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The article seems to make two different points that don't completely fit together: 1. Non-engineers are better leaders because they can find solutions to "wick

The article seems to make two different points that don't completely fit together: 1. Non-engineers are better leaders because they can find solutions to "wicked problems", problems with many interacitng parts where there is no predefined objectively right or wrong solution. 2. Non-engineers are better leaders because they are better at persuading others that their shitty solutions are actually good. I might buy #2 (for some definition of "better leaders"); I'm not so sure about #1.

junkscience2017 9y ago
#1 flows from the strange rationalization that regardless of anything else in life, studying humanities for four years in college turns one into a great abstract thinker....while studying engineering for four years permanently transforms you into a robot amazing that people still believe that an undergrad education either turns you into Napoleon or R2D2
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  And that an engineer can't be interested in humanities - there are plenty of engineers who have hobbies outside engineering.
- sidlls 9y ago
  How odd. There is a meme in engineering circles that people who don't study math or science are somehow less able to think and reason. I wasn't aware of the sort of inverse you posit. My personal experience on this is extremely lopsided: it's rare for me to encounter a non-techie who doesn't fawn embarrassingly at me when I tell them what my academic background is (physics) or gush over how smart and good at math I must be, etc., while on the other hand I hear from engineer peers all the time about how non-techies are dumb, incompetent, play politics, etc.
  - junkscience2017 9y ago
    nowhere did I claim that only engineers were numerate, logical or analytical
- barrkel 9y ago
  The bias is rather that engineering makes you great at building things, but humanities is required to know what to build. It's just as suspect to me as it probably is to you. Humanities is just as susceptible to building castles in the air as software engineering, flights of intellectual fantasy about how the world ought to be. Difference is, when humanities makes a mistake, you get fascism or communism, rather than crashing code or broken bridges.
auxym 9y ago
> problems with many interacitng parts where there is no predefined objectively right or wrong solution This actually defines most problems engineers solve. Well, at least the "predefined right solution" part. If you really already have a predefined, correct solution to your problem, do you really need an engineer to solve it? Most engineering solutions come in the form of making acceptable trade offs. While there almost certainly exist "wrong" solutions (risking human life for little to no benefit would be an unnaceptable tradeoff and a wrong solution), the pool of acceptable (and therefore correct, in a sense) solutions is most often at the very least greater than unity.
paraschopra 9y ago
>1. Non-engineers are better leaders because they can find solutions to "wicked problems", problems with many interacitng parts where there is no predefined objectively right or wrong solution. I'm not making the claim that non-engineers are better leaders. I'm merely saying the analytical approach of solving problems works against (rather than helping) any resolution of a human system problem. I'm not making a claim of non-engineers knowing how to solve wicked problems (they're called wicked by researchers _because_ there is no solution).

junkscience2017 9y ago

#1 flows from the strange rationalization that regardless of anything else in life, studying humanities for four years in college turns one into a great abstract thinker....while studying engineering for four years permanently transforms you into a robot amazing that people still believe that an undergrad education either turns you into Napoleon or R2D2

greenhouse_gas 9y ago
And that an engineer can't be interested in humanities - there are plenty of engineers who have hobbies outside engineering.
sidlls 9y ago
How odd. There is a meme in engineering circles that people who don't study math or science are somehow less able to think and reason. I wasn't aware of the sort of inverse you posit. My personal experience on this is extremely lopsided: it's rare for me to encounter a non-techie who doesn't fawn embarrassingly at me when I tell them what my academic background is (physics) or gush over how smart and good at math I must be, etc., while on the other hand I hear from engineer peers all the time about how non-techies are dumb, incompetent, play politics, etc.
- junkscience2017 9y ago
  nowhere did I claim that only engineers were numerate, logical or analytical
barrkel 9y ago
The bias is rather that engineering makes you great at building things, but humanities is required to know what to build. It's just as suspect to me as it probably is to you. Humanities is just as susceptible to building castles in the air as software engineering, flights of intellectual fantasy about how the world ought to be. Difference is, when humanities makes a mistake, you get fascism or communism, rather than crashing code or broken bridges.

auxym 9y ago

> problems with many interacitng parts where there is no predefined objectively right or wrong solution This actually defines most problems engineers solve. Well, at least the "predefined right solution" part. If you really already have a predefined, correct solution to your problem, do you really need an engineer to solve it? Most engineering solutions come in the form of making acceptable trade offs. While there almost certainly exist "wrong" solutions (risking human life for little to no benefit would be an unnaceptable tradeoff and a wrong solution), the pool of acceptable (and therefore correct, in a sense) solutions is most often at the very least greater than unity.

paraschopra 9y ago

>1. Non-engineers are better leaders because they can find solutions to "wicked problems", problems with many interacitng parts where there is no predefined objectively right or wrong solution. I'm not making the claim that non-engineers are better leaders. I'm merely saying the analytical approach of solving problems works against (rather than helping) any resolution of a human system problem. I'm not making a claim of non-engineers knowing how to solve wicked problems (they're called wicked by researchers _because_ there is no solution).