This is actually amazing. I always thought that this "seeing in systems" was also the cause of the lack of empathy that traditionally has been attributed to eng

This is actually amazing. I always thought that this "seeing in systems" was also the cause of the lack of empathy that traditionally has been attributed to engineers (being this an unfair stereotype or not). There are several computational paradigms that we attribute to minds (and people) that more often than not backfire, finite state machines being the most obvious one. Sometimes it works, and we discover a great mental model to live by. Sometimes it goes really wrong and it all goes the modernist way (Mies van der Rohe and co). This leads to another nasty effect: being incapable to commiserate with the people around us. If the mind is a deterministic black box and I'm not an alcoholic because I refrain myself from drinking, how come there are alcoholics. The answer must be: they do not try hard enough. Same with poor people, obese people. If things have not happened to me, the fact that happen to other people must mean that they've brought it upon themselves.