2) There's a fundamental difference between the sciences and the > > humanities with regards to the difficulty of each one. The fact is > > that if you're a science student, it's much easier to learn a little > > history and read some literature and become a good humanities player > > as well than to do the reverse. This is a little nutty. While I'm constantly impressed by the ability of quizbowl players to divide knowledge into endless categories, this is a bit excessive. All quizbowl knowledge, consisting as it does of impetus and response, (or rather clue and answer), seems to me by nature created equal. Is it possible that the reason why most science majors who are quizbowl players are also capable in the humanities is because of the nature of the distribution? While it's possible for a humanities student to largely ignore 1\4 of the distribution and still be a competent player, a science player, especially one constrained only to physics, has to learn something outside of science to even be interested in quizbowl most of the time. The only case I see for your point would be the suggestion that more people simply find learning literature or history to be more interesting than learning their damn subatomic particles. This is probably true, but to put it in terms of "easiness" or "hardness" is misleading. AE
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