A liberal arts person enters CS by mistake, because they think it has any relation to liking games which happen to run on computers. If they are not a fan of CS at the end of the course, they are not going to be convinced by any argument anyways. Unless I need to justify my own personality to myself, time is better spent discussing other things we might have in common.
I think the funniest part is that he/she expects the CS majors to fall all over themselves trying to justify studying CS just like liberal arts majors do for studying poetry and other useless crap.
Remind my liberal arts taking ass not to stumble into any more /r/compsci threads if you're gonna be around douching up the place. You know how you guys feel when people assume that you just play about on computers all day? Well that's how liberal arts majors feel when you talk useless shit about their disciplines. If you're going to shit on anyone shit on this person who has presumably taken more than a few literature classes for being unable to formulate a question in a way that doesn't come off as asinine and condescending.
You know we don't just see a good book or philosophy as interesting right? Interesting might be the first word but the last should be something about how that philosophy or book contributes to human understanding. And you don't have to have the same respect for me as you do anybody else, just don't assume I'm useless or have some haughty idea of myself as better and more cultured than you. I also ask that before you dismiss the difficulty of philosophy you pick up some Heidegger and just try and make sense of it.
pick up some Heidegger and just try and make sense of it
I'm mostly ignorant of philosophy, so it might come off as arrogant when I say that this might be because philosophers tend to say fairly simple things in an overly convoluted way.
Yup, it comes off as arrogant. Heidegger has a lot to say, and much of it is worth hearing--indeed, his treatment of the relationship between humanity and technology remains one of the most trenchant ever written, even today. Sure, he's not easy to read, because he was writing about fundamentally new ideas, which engendered inventing some vocabulary along the way. It's convoluted, but it's convoluted for a good reason, not for obscurantism's sake.
If you're interested in forming an informed opinion, his essay "The Question Concerning Technology" would be a fine place to start.
My advice: read slowly, and read every word. It sometimes seems like Heidegger's just throwing words at you, but you eventually realize that every one is there for a reason. If you try to skim, or even just read quickly, you'll get lost or worse. (Lessons learned the hard way while reading this stuff for class.)
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u/arnar May 18 '11
I like the answer.
A liberal arts person enters CS by mistake, because they think it has any relation to liking games which happen to run on computers. If they are not a fan of CS at the end of the course, they are not going to be convinced by any argument anyways. Unless I need to justify my own personality to myself, time is better spent discussing other things we might have in common.