alexr_rwx: (condescending unix users)
Alex R ([personal profile] alexr_rwx) wrote2006-10-31 06:08 pm

Planning on learning something critical to my academic happiness...

One of these years -- one of these years, I'm probably going to learn that the whole social-sciences-y side of computer science is a lot more interesting in the abstract than in practice. In practice, classes like "HCI" or "Educational Technolgy" or even the cog-sci classes... just end up pissing me off.

It's not that it's "interdisciplinary" between AI and philosophy and psychology... it's that it's at the tipping point of interesting-ness between all of these and it ends up sounding like noise. To me, anyway.

Let's just go write some code or open up some brains or something.

[identity profile] schizobovine.livejournal.com 2006-11-01 08:54 am (UTC)(link)
I guess I've always preferred a breath of knowledge to a depth, so I'm not resentful of HCI/AI/Philosophy of Computing right off the bat. I think you're just running into ideas that people thought would be a cool but never really went anywhere interesting. Academia is littered with 'em, 'cuz you have to find a lot of bad ideas before you get a few good ones.

You stuck it out longer than I did, so don't feel at all bad. I gave up a LOT earlier and ran away to the wide world of making money selling silly things that people really don't need. It isn't nearly as intellectually fulfilling, but it pays better. :-\

Bleh, I could ramble on about scientific paradigm shifts a la Khun or however you spell it, but I have work in the morning.