Yea computer “science”? Bitch you mean programming?
Comment on Polisci
RenegadeTwister@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Physics majors have every right to dunk on polisci. Too many majors throw around the word “science” to try to give their made-up voodoo legitimacy.
FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world 4 months ago
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
Depends. A proper computer science course is basically math with machines. At the highest level, it may have zero programming at all.
Software Engineering is, well, engineering (setting aside the whole debate on what makes a “real” engineer).
It used to be that universities crammed both under “computer science”, and you had to look at the curriculum to figure out which one they were actually teaching. They tend to separate the two more clearly these days. Neither is really “science” in the strictest sense, but the term stuck now.
Vilian@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
math with machines
so computer engineering?
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
No, the machines tend to be abstract. Such as an infinite paper tape that can manipulate symbols.
PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No, computer engineering tends to focus more on hardware. When I was doing that kind of thing in college, computer engineering did things like chip design and logic boards and so on. I had courses on DSP and VLSI, multiple assembly languages, RISC vs CISC systems, and so on. In my university, it was considered a subspecializqtion of electrical engineering, with the first two years of undergraduate study being identical.
When I switched over to CS, I was doing things like numerical analysis and software systems architecture.
Both majors used math, but CE (as an EE major) required students to go through (iirc) calculus 5, and I think that CS majors could stop at calc 3 but would end up having to do different kinds of math after that.
Siethron@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No, that’s machines with math
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Think of it more like programming without electricity.
yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 4 months ago
That’s why informatics is by far the superior term. Computer science is such a boring terms anyways, you don’t call maths “number science”, biology "living beings science " or chemistry “atoms science” either.
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
All of thoose are different. Computer science, computer engineering, software angineering and informatics are all different conceptually
yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 4 months ago
Accordingly, universities in continental Europe usually translate “informatics” as computer science, or sometimes information and computer science, although technical universities may translate it as computer science & engineering.
lobut@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
My geophysicist friend laughed at me for a little long when I said “I’m a computer scientist”.
I never took that degree/job position or whatever seriously anyway. I’ve always giggled at software engineering too. I just call myself a programmer.
Windex007@lemmy.world 4 months ago
One is your education and one is your job. It’d be like me chirping someone with a geophysics degree who’s working at Starbucks.
lobut@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
lol, okay that made me chuckle … I liked that.
Although, we both eventually got into the jobs for what we studied for. We’ve made that jokes both in university and when we got into respective fields.
Donkter@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yeah, polisci has gotten as far as the “observation” part of science and kinda has to stop there for moral reasons.
exocrinous@startrek.website 4 months ago
The same is often true of psychology, but psychology is clearly a science.
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
What’s voodoo about political science?
Frogodendron@beehaw.org 4 months ago
“Real” scientists try to put a spin on it akin to “You can’t properly hypothesise, reason or make predictions about anything based on a sample size of ~200 countries that are totally outside of your control and are very different from each other”. Few more arguments get thrown into a pot.
Doesn’t stop political scientists from mostly accurately describing things, so no harm is done here. The harm lies within pushing that opinion on general public, highlighting the that “proper” scientists don’t see any value in social “sciences”, hence contributing to public ignorance about societal problems.
And with how lousy political views of “rational”, “logical”, “critically thinking” people in STEM sometimes are, it’s awfully ironic.
Speaking as a disgruntled Russian STEM scientist who is horrified how willingly some of his collages ate Putin’s reasons for actions both against Ukraine and within Russia, including against fellow scientists (WTF, where’s professional solidarity?!).
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
That’s pretty much where I was going. What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical? Give up?
exocrinous@startrek.website 4 months ago
What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical?
Same thing astronomy did.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
All the zombies
ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 4 months ago
only a self inflated STEM-oid would take a joke in the OP and use it to delegitmamize an entire field of science based on vibes
having a BA in physics doesnt make you able to disprove social sciences, dont be like bobby fischer.
stufkes@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Political Science is the study of political systems and behaviours employing the scientific method. It’s a sub field of social science and a very new one, at less than 150 years old Political philosophy is of course much older.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Really? They have control groups? Blind and A/B testing? Hypothesis that they set out to reject?
I’m sure they have methods but are they scientific?
blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The answer to all your questions are
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes - Whatever goes against my political allegiances.
Yes - They all just have an n < 50.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 3 months ago
The issue with considering these to be anything like the ‘hard sciences’ is that it is impossible to even try to control for all variables. Plus, whenever sociologists, for example, make a bad prediction, they just write it off as differences in personality or some other similar thing.
God forbid they actually just falsified their hypothesis. It’s important that people understand how to think about the social sciences, don’t get me wrong, but they’re pretty overwhelmingly ineffective for creating a proper framework for understanding the world around you.
Theories in social science and theories in hard science are totally different.
Theories in science have a shit ton of evidence behind them and haven’t been falsified.
Theories in social science, on the other hand, are all in competition with each other because they all have their positive and negative aspects that make them better for application in some situations than others.
And yes I know that we still use a newtonian idea of gravity in many cases, but that’s completely different as it just tends to make the math easier in practice. It’s not that we actually still believe in newtonian ideas.
JayObey711@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You make those claims without ever having looked into polisci studies. Not really looking to reject your own hypothesis.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 4 months ago
A literature review comes first in science. I asked questions. I did not make claims.
exocrinous@startrek.website 4 months ago
Hey genius, if you need experimentation in order for a field to be a real science, then explain how astronomy is a science.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Isn’t one of the point of all those telescopes we built in space and on earth to prove or disprove our hypothesis regarding astronomy? Is that not experimentation?
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
it should be a sub field of sociology instead of science.
Sociology isn’t called social sciences, though arguably you could call it that.
Donkter@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I think sociology is part of a field called “The Social Sciences” which includes sociology, psychology, polisci etc.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 3 months ago
The issue with considering these to be anything like the ‘hard sciences’ is that it is impossible to even try to control for all variables. Plus, whenever sociologists, for example, make a bad prediction, they just write it off as differences in personality or some other similar thing.
God forbid they actually just falsified their hypothesis. It’s important that people understand how to think about the social sciences, don’t get me wrong, but they’re pretty overwhelmingly ineffective for creating a proper framework for understanding the world around you.
Theories in social science and theories in hard science are totally different.
Theories in science have a shit ton of evidence behind them and haven’t been falsified.
Theories in social science, on the other hand, are all in competition with each other because they all have their positive and negative aspects that make them better for application in some situations than others.
And yes I know that we still use a newtonian idea of gravity in many cases, but that’s completely different as it just tends to make the math easier in practice. It’s not that we actually still believe in newtonian ideas.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
that more broadly would make sense to me. But i still wouldn’t consider polsci to be polsci, i would consider it to be a sub set of sociology.
exocrinous@startrek.website 4 months ago
It’s mainly called social science in my country.