Sentimental inclinations

Operating systems lecture:

Lecturer: Are there any advantages of writing threaded programs for a single core computer with no hyper-threading capability?
Me: There is! We humans have a sentimental inclination to implement the human thinking as if the problem could be solved in parts and threaded programs satisfy this sentimental need.
Lecturer: I don't think the compiler writers thought about the sentimental needs of people.
Me: But why didn't they leave computers at machine code? That was the sentimental attraction towards human like languages.


Some random discussion with pure mathematics lecturer:

Lecturer: Patterns within integer sequences exist in the universe. Humans have a special ability to find these patterns than any machine.
Me: Are integers or their patterns that important to the universe?
Lectuer: Must be. We can use the integer set to extend up to the rational set and probably the reals.
Me: But don't you think that integers looks important to us because of our sentimental attraction towards them?
L: How come?
Me: We developed this sentimental need to interpret everything based on integers because we were a counting civilization. Think about corals! if not for fish they would not have any reason to count integers. Corals are not individuals. The water around them is continuous. They would not have fallen in love with integers the way we did. For them, integers would not be something important out of reals. There are two books by Arthur C Clerk and Ian Stewart discussing this.
L: Interesting.

Qualitative and quantitative subjects

During a general elective lecture (which we computer engineering students are forced to take because the admin believes that it will make us well rounded people by some magic!)

Lecturer: "There are two types of subjects in the world. The quantitative subjects like pure mathematics, applied mathematics, chemistry -- the stuff you normally do. They have all these models, equations and universal standards to make decisions. On the other hand there are quantitative subjects which has a lot to do with the personal skills of the person. There are no models or equations to decide which piece of art is the best. It is just depending on personal judgement. You should understand that how you do good in a quantitative subject and a qualitative subject is very different"

Someone whispers "and then deep learning happened!"


PS 1: I don't agree with someone calling pure mathematics quantitative
PS 2: Yes, I do believe we humans are just intelligent machines, and therefore AI algorithms will do as good as we do in qualitative subjects in future.
PS 3: The story is slightly altered to make it interesting.