One can get music tossups, especially at a lower level, from a music appreciation/music history class, and philosophy has some "intro to philosophy" classes too, that while they won't necessarily cover everything in a lower-level canon, they'll give you a pretty broad base to start. Both music appreciation and intro to philosophy can pretty much be taken by anyone (one does not necessarily have to read music or understand philosophical terms to participate in the class).yisun wrote:Of course, music may be a bit unique to me, but I don't see any reason why CS would be more difficult than, say philosophy or music -- all of them involve a lot of technical terminology and are not taught in most high schools...[CS] is similar to the situation in music...
At the science level, there's intro to biology, intro to physics, intro to (pick your favorite discipline of earth science), and intro to astronomy. While these require more effort for a non-scientist than a music appreciation course would require for a non-musician, they're still somewhat accessible, and would probably help you get a few tossups after the FTP. On the other hand, there's no good intro to chem, intro to math, or intro to CS course (and that's probably a big part of why the first four categories are included in UCLA's Science GE and the latter three aren't). Of these, some sort of chemistry is required for just about any science major, and math is required for all sorts of science and non-science majors, so it would be reasonable to expect that people who don't necessarily study these fields have some familiarity with the subjects. However, CS isn't required for essentially anything other than CS (outside of maybe a few programming classes, which is apparently "fake" CS). That is, other than the people who invest the time in learning CS for quizbowl, the only people who are getting CS questions are CS majors, whereas I'd bet that this doesn't happen in any other category or subcategory of quizbowl.
To counteract another of your points: I'm probably one of the better music theory players on the circuit, in that I read music, got a 5 on the AP test long ago, and generally have a good idea of what the question's talking about when they go into all that technical stuff. For a couple of clues at Zot Bowl, I literally went and found a score and transcribed the note sequence or chords or whatnot from the staff into the question. This in no way makes me a good music player. I'm probably average at best, and even when I know exactly what the question is talking about there's no guarantee I'll match that musical description with a specific work. On the other hand, understanding the jargon of any given scientific discipline will make me a better player in that category. Of those scientific disciplines, I contend that CS has the hardest "jargon" for a non-specialist to master, especially with the high probability of a non-specialist making a tossup unintentionally transparent.