There was a time when I felt that way. But somewhere along the line I married a woman who's got a degree in History and Literature. I can see your eyes rolling already. It gets worse: she never even (gasp!) took Calculus.

But the fact is that she's smart. Crazy smart. Quoted by the Supreme Court smart.

And she sees the world through glasses that are very, very different than my own. Our discussions are not about whether X > Y, but whether Y is even a measurable, meaningful value; whether this is the right question to be asking; what X means in a legal sense; what that implies for the how we build policy; and whether we can help people get understand Y.

This morning we argued about Robert Reich's premise of restructuring the economy and whether you could blame stagnant wages at the feet of Microsoft.

Every day that I talk to her I see nuances where I hadn't before. I get smarter.

I'd even go as far as to say I get smarter at a faster rate than I have talking to vast majority of the technical people I've ever interacted with.

count yourself lucky. attractive women who don't spend their lives acting like 3rd graders just because they can are few and far between. This is also why people join mensa and similar clubs even though it seems kind of stupid to pay to belong to a "smart club". People need a level of interaction similar to their own. I'm sure most of the people on hacker news are frustrated on a daily basis with the 8th grade reading comprehension level (and the level of mental acuity that implies) of those around them and thus come here for a semblance of intelligent interaction.

I do count myself as lucky -- very lucky!

However, I continue to be amazed at how many men I find that are scared by smart women. But that's a topic for another thread. And perhaps not on HN.

that makes me happy. if everyone loved smart girls it would lower my chances of finding one even more.

To be perfectly honest, I don't see why that should matter. Studying history is no less honourable than studying physics. We need both in our world.

A historian obviously isn't going to be making lots of money later in life, but that doesn't make them worthless. A good education system should allow historians to come out of poor backgrounds too, not force everyone int apparently productive degrees. Hard sciences aren't everything in life.

As I see it, the big difference between 'softer' (history, literature, philosophy, ...) and 'harder' (math, physics, ...) subjects is that, as an undergrad, you can 'get by' in softer subjects on very little work, especially if you are reasonably intelligent, whereas in harder subjects if you're not working to at least a certain level, you will do really badly.

However, to be a great historian is no less a task that to be a great physicist. Doing anything well is just as difficult as doing anything else well.

Sir, I applaud you.