As a post-doc biologist who works in a CS school and with a bunch of mathematicians and physicists—I partly agree. I do think the CS culture has an excellent combination of practical skills and rigorous training in abstraction. However, in my experience, many CS graduates are weak on empiricism; they can build fantastic systems, but they don’t understand (or care) what data mean; they are lazy about analysis and hypothesis testing. Half my current batch of honors students didn’t know what a hypothesis was. I’d encourage budding rationalists to take both some empirical science and some CS subjects and major in whatever they like most.
As a post-doc biologist who works in a CS school and with a bunch of mathematicians and physicists—I partly agree. I do think the CS culture has an excellent combination of practical skills and rigorous training in abstraction. However, in my experience, many CS graduates are weak on empiricism; they can build fantastic systems, but they don’t understand (or care) what data mean; they are lazy about analysis and hypothesis testing. Half my current batch of honors students didn’t know what a hypothesis was. I’d encourage budding rationalists to take both some empirical science and some CS subjects and major in whatever they like most.