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>> I seriously doubt you'd be able to identify the engineers from what they wrote. This isn't meant to be funny, but I bet you could identify good engineers fr

>> I seriously doubt you'd be able to identify the engineers from what they wrote. This isn't meant to be funny, but I bet you could identify good engineers from what they wrote rather quickly. What does a good engineer do when they discover a faulty resistor while debugging a circuit? Cut it out, throw it in the trash, and replace it with a working one. They never pause to consider the moral impact of suddenly removing it from the board, attempt to rehabilitate it, or try to empathize with it. They cut it out and move on. If you apply engineering principles to societal problems, the die-hard engineer may come up with a similar result. I'm only speculating, but their line of reasoning could resemble... "these (good productive) citizens do not harm other citizens, and they support their economies through labor and taxes.... discard every other citizen that does not do this, and replace them with a working one". Sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot to me.

naasking 9y ago
Funny you mention this, I made exactly this argument against the philosophy of hard determinism a few months ago. After all, under hard determinism, people have no more value than any other aggregate of deterministic particles, so why should we even try to reform them as most hard determinists argue? So it's not just engineers that might reach these conclusions.
roenxi 9y ago
As a society, we have demonstrated a remarkably limited ability to coherently articulate what the problems are. Now, if you can articulate a clear problem, I might be persuaded that engineers as class will solve it a specific way. But my experience is that once a problem is identified anyone could do it. Identifying the problem is the part that generates friction. In the one-line example you came up with, you imply: * Working is good * Economic productivity is the end goal * Possibly a link between morality and citizenship * That 'replacement' based on some unknown process will be legitimate If I am allowed to assume things like that, every human problem becomes easy and I can engineer it. But a 'landslide' in politics is 60% agreement on a subject - assumptions like this do not fly. I, for example, disagree with at least 2 of those points.

naasking 9y ago

Funny you mention this, I made exactly this argument against the philosophy of hard determinism a few months ago. After all, under hard determinism, people have no more value than any other aggregate of deterministic particles, so why should we even try to reform them as most hard determinists argue? So it's not just engineers that might reach these conclusions.

roenxi 9y ago

As a society, we have demonstrated a remarkably limited ability to coherently articulate what the problems are. Now, if you can articulate a clear problem, I might be persuaded that engineers as class will solve it a specific way. But my experience is that once a problem is identified anyone could do it. Identifying the problem is the part that generates friction. In the one-line example you came up with, you imply: * Working is good * Economic productivity is the end goal * Possibly a link between morality and citizenship * That 'replacement' based on some unknown process will be legitimate If I am allowed to assume things like that, every human problem becomes easy and I can engineer it. But a 'landslide' in politics is 60% agreement on a subject - assumptions like this do not fly. I, for example, disagree with at least 2 of those points.