Meaningful careers

[Avenger]

You forgot money, the most important requirement to get into politics.

My 2 cents? Computing. It's the newest, fastest growing field and industry. Understand computers and you understand the future. Be ahead of the curve, follow the changes, maybe you could make something that changes people's lives. The internet is the great new organiser for political/social change, but it needs developers behind it for more exciting things to happen.

First... Computing is not new. It is several hundred years old, if not older. It's taking off now thanks to materials' scientists, physicists, chemists, and engineers who made it possible. Second, computing is not a great way of contributing. Computing is in fact a huge energy-drain, and mostly benefits already-rich people. If you want to "contribute" I would suggest finding ways of improving computing systems so that they require less energy, but that would be a job for chemists, physicists, engineers, and materials' scientists - not for people who spend time coding things on the computer. Computing is useful, but it's certainly not a field of such importance just yet.

You can think of computing as playing a game, and the science that allows it as making a game. Except all that science can be applied for a whole host of applications, not just one.

 

[harSens]

Uhm, you do realize that recent advances in all kinds of fields are made possible by computing? Computing is currently nearly as essential as a 'supporting' science as math.

 

[Z Power]

Computers are tools. So to make advances in any kind of field, you first need to have knowledge in that field. Just knowing about computers alone is not going to help you discover a non-meat substitute for proteins, for example.

 

[Mkilbride]

If we could find out how to eat plastic for substance, we could end world hunger & help with pollution. Work on that.

 

[Denz]

It's very hard for a male to break into the porn industry. A lot of the males that do break into it do so by doing gay porn first, so have fun with that. Also, it's not like you can pick a random male on the street and have him enter the field. They want someone to be able to get it up on command, last indefinitely, and finish on command. And then be ready to do it again if you need another take. Also, the pay for males is rather bad unless you're one of the famous male porn stars.

I was thinking more of a director, producer etc.. you can still test the "material" before you push it in production (if you know what I mean).

 

[Avenger]

If we could find out how to eat plastic for substance, we could end world hunger & help with pollution. Work on that.

... Why do you spam/troll? Is it really necessary?

 

[Z Power]

-_--_-

But those people are going to need computers likely with highly advanced custom software made by massive development teams

You realize us engineers have to take Programming classes for exactly that reason. Those software aren't made by game developers you know. :3

 

[sub]

I was thinking more of a director, producer etc.. you can still test the "material" before you push it in production (if you know what I mean).

The problem with that job is that you're going to be watching porn 24/7. You'll get desensitized to it and to sex. If you end up working for an internet porn site, you'll probably also see more freaky disgusting stuff then you'd ever want.

I know we're not being 100% serious with this, but its probably a bad idea to make your hobby your profession.

 

[harSens]

Computers are tools. So to make advances in any kind of field, you first need to have knowledge in that field. Just knowing about computers alone is not going to help you discover a non-meat substitute for proteins, for example.

And quite an essential tool for nearly all sciences. Mathematics is also a 'tool'. Advances in mathematics and (theoretical) computer science do drive advances in other fields though.

 

[Avenger]

Uhm, you do realize that recent advances in all kinds of fields are made possible by computing? Computing is currently nearly as essential as a 'supporting' science as math.

Of course I do. I also realize that there's a research park near where I study where an atomic force microscope relies mostly on a 386 computer using 3.5" floppies...

Cutting edge it is not.

Point being, computing is not as useful as a lot of other tools. It's useful, sure, but it's not at all as important as fortnox claimed.

 

[harSens]

Of course I do. I also realize that there's a research park near where I study where an atomic force microscope relies mostly on a 386 computer using 3.5" floppies...

Cutting edge it is not.

Point being, computing is not as useful as a lot of other tools. It's useful, sure, but it's not at all as important as fortnox claimed.

That atomic force microscope still builds upon principles of computing to get results. These principles do not get outdated.
So what scientific tools do you think are more useful?

 

[Zeonix]

I'm sure whatever field he's currently researching is the best field to have ever been fielded and can probably ascend to even higher fields of fielding.

 

[Avenger]

That atomic force microscope still builds upon principles of computing to get results. These principles do not get outdated.
So what scientific tools do you think are more useful?

The atomic force microscope does not build on the principles of computing. The atomic force microscope's data collection and instructions build on the principles of computing. The principles of computing are several hundred years old, and have not changed much in that time, and this is my point. What has changed is the availability and knowledge of materials, something which is a direct result of the work of physicists and chemists.

Modern computing is a result of physics, chemistry and engineering. It is fairly stagnant without the movement of those three that predated it. Though it is useful that does not mean it is growing as rapidly as you claim, nor that it "contributes" as much as you think. It is a tool, not a goal in itself. As physics and chemistry improves, computing capability will improve, but it rarely if ever works the other way around. Certainly, modern computing speeds up several tasks that physicists do (integrations are largely impossible to solve in a non-numerical fashion), and of course various calculations of orbitals (though, to be fair, we need better computers for this to work, and in turn, need better knowledge of physics and chemistry) in molecules.

Computing is a tool. Science is the way forward. Without science, there is no computing. Without computing, there still is science. To improve computing, you must improve science. To improve science, you do not necessarily need to improve computing (though it doesn't hurt).

I'm not in any way saying computing is useless. I'm saying that the foundations for computing are more important to improve than the computing itself, because computing is dependent on technological progress, whereas technological progress is not necesssarily dependent on computing. I'm saying fort nox over-stated the importance of computing vs other fields.

@Zeo:

I actually use quite a bit of computing in my line of study, and all scientists are generally expected to master computing to some degree. It's just that computing tends to be simple enough that a chemist or physicist can learn it on the side (as we are expected to).

Now, if he had said mathematics I would be inclined to agree; mathematicians can do a lot of cool stuff. All deep science relies heavily on various forms of mathematics. But computing tends to hint at computer science, which isn't at all as useful as the theoretical/experimental applications of mathematics involving numerical and analytical solutions through logical processes or artificial intelligences.

 

[Zeonix]

The atomic force microscope does not build on the principles of computing. The atomic force microscope's data collection and instructions build on the principles of computing. The principles of computing are several hundred years old, and have not changed much in that time, and this is my point. What has changed is the availability and knowledge of materials, something which is a direct result of the work of physicists and chemists.

Modern computing is a result of physics, chemistry and engineering. It is fairly stagnant without the movement of those three that predated it. Though it is useful that does not mean it is growing as rapidly as you claim, nor that it "contributes" as much as you think. It is a tool, not a goal in itself. As physics and chemistry improves, computing capability will improve, but it rarely if ever works the other way around. Certainly, modern computing speeds up several tasks that physicists do (integrations are largely impossible to solve in a non-numerical fashion), and of course various calculations of orbitals (though, to be fair, we need better computers for this to work, and in turn, need better knowledge of physics and chemistry) in molecules.

Computing is a tool. Science is the way forward. Without science, there is no computing. Without computing, there still is science. To improve computing, you must improve science. To improve science, you do not necessarily need to improve computing (though it doesn't hurt).

I'm not in any way saying computing is useless. I'm saying that the foundations for computing are more important to improve than the computing itself, because computing is dependent on technological progress, whereas technological progress is not necesssarily dependent on computing. I'm saying fort nox over-stated the importance of computing vs other fields.

@Zeo:

I actually use quite a bit of computing in my line of study, and all scientists are generally expected to master computing to some degree. It's just that computing tends to be simple enough that a chemist or physicist can learn it on the side (as we are expected to).

Now, if he had said mathematics I would be inclined to agree; mathematicians can do a lot of cool stuff. All deep science relies heavily on various forms of mathematics. But computing tends to hint at computer science, which isn't at all as useful as the theoretical/experimental applications of mathematics involving numerical and analytical solutions through logical processes or artificial intelligences.

How does one go about creating and implementing AI without the use of computing?

 

[Avenger]

I've said already that computing hasn't really made that much progress in the last 300 years. It's only in making things faster that it works, and even that is only made possible by technological breakthroughs - not computing breakthroughs.

 

[harSens]

Of course you can always replace computing by manual labor. That's the whole point of computing: remove error prone and slow manual labor by computing. Most of the principles of computing are not hundreds of years old (e.g. object oriented programming, turing machines, modeling parallel processes, ...). Recent advances in computer science help in for example:
History: speech recognition and information retrieval techniques help make our audio-recorded recent history search-able in an efficient manner
Biology: for example to match genes, in huge genome databases, in simulation of evolution, ..., it even spawned the subfield of bio-informatics
Social Psychology: where virtual humans and virtual environments can often replace actors and real environments, making experiments much more repeatable
Chemistry: where many labor intensive experiments can be replaced by computer simulation
Meteorology: designing weather models
Engineering: in simulations that test structures for vulnerabilities before they are built
etc etc.

AI is a subfield of computer science btw...

 

[Denz]

and don't youever touch harsens computers! EVER!

 

[Avenger]

Of course you can always replace computing by manual labor. That's the whole point of computing: remove error prone and slow manual labor by computing.

It's a tool.

Most of the principles of computing are not hundreds of years old (e.g. object oriented programming, turing machines, modeling parallel processes, ...).

Actually most numerical methods were developed between the 1500ds and 1900ds, and they were virtually useless at that time. Mostly scribbles made by mathematicians on their free time. For mathematicians, by mathematicians. I didn't say all, because clearly the mathematics involved in programming didn't exist before the means to create useful computers existed. Useful computers didn't exist before chemistry and physics reached a level which allowed that kind of technology to be created...

And I admitted to computing being useful. I just don't think it's more important than what computing is based on; namely technological progression through chemistry and physics.

As for meteorology, that's actually kind of useless. Meteorology has never been very accurate. Climatology is perhaps a better suited use for simulations (macro-simulations are often easier to handle because their margins are bit wider without as much detriment).

My point stands: computing follows chemistry, physics, and engineering. It's fairly useful, but it's not something you really need a specialized profession for. Many of the things you talked about were developed by people who weren't really computational specialists. They were normal scientists who learned computation as a means to solve problems. Presumably so they could spend more time drinking and less time in labs/at desks.

 

[harSens]

There is a lot of interesting subfields in computer science that can evolve without requiring any advances in other sciences. For example: AI, language understanding, information retrieval, software engineering, formal verification of software programs, automatic translation, speech synthesis and recognition, 3D visualization, simulation of processes in many other sciences, etc etc. I'd say that alone is worth a separate scientific principle. That aside, I'd rather not have the software for nuclear power plants designed by a (non software) engineer that learned some programming on the side.

 

[Avenger]

There is a lot of interesting subfields in computer science that can evolve without requiring any advances in other sciences. For example: AI, language understanding, information retrieval, software engineering, formal verification of software programs, automatic translation, speech synthesis and recognition, 3D visualization, simulation of processes in many other sciences, etc etc. I'd say that alone is worth a separate scientific principle. That aside, I'd rather not have the software for nuclear power plants designed by a (non software) engineer that learned some programming on the side.

AI is still not a purely computer science endeavour. But I agree that it's useful. I disagree on the "software for nuclear power plants" issue.

I would rather have the person writing the software understand nuclear physics, and then integrate that with computation (and have it double checked, as all code is), than have the person understand computation and not nuclear physics.