• RenegadeTwister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    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.

    • stufkes@lemmy.world
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      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
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        4 months ago

        employing the scientific method

        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
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          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.

        • JayObey711@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You make those claims without ever having looked into polisci studies. Not really looking to reject your own hypothesis.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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
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          4 months ago

          I think sociology is part of a field called “The Social Sciences” which includes sociology, psychology, polisci etc.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            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.

            • Donkter@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              It’s all kind of a subset of sociology. Why do groups make decisions? It’s down to individual psychology. But that’s similar to saying all science is derivative of physics. It’s technically true, but it does us more favors to split it up.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        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, and the machines in question are entirely abstract.

        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.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            4 months ago

            No, the machines tend to be abstract. Such as an infinite paper tape that can manipulate symbols.

          • PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
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            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.

      • yetAnotherUser@feddit.de
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        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.

      • lobut@lemmy.ca
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        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.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, polisci has gotten as far as the “observation” part of science and kinda has to stop there for moral reasons.

    • ghost_of_faso2
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      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.