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by SkyMarshal 2170 days ago
I'm comfortable making that claim, and yes I had a mixed education of roughly 1/3rd hard STEM (CS, math, stats), 1/3rd soft STEM (Econ, Law), and 1/3rd non-STEM (economic history, philosophy, required undergrad writing elective).

Things like the Sokal Hoax are difficult to impossible in hard STEM fields. Non-STEM fields are more difficult to falsify and thus more difficult to apply similar levels of rigor. Smart and clever undergrads figure out their professors' biases and are constantly submitting lesser versions of the Sokal Hoax for their writing assignments (been there, done that). You can't do that in hard STEM fields, and its more difficult in some logically rigorous soft-STEM ones like law classes. Non-STEM fields tend to be held in the fuzzy-logic-based natural language you grew up with and know intimately, while STEM fields require learning an entirely new language (math, code) where fuzzy logic does not work and precise logic is required. It's more difficult for a variety of reasons.
2 comments
archagon 2170 days ago
If you have the aptitude for it, I'd argue that being constrained by clean, cold, infallible logic makes STEM subjects much easier, not harder, than the messy human whirlpool of the humanities and social sciences. Sure, it might be easier to get away with BS in those fields — but what if you actually want to learn something or make a tangible impact? No matter how you slice it, humans live in the world of "fuzzy-logic-based natural language," not bits and bytes. (Incidentally, this might reveal why some engineers struggle with things like UX, technology ethics, or algorithmic bias.)

I also have a mixed education of 1/2 CS and 1/2 Music. I found some of my music classes way harder (and often way more enjoyable) than many of my CS classes, despite the fact that the latter dealt with well-scoped problems.

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cguess 2170 days ago
When I was in college I dropped an almost-finished comp-sci degree to switch to the humanities exactly because it was harder. I was damn bored in those classes studying interrupts and recursion. Arguing about ideas was way more fun (I know in grad school you get to that in comp-sci and other maths, but I was not planning on going there).
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SkyMarshal 2169 days ago
You have a point with aptitude making hard logic easier than fuzzy logic for some. But I would observe that such folks are the minority, not the majority, making hard logic more difficult for the population on average.
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square_usual 2170 days ago
It's really annoying when people use sokal as a cudgel against non-STEM fields, because academic hoaxes have existed in every field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s...
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