It's not that silly. Just making the point that I've met plenty of people without degrees who are absolutely great engineers. And my company somehow comes up with plenty of badly engineered systems, despite being full of people with CS degrees.

Is it possible that there's some sort of cognitive bias going on with your and mine strong, opposing feelings on this subject?

I've met people with CS master's degrees who seemed completely useless.

My cognitive bias is that generalizing is more useful than focusing on exceptions.

Studying computer science at a 4-year institution is more likely to produce competent programmers.

Since we're being pedantic: analogies aren't reality. Saying that a healthy lifestyle could improve your longevity doesn't in any way support the argument that a CS degree makes one more likely to understand big O.

> the argument that a CS degree makes one more likely to understand big O

This is 101-level content at most institutions. If you manage to graduate without understanding it, you are a magician or some kind of con man savant.

I'm not saying you're wrong.