verbal tirade against a person and then try to pin me for unsportsmanlike conduct despite having no objections with my position (despite the fact that I had to show you as such).
And I'm the argumentative one.
The point is that it's not unique in requiring these skills. You make it sound as if they score worse against people who are untrained for the same material, when most collegiate fields require rigorous training in reasoning and analytical processes. So you admit there are quantitative skill sets which can be compared across majors, and which are common to many majors?
Well done. Case closed.
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On May 02 2009 05:31 tiffany wrote:
science and engineering is on the whole more difficult than anything liberal arts or business. but you can take the smartest math kids and they won't be good at theater, advertising, or communications. so maybe to them it's the other way around.
but in general i think it's pretty clear that science is harder because you either know it or you don't, while in business you can bs and get away with it.
I'm arguing that just because you can bs your way to better grades in non-scientific majors doesn't mean they are inherrently more difficult. I'm not equating grades with the ease of an entire subject matter.
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I think science and engineering courses are more difficult in general because they take much more memorization and knowledge. It's relatively easy to just bs a paper in history or english class, but you can't make up biological knowledge or randomly push arrows in organic chemistry and hope you get a good grade for your answer.
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you need to take into account the school and the class size. i would think a political science major at a small liberal arts school with small class sizes would be harder than one at a large university because the teacher would be able to spend more personal time with his students and thus be able to weed out the bsing drones.
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Baa?21244 Posts
On May 02 2009 11:50 TommyG wrote:
thus be able to weed out the bsing drones.
Except the whole subject is built around random bs anyways, so wouldn't those drones just be fulfilling expectations? =P
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I'm a senior in high school planning to study Engineering and it sounds like it's one of the most challenging majors. That should be fun...
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the only annoying thing about science majors is the insane fucking curves in every class. Seriously in ochem last quarter I got a 67% on the midterm and a 55% on the final and I passed the class? my letter grade woulda been like a C+... seriously: 0 attendance to lecture, 0 attendance to discussion, never did any HW, just studied for about 2-3 hours per day from the book a week before the final and I pass the class?
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKIN EZ! =p Anyone with half a brain can get a 60% on a test which equates to about a B+, so you just need like 3/4 of a brain to get an A in these classes. BOOOOOOOOYAH
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On May 01 2009 21:04 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2009 16:03 fight_or_flight wrote:
btw, I think these endless debates with no resolution are a good example of why hard science is more difficult than arts. In a debate like this, everyone has an "opinion" and is never really truly right or wrong. However, if a program doesn't compile or your space shuttle explodes, there is clearly an objective "opinion" telling you that you are just flat out wrong. So as far as a Bachelors degree goes (and probably higher degrees as well), one is clearly harder than the other.
In the grand scheme of things however, I think that science fields are actually easier than other fields, for precisely the reason that makes them harder academically. That is, you have no objective source telling you whether you are right or wrong, yet there is only one objective truth.
Truth can fall into 4 categories: evident and provable, not evident and provable, evident but not provable, and not evident and not provable. Scientific truths are provable. The arts are not provable. The reason science seems harder is because it forces an individual to come to terms with truth itself through experiments. People are so biased, however, that it can be nearly impossible for them to accept truth, even when it is evident.
What I'm saying is that unless truth is forced upon people there is very very little chance they will actually find and accept it. Thats why theology isn't usually taught at universities, because there is so little that forces people to come to a correct conclusion that it cannot even be discussed. Political science or sociology on the other hand at least has polls and statistics that forces at least some amount of truth on people (numbers are objective and true).
However we know how religion threads turn out, and indeed it is the "hardest" field there is. Start studying epistemology. Upper level math/physics fall out of the realm of experimentation and proving, and "numbers are objective and true" is just a completely false statement. I can take a set of data and run regression analyses until it "proves" anything. Polls are one of the worst forms of quant work in poli sci/economics. Nothing is value-free. Not even the natural sciences. Strangely, their professional scholars usually do a better job of admitting this than many quants in the social sciences.
Don't get me wrong, I'm probably one of the most critical people on this website when it comes to believing the conclusions of scientists, especially physicists. When polls and statistics are used to draw conclusions, I am just as (sometimes more?) likely to automatically assume it is wrong than to accept it.
However, numbers themselves are indeed always true and objective, by definition. All theorems are proven from first principles. Applying them is a completely different story and doesn't have anything to do with the numbers themselves. Perhaps we kind of view numbers differently, but I can tell you that the math and theory behind statistics is pretty rock solid.
Also, I agree that upper level physics isn't much more objective than anything else. My sole point is that there is a feedback mechanism for the natural sciences which can validate or invalidate your thinking pretty well. You will never know if you are right, but generally you can find out if you are wrong, or at least headed in the wrong direction.
I will look into the subject you mentioned.
edit: actually, I take back what I said...upper level physics is more objective than other things, however, there is still a fair amount of politics in it
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On May 02 2009 13:15 Xeris wrote:
the only annoying thing about science majors is the insane fucking curves in every class. Seriously in ochem last quarter I got a 67% on the midterm and a 55% on the final and I passed the class? my letter grade woulda been like a C+... seriously: 0 attendance to lecture, 0 attendance to discussion, never did any HW, just studied for about 2-3 hours per day from the book a week before the final and I pass the class?
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKIN EZ! =p Anyone with half a brain can get a 60% on a test which equates to about a B+, so you just need like 3/4 of a brain to get an A in these classes. BOOOOOOOOYAH
Do you even know how grading by a curve even works? Wow, I lose faith in American education when I read posts like this
example of a normal curve (your teacher will not follow this curve exactly):
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On May 02 2009 14:46 GrayArea wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2009 13:15 Xeris wrote:
the only annoying thing about science majors is the insane fucking curves in every class. Seriously in ochem last quarter I got a 67% on the midterm and a 55% on the final and I passed the class? my letter grade woulda been like a C+... seriously: 0 attendance to lecture, 0 attendance to discussion, never did any HW, just studied for about 2-3 hours per day from the book a week before the final and I pass the class?
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKIN EZ! =p Anyone with half a brain can get a 60% on a test which equates to about a B+, so you just need like 3/4 of a brain to get an A in these classes. BOOOOOOOOYAH Do you even know how grading by a curve even works? Wow, I lose faith in American education when I read posts like this
Do you even know how different teachers use curves different ways? Wow, I lose faith in idiots on the internet when I read posts like this
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.comfsm.fm/%7Edleeling/statistics/normal_curve.gif)
