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> This will never stop happening for any given discipline, however, will it? No, it won't. However, my experience has been that programmers, for some reason,

> This will never stop happening for any given discipline, however, will it? No, it won't. However, my experience has been that programmers, for some reason, are much more likely to engage in such behavior. They wade in to a discussion on something technically complex, yet completely out of their wheelhouse, clutching a few cherry-picked academic or pseudo-academic citations, which they then use to argue definitive conclusions on certain points they believe. Someone on this site once referred to discussions where people trade anecdotes on a contentious subject as "anecdote poker"; I would refer to this similar behavior as "citation poker".

tivert 8y ago
> They wade in to a discussion on something technically complex, yet completely out of their wheelhouse, clutching a few cherry-picked academic or pseudo-academic citations, which they then use to argue definitive conclusions on certain points they believe. I've heard that phenomenon referred to as the "engineer's disease." I can't easily find any great sources about the term or concept, but these will do: https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee... > November 2003 comment on Crooked Timber (by MeFi's own Martin Wisse?): Engineer’s disease: where just because someone is a (self-proclaimed) expert in field, they think this makes them automatic experts on anything else. Usually people intelligent enough to see through “lies-to-children” [explanations], but not intelligent enough to understand there’s more to their new area of expertise than that. For [some] reason, engineers are particularly susceptible to it. https://www.metafilter.com/160644/Treating-the-world-as-software-promotes-fantasies-of-control https://www.metafilter.com/160644/Treating-the-world-as-soft... https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm: > As computer programmers, our formative intellectual experience is working with deterministic systems that have been designed by other human beings. These can be very complex, but the complexity is not the kind we find in the natural world. It is ultimately always tractable. Find the right abstractions, and the puzzle box opens before you. > The feeling of competence, control and delight in discovering a clever twist that solves a difficult problem is what makes being a computer programmer sometimes enjoyable. > But as anyone who's worked with tech people knows, this intellectual background can also lead to arrogance. People who excel at software design become convinced that they have a unique ability to understand any kind of system at all, from first principles, without prior training, thanks to their superior powers of analysis. Success in the artificially constructed world of software design promotes a dangerous confidence.

tivert 8y ago

> They wade in to a discussion on something technically complex, yet completely out of their wheelhouse, clutching a few cherry-picked academic or pseudo-academic citations, which they then use to argue definitive conclusions on certain points they believe. I've heard that phenomenon referred to as the "engineer's disease." I can't easily find any great sources about the term or concept, but these will do: https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee... > November 2003 comment on Crooked Timber (by MeFi's own Martin Wisse?): Engineer’s disease: where just because someone is a (self-proclaimed) expert in field, they think this makes them automatic experts on anything else. Usually people intelligent enough to see through “lies-to-children” [explanations], but not intelligent enough to understand there’s more to their new area of expertise than that. For [some] reason, engineers are particularly susceptible to it. https://www.metafilter.com/160644/Treating-the-world-as-software-promotes-fantasies-of-control https://www.metafilter.com/160644/Treating-the-world-as-soft... https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm: > As computer programmers, our formative intellectual experience is working with deterministic systems that have been designed by other human beings. These can be very complex, but the complexity is not the kind we find in the natural world. It is ultimately always tractable. Find the right abstractions, and the puzzle box opens before you. > The feeling of competence, control and delight in discovering a clever twist that solves a difficult problem is what makes being a computer programmer sometimes enjoyable. > But as anyone who's worked with tech people knows, this intellectual background can also lead to arrogance. People who excel at software design become convinced that they have a unique ability to understand any kind of system at all, from first principles, without prior training, thanks to their superior powers of analysis. Success in the artificially constructed world of software design promotes a dangerous confidence.