First, I’d predict that much of the observed correlation between technical proficiency and wealth is just because both of them require some innate smarts. In general, I’m suspicious of claims that some field develops “transferable reasoning abilities”, partly because people keep using that to rationalize their fiction-reading or game-playing or useless college degrees. I’m worried that math and physics and theoretical CS are just nerd-snipery / intellectual porn, and we’re trying to justify spending time on them by pretending they’re in line with our “higher” values (like improving the world), not only with our “lower” values (like intellectual enjoyment).
Second, if technical proficiency does build transferable reasoning ability, I’d expect the overall benefit to be small, much smaller than from, say, spending that time working on whatever contributes most to your goals (which will usually not be building technical proficiency, because the space of all actions is big). You should always be trying to take the optimal action, not a random “beneficial” action, or else you’ll spend your time mowing lawns for $10/hour.
Edit: I think this comment is too hostile. Sorry. I do agree that learning technical skills is often worthwhile.
I’m worried that math and physics and theoretical CS are just nerd-snipery
No way, especially not physics. We as a civ need to do more of this stuff, not less, compared to what we are doing now.
I can’t think of any category of human activity that did more to improving the world than the hard sciences. Maaaaybe some religions in the “convince people to stop killing each other and cooperate long enough to get science off the ground” sense.
Hehe, it’s rare that intellectual satisfaction is called a ‘low’ value.
Yes, there’s also the theory that success in hard math/science fields are strong signals of intellect, and thus smart people flock to them to signal their intelligence.
As someone about to start a CS degree and figuring out what to do with his life, this is a sobering line of thought.
My view is that some degree of technical facility helps a lot. As I recently wrote, I think that learning to read very carefully and not make unwarranted assumptions is a very important skill, and one way to get it is by studying proof-based math. I don’t have strong views on how much studying pure math and TCS help after the first 1-2 years. I think that the case for learning advanced statistics & machine learning is much stronger.
Separately, I benefited a huge amount from reading and interacting with elite mathematicians. Even though they weren’t thinking about the things that I’m doing now directly, I was able to transfer what I had learned from them to the things that I’m currently focused on. That’s the peer group effect.
First, I’d predict that much of the observed correlation between technical proficiency and wealth is just because both of them require some innate smarts. In general, I’m suspicious of claims that some field develops “transferable reasoning abilities”, partly because people keep using that to rationalize their fiction-reading or game-playing or useless college degrees. I’m worried that math and physics and theoretical CS are just nerd-snipery / intellectual porn, and we’re trying to justify spending time on them by pretending they’re in line with our “higher” values (like improving the world), not only with our “lower” values (like intellectual enjoyment).
Second, if technical proficiency does build transferable reasoning ability, I’d expect the overall benefit to be small, much smaller than from, say, spending that time working on whatever contributes most to your goals (which will usually not be building technical proficiency, because the space of all actions is big). You should always be trying to take the optimal action, not a random “beneficial” action, or else you’ll spend your time mowing lawns for $10/hour.
Edit: I think this comment is too hostile. Sorry. I do agree that learning technical skills is often worthwhile.
No way, especially not physics. We as a civ need to do more of this stuff, not less, compared to what we are doing now.
I can’t think of any category of human activity that did more to improving the world than the hard sciences. Maaaaybe some religions in the “convince people to stop killing each other and cooperate long enough to get science off the ground” sense.
For every person convinced to stop killing by religion, there are 2 who justified their killing with religion.
You have to evaluate vs e.g. a counterfactual world w/o christianity.
Justifications are cheap. Convincing someone to stop a certain behavior on the other hand is hard.
Hehe, it’s rare that intellectual satisfaction is called a ‘low’ value.
Yes, there’s also the theory that success in hard math/science fields are strong signals of intellect, and thus smart people flock to them to signal their intelligence.
As someone about to start a CS degree and figuring out what to do with his life, this is a sobering line of thought.
My view is that some degree of technical facility helps a lot. As I recently wrote, I think that learning to read very carefully and not make unwarranted assumptions is a very important skill, and one way to get it is by studying proof-based math. I don’t have strong views on how much studying pure math and TCS help after the first 1-2 years. I think that the case for learning advanced statistics & machine learning is much stronger.
Separately, I benefited a huge amount from reading and interacting with elite mathematicians. Even though they weren’t thinking about the things that I’m doing now directly, I was able to transfer what I had learned from them to the things that I’m currently focused on. That’s the peer group effect.