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nerzhin comments on A Rational Education - Less Wrong
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I just graduated from undergrad in mathematics, so perhaps I have less perspective, or perhaps I have a "fresher" perspective! I don't know.
A few classes that I enjoyed without expecting it:
-a class called "Feminism and Science." I would be very surprised if there were classes in feminist science studies at your school, but they have a perspective on rationality and science studies that is unique and valuable.
--relatedly, I wish that I had taken courses in feminism. It wasn't until the last year that I realized how much of feminism deals with things like resolving hidden inferences (first link NSFW!)
--also, science studies classes will almost certainly benefit from having someone from LessWrong in them. So will feminism classes!
-"Politics and Religion," a class about the stale religious metaphors that get used in modern politics. Again you may not have a perfect analog, but a cursory class or two in politics or religion could give a lot of insight about how other people operate, and also expose them to how you operate, if you care about other people's rationality as well. (whereas math classes will be much more homogenous.)
-a topical course from the linguistics department. Linguistics is very, very interesting. When I say a "topical course" I mean I took a course for non-majors which was more of a class in "why people study linguistics" and less in "how people study linguistics." I learned a lot about what makes questions of linguistics important in questions of rationality (again, see hidden inferences above!)
-language classes. I took Japanese, and it was enjoyable, stretched my mind a bit (for reasons detailed in the above class!) and kept my work ethic going. Also let me interact with people from various backgrounds, instead of only math majors.
-Playwriting. I actually expected to enjoy this. Whether it's good for rationality... well there are some applications of behavioral psych, and some ability to learn about how much of the theory of writing actually has a foundation.
classes I wish I had taken but didn't:
-any psychology classes, especially evolutionary psych!
-more linguistics
-more than one computer science course (though I wouldn't want to major in it)
-evolution and ecology
-science fiction-themed literature classes
-I mentioned feminism and science studies earlier
-lots of different languages. Having a designated place and time to speak different languages (at least in my experience) makes it a lot easier to learn, and college is a great opportunity for that that won't come back.
-bioethics, legal studies
-game theory
classes I didn't enjoy as much as I expected:
-real analysis. But that's because I like algebra.
-economics. I once had a TA tell me, when I asked about a question on a test, "well I was grading that problem, and I thought what you had was okay, but the answer key said it was (c) so I marked it off."(sic). I never took another econ class again. Not sure if that would be a problem in other places.
-history. Too much reading and not enough real knowledge.
Repeating stuff I think is important
I think that both feminist studies and linguistics have a lot more potential for carving reality at the joints than, say, mathematical physics. Of course, the background that mathematical physicists have is better for actively doing this, and you might have to fight some cultural battles in feminist studies classes. But rationalists and feminists have a lot in common and I think more crossover is important there.
This comment is great, an unexpected but interesting perspective.
This claim sounds obviously wrong to me. But I suspect we're working with different ideas of what "reality" is.
When I say "reality" I mean "situations you will encounter in life" not "some objective notion of the world around us on a fundamental level" which is often the sort of thing people mean when they say reality.
I'll allow any definition of 'reality' in most cases. But when you say "carving reality at it's joints" you are engaging with a specific concept, one that you cannot merely redefine away. This difference is exactly the sort of thing that studying linguistics can help one understand. It's the difference between "just my point of view" and "wrong".
I meant to engage with that specific concept. You seem to agree with my usage with respect to linguistics, so I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies. I did reference that concept purposefully, please allow me to explain why.
The professor in my feminism course was a particle physicist, so she used quantum mechanics to draw metaphors for social circumstances.
For example, when establishing some idea such as "gender," we often consider only two options; male and female. These are unusually dense points in "genderspace," though by no means the only points, and they are bounded by our maps, not by the territory. Similarly, when dealing with Newtonian mechanics, we often refer to "position" and "momentum" as inherent properties of objects. This is not how things work, but it is helpful for our maps. Unfortunately, as we attempt to build smaller and smaller things, this ends up driving us crazy, because our maps have the wrong symbols written on them and don't make sense anymore. As our society becomes more diverse and more accepting, and as we attempt to raise the quality of life of its inhabitants, it becomes the case that the male/female dichotomy starts being harmful. Around 1% of the general population (I don't have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female. Among other things, it may be difficult for these people to decide which bathroom to enter in a restaurant. By expanding our notions of gender, we can carve reality in more detail, but by studying gender we may find higher-definition joints.
If you can think of any other class in which that sort of analysis happens (and it almost certainly doesn't happen in every feminism class, although probably in more than you might expect), I would be very interested to hear about it.
You probably ran into Anne Fausto-Sterling's claim that 1.7% of human births are intersex. But it looks like Fausto-Sterling got the science wrong. Yet her work is widely cited by feminist academics.
I had to mostly disengage from this reply when you used "you must be hostile to X" as an excuse to not understand my comment. In fact, my point is completely irrelevant to feminism.
The definition you have declared for 'reality' is a completely incompatible with the 'carve reality at its joints' concept that you are appealing to.
Some of the other points that you make are ones that I would address in a different context (perhaps in reply to my other reply in this tree) and with a different introduction.
Sorry, but I haven't seen that either. magfrump's concept ("situations you will encounter in life") seems quite compatible with "carve reality at its joints".
(I agree that saying "I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies" is not very useful at this point)
I am sorry about the hostility comment, I had a a lot of replies to sort through so I assumed you referred to the original comment rather than the later comment where I introduced the definition.
As Emile notes, however, I don't see any incompatibility between my definition and the concept outlined in the post he links.