Since it is a slow week, I was thinking about variations on Rupert Sheldrake’s idea of morphic resonance, and how these might apply to an Aristotelian philosophy of nature.
I'm not boasting, but there appear to be more brave engineers willing to stand up than scientists.
Think the reasons are:
1. engineers are in it for the work- not for the fame nor ultimately the funds.
2. a good engineer will always have a job -f this I'll go work somewhere else.
3. it's still predominately a masculine field -who cares what the longhouse thinks.
4. the best engineers are not beavers nor ants.. -they're honey badgers.
5. we know.. "God always forgives, man sometimes and Nature never, and Nature bats last.." - and when the sh1t flys it sticks to the engineer. Call it out before that happens!!!
I consider myself greatly blessed for having chosen the right profession.
You forgot the most important one that differentiates engineers. If an engineer gets it wrong there are fairly immediate and real consequences - the building falls down or something similar.
Systems engineering in defense has been longhoused (female engineer here, and yes I know what you mean by "longhouse"). I worked on a year-long contract at one of the private R&Ds that wrote the successful Apollo lunar landing software in the 60's. My view from 50 years after Apollo 11 is that we aren't getting back to the moon, at least not with any contribution from that formerly great R&D center (a lot of the mid to mid-upper management appears to be 30-something female PhDs from the Ivies, who seem to think nothing important happened before they arrived).
So, I agree with all of your points (love the honey badger analogy), except for point 3 but there's reasons that my former specialty got trashed (gubmint keeps throwing money at it even if programs fail, gubmint insists on DEI, gubmint lets places lay off engineers but keeps the managers who made all the mistakes). I congratulate you for picking a better engineering specialty!
I've worked in mostly male environments, mixed, and via some DIY/maker space hobbies some mostly female environments. "Longhousing" does not necessarily have to happen in mixed/mostly female environments. I think what keeps bad behavior in check is an honest preference for and recognition of good problem-solving.
If you want to know how to crush the pretense of those five points - simply give it back to them with "priest" substituting for "expert" in each instance. Nothing more.
“One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”
James Watson – a co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure:
The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
Quoting from a May 1, 1999, statement---“Why U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists opposes artificial water fluoridation”---written by William Hirzy, PhD, [Union of Scientists] Senior Vice-President, Chapter 280:
“Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.” Mark Twain
Scientist:
"A soul, you say? (chortles) Well, all I can say in the name of Science is that *nobody has ever seen a soul*, nobody has touched it, examined it. It is thus a mere unverifiable and dare I say superfluous hypothesis!...Now, to continue the lecture. There are a continuum of quantum universes each with its own attending distribution of dark matter..."
One must be able to question everything. To do this, one must face the world alone and to face the world alone requires not intellectual strength, but emotional strength. The strength to face unauthorized Truth.
I've got a different heuristic: any side which is earnestly trying to silence or 'deplatform' dissenters or reflexively using their institutions or credentials in place of arguments earns my immediate distrust.... and I'm moving toward immediate rejection. Don't push me.
This reminds me of an old saw about lawyers that I think applies: “If the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; if neither is on your side, pound the pulpit.” If someone immediately goes to attacking persons, rather than defending their ideas, that tells you all you need to know.
There is a very simple method to tell real (whatever it means) science from unreal science:
Remove all funding.
Remove everything down to the last cent from education in the respective field, certification, public procurements, stratification of personnel into the elites (aka PhDs) and the rest, research, archiving, journal publications, all kinds of rewards and prizes, up to the old age benefits and pensions. Plus, make all activities anonymous and publicly reported in real time.
It has to be done scientifically. Do it for one field as a test only. Like, software creation. Or law making.
Run the test for at least two cycles (to find trends), which will be about 8-10 years. Monitor the thing on the fly, but do not interfere and do not change the totality of the exclusion of funding.
Finally, draw conclusions.
As far as I know, nobody has ever done anything like that for any area of our existence. It is therefore extremely interesting - from a scientific point of view - what will happen…
My guess is that all violence will disappear from the world within the first quarter. Lies and lying will persist for not more than another quarter. Who knows, maybe we will rise to be a real civilization within six months…
Agree that "Remove all funding" has never, (to our knowledge), been attempted as a deliberate experiment in regard to any specific discipline. But that result has occurred, over and over again, throughout history. Wars, natural disasters, religious fanaticism or good old fashioned civilizational collapse have 'cut off funds' - for anything. Or everything.
And every time; every single time, a new crop of "experts" has emerged. One suspects that the tendency to credentialism is a fundamental component of whatever it is that makes us human.
"maybe we will rise to be a real civilization within six months…"
We prefer to be isolated from daily noise, left alone so that ideas from other minds couldn’t contaminate our decisions, and we don’t want to be advised then, even if motivated by good intentions.
We want to own the key moments in our life.
A good example is with the sterile cockpit in an aircraft trying to land. Even if their passenger is an extremely decorated test pilot, they will lock the door, and the expert passenger (many times more experienced than the pilots) will peacefully leave the task to those who fly the plane.
Wars or social unrest or predetermined agendas are not like that. They have hundreds of conflicting interests, not to mention those who design and gradually guide whole nations to the fight for their own private gains. You may be sure that those in the shadow have worked out hundreds of scenarios. The resulting social “cleansing” is not accidental or random. Consequently, nothing has changed, except that certain benefitting parties will take over and many potential participants are deliberately removed from the partition of the loots. All violent conflicts run along these lines. Nothing civilized there, even after thousands of years and extremely long training and practice at destroying our own.
Briggs, I make the bold conjecture that you are describing a social problem, not a scientific one. Thomas Kuhn thought that he was describing a scientific problem in 1962, but he was describing a social problem also. Kuhn's thinking is what Ayn Rand derided as "social metaphysics" (where knowledge is akin to a Gallup Poll).
But just because more than one-tenth of all humans have always tended to coalesce together and share each other's opinions and feel confident that -- because those opinions are shared, they have more weight -- isn't a foundational error in science, it is just the admission that more than one-tenth of humans will seek solace in conformity and a coherence theory of truth (vs. a correspondence one).
Even Kuhn's original interest in the matter, sparked by evaluating Aristotle's Physics in light of Newton's, thousands of years after the fact, isn't a big deal when you understand it for what it is. I think I've mentioned this before but a good book is The Logical Leap, by David Harriman. Using that book, it is totally clear why Newton's physics was "better than" Aristotle's.
My understanding is that the late theoretical physicist Ronald Christensen left us the Principles of Reasoning called "entropy minimax" that are the solution to The ancient, previously unsolved Problem of Induction, where the problem is of how, in a logically permissible way to select the set of inferences to the conditional outcomes of the events of the future for the physical system being modeled from a larger set of possibilities. Before he died, Christensen published the seven volume treatise on his discovery that is titled "The Entropy Minimax Sourcebook." However, entropy minmax failed to catch on. That this is so creates the misimpression that "Science is Not The Answer."
Continental drift was derisively put down by geology professors as plausible only to stupid and gullible people. Until the big paper on plate tectonics was crammed down their throats. Many big advances in science were the work of nonacademic outsiders — Einstein being one of those. In my day as a math grad student in the 1970's, category theory was regarded as a brain disease by many math departments (including mine). Nowadays category theory is used in theoretical physics and in some data analysis problems involving redundant sensors.
All is not lost, though. I have worked with and learned from some honest scientists who are capable of dropping pet ideas on the spot when shown contrary evidence.
Ever since Thomas Kuhn wrote 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' back in 1962, ambitious young men (mostly) have been vying to overturn existing paradigms. That relatively new (some would say overly ambitious) approach to science went into overdrive with the late 70's retrieval of 19th C. Theosophy rebranded as 'New Age.' Since then it's been impossible to even hint at a new paradigm without it being instantly popularized and spun into some new form of religion, with all the attendant financial trappings and cult like behaviour.
It's enough to make a real physicist throw in the towel and open a chain of brake shops. At least that's a money making proposition with good growth prospects since the amount of foot pressure used to stop today's oversized vehicles is directly proportional to how angry and disaffected today's driver has become - a trend that shows no sign of ending any time soon.
I'm not boasting, but there appear to be more brave engineers willing to stand up than scientists.
Think the reasons are:
1. engineers are in it for the work- not for the fame nor ultimately the funds.
2. a good engineer will always have a job -f this I'll go work somewhere else.
3. it's still predominately a masculine field -who cares what the longhouse thinks.
4. the best engineers are not beavers nor ants.. -they're honey badgers.
5. we know.. "God always forgives, man sometimes and Nature never, and Nature bats last.." - and when the sh1t flys it sticks to the engineer. Call it out before that happens!!!
I consider myself greatly blessed for having chosen the right profession.
Speaking of engineers...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski
I wish I'd found this guy around the time I discovered McLuhan and Hofstadter (1981). I'd have saved myself a whole lot of wheel spin:)
You forgot the most important one that differentiates engineers. If an engineer gets it wrong there are fairly immediate and real consequences - the building falls down or something similar.
Systems engineering in defense has been longhoused (female engineer here, and yes I know what you mean by "longhouse"). I worked on a year-long contract at one of the private R&Ds that wrote the successful Apollo lunar landing software in the 60's. My view from 50 years after Apollo 11 is that we aren't getting back to the moon, at least not with any contribution from that formerly great R&D center (a lot of the mid to mid-upper management appears to be 30-something female PhDs from the Ivies, who seem to think nothing important happened before they arrived).
So, I agree with all of your points (love the honey badger analogy), except for point 3 but there's reasons that my former specialty got trashed (gubmint keeps throwing money at it even if programs fail, gubmint insists on DEI, gubmint lets places lay off engineers but keeps the managers who made all the mistakes). I congratulate you for picking a better engineering specialty!
I've worked in mostly male environments, mixed, and via some DIY/maker space hobbies some mostly female environments. "Longhousing" does not necessarily have to happen in mixed/mostly female environments. I think what keeps bad behavior in check is an honest preference for and recognition of good problem-solving.
Guys who drive big trucks full of logs also don´t seem to take a lot of shit.
If you want to know how to crush the pretense of those five points - simply give it back to them with "priest" substituting for "expert" in each instance. Nothing more.
“One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”
James Watson – a co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure:
The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
Richard Horton richard.h orton@lancet.com
Quoting from a May 1, 1999, statement---“Why U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists opposes artificial water fluoridation”---written by William Hirzy, PhD, [Union of Scientists] Senior Vice-President, Chapter 280:
“Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.” Mark Twain
Scientist:
"A soul, you say? (chortles) Well, all I can say in the name of Science is that *nobody has ever seen a soul*, nobody has touched it, examined it. It is thus a mere unverifiable and dare I say superfluous hypothesis!...Now, to continue the lecture. There are a continuum of quantum universes each with its own attending distribution of dark matter..."
Every scientific theory is just one experiment away from being proven false. Consensus insures that the offending experiment never occurs. By design.
One must be able to question everything. To do this, one must face the world alone and to face the world alone requires not intellectual strength, but emotional strength. The strength to face unauthorized Truth.
So basically... trust the experts?
I've got a different heuristic: any side which is earnestly trying to silence or 'deplatform' dissenters or reflexively using their institutions or credentials in place of arguments earns my immediate distrust.... and I'm moving toward immediate rejection. Don't push me.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/reality-vs-reporting
This reminds me of an old saw about lawyers that I think applies: “If the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; if neither is on your side, pound the pulpit.” If someone immediately goes to attacking persons, rather than defending their ideas, that tells you all you need to know.
I judge engineers by their explanations of 9/11.
'Remember the hand-washing guy? Hounded. The drifting continents fellow? Scorned. The meteor man? Loathed.'
Those are the exact examples I usually cite. Also, the hot-blooded-dinosaur guy.
In medicine there’s the H. Pylori guy[s]
More recently the 'safe and effective' guy.
There is a very simple method to tell real (whatever it means) science from unreal science:
Remove all funding.
Remove everything down to the last cent from education in the respective field, certification, public procurements, stratification of personnel into the elites (aka PhDs) and the rest, research, archiving, journal publications, all kinds of rewards and prizes, up to the old age benefits and pensions. Plus, make all activities anonymous and publicly reported in real time.
It has to be done scientifically. Do it for one field as a test only. Like, software creation. Or law making.
Run the test for at least two cycles (to find trends), which will be about 8-10 years. Monitor the thing on the fly, but do not interfere and do not change the totality of the exclusion of funding.
Finally, draw conclusions.
As far as I know, nobody has ever done anything like that for any area of our existence. It is therefore extremely interesting - from a scientific point of view - what will happen…
My guess is that all violence will disappear from the world within the first quarter. Lies and lying will persist for not more than another quarter. Who knows, maybe we will rise to be a real civilization within six months…
Agree that "Remove all funding" has never, (to our knowledge), been attempted as a deliberate experiment in regard to any specific discipline. But that result has occurred, over and over again, throughout history. Wars, natural disasters, religious fanaticism or good old fashioned civilizational collapse have 'cut off funds' - for anything. Or everything.
And every time; every single time, a new crop of "experts" has emerged. One suspects that the tendency to credentialism is a fundamental component of whatever it is that makes us human.
"maybe we will rise to be a real civilization within six months…"
Or NOT!
Important moments in life need special attitudes.
We prefer to be isolated from daily noise, left alone so that ideas from other minds couldn’t contaminate our decisions, and we don’t want to be advised then, even if motivated by good intentions.
We want to own the key moments in our life.
A good example is with the sterile cockpit in an aircraft trying to land. Even if their passenger is an extremely decorated test pilot, they will lock the door, and the expert passenger (many times more experienced than the pilots) will peacefully leave the task to those who fly the plane.
Wars or social unrest or predetermined agendas are not like that. They have hundreds of conflicting interests, not to mention those who design and gradually guide whole nations to the fight for their own private gains. You may be sure that those in the shadow have worked out hundreds of scenarios. The resulting social “cleansing” is not accidental or random. Consequently, nothing has changed, except that certain benefitting parties will take over and many potential participants are deliberately removed from the partition of the loots. All violent conflicts run along these lines. Nothing civilized there, even after thousands of years and extremely long training and practice at destroying our own.
We have what we have.
OR - We are what we are.
Briggs, I make the bold conjecture that you are describing a social problem, not a scientific one. Thomas Kuhn thought that he was describing a scientific problem in 1962, but he was describing a social problem also. Kuhn's thinking is what Ayn Rand derided as "social metaphysics" (where knowledge is akin to a Gallup Poll).
But just because more than one-tenth of all humans have always tended to coalesce together and share each other's opinions and feel confident that -- because those opinions are shared, they have more weight -- isn't a foundational error in science, it is just the admission that more than one-tenth of humans will seek solace in conformity and a coherence theory of truth (vs. a correspondence one).
Even Kuhn's original interest in the matter, sparked by evaluating Aristotle's Physics in light of Newton's, thousands of years after the fact, isn't a big deal when you understand it for what it is. I think I've mentioned this before but a good book is The Logical Leap, by David Harriman. Using that book, it is totally clear why Newton's physics was "better than" Aristotle's.
My understanding is that the late theoretical physicist Ronald Christensen left us the Principles of Reasoning called "entropy minimax" that are the solution to The ancient, previously unsolved Problem of Induction, where the problem is of how, in a logically permissible way to select the set of inferences to the conditional outcomes of the events of the future for the physical system being modeled from a larger set of possibilities. Before he died, Christensen published the seven volume treatise on his discovery that is titled "The Entropy Minimax Sourcebook." However, entropy minmax failed to catch on. That this is so creates the misimpression that "Science is Not The Answer."
Terry Oldberg
Engineer/Scientist/Public Policy Researcher
Los Altos Hills, California
650-519-6636 (mobile)
terry_oldberg@yahoo.com (email)
Continental drift was derisively put down by geology professors as plausible only to stupid and gullible people. Until the big paper on plate tectonics was crammed down their throats. Many big advances in science were the work of nonacademic outsiders — Einstein being one of those. In my day as a math grad student in the 1970's, category theory was regarded as a brain disease by many math departments (including mine). Nowadays category theory is used in theoretical physics and in some data analysis problems involving redundant sensors.
All is not lost, though. I have worked with and learned from some honest scientists who are capable of dropping pet ideas on the spot when shown contrary evidence.
Ever since Thomas Kuhn wrote 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' back in 1962, ambitious young men (mostly) have been vying to overturn existing paradigms. That relatively new (some would say overly ambitious) approach to science went into overdrive with the late 70's retrieval of 19th C. Theosophy rebranded as 'New Age.' Since then it's been impossible to even hint at a new paradigm without it being instantly popularized and spun into some new form of religion, with all the attendant financial trappings and cult like behaviour.
It's enough to make a real physicist throw in the towel and open a chain of brake shops. At least that's a money making proposition with good growth prospects since the amount of foot pressure used to stop today's oversized vehicles is directly proportional to how angry and disaffected today's driver has become - a trend that shows no sign of ending any time soon.
"Science Is Not The Answer"
What was the question?
How do we determine what is good and what is bad?
Definitely not through science.
Speaking of systems engineers why not check out this website:
http://tillerfoundation.org
I’ve never seen the Appeal to Authority Fallacy dressed up in so many words.
Wait until you see how I adorn tautologies.
Sixthly, the lay people should never call himself a layman. Even if they/them is a man.