is there anyone who would not pick computer science?
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i would not pick computer science
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math then?
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Replying to @DaltonDEmery
mostly i was thinking, even if you set personal financial benefits aside, it seems like compsci (maybe stats or math) is the field where individual skill is by far the highest-leverage on social global wellbeing. most other important fields filter skill through institutions more
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i’m already way better than top 1% at math. there are so many other dimensions of skill you could consider. what about being top 1% at flirting? sex? raising children? conflict resolution?
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well hm it depends on whether you mean top 1% among genpop or among experts, just realized that could go either way. among experts... hmm this is a complicated question for me to answer. depends a lot on what “experts” means, and also “better”
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i guess it depends on what you’re trying to do. i think there’s a big difference between being a research mathematician vs. other reasons you might want to pick up math. i think it is possible to get dramatically better at math by training specific subskills people don’t talk abt
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the main one i have in mind is something like “ontology building” - getting an overall sense of what the main objects in a field are, how they relate to each other, the sorts of things you can use them to do. you can often recycle a lot of this by analogy from other fields
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and i think one of my main advantages in learning math is a breadth of experience i use to pull out lots of analogies from. not an easy thing to build quickly tho, took me thousands of hours over the course of years