4 ms·

If you want the truth, talk to an engineer, not a scientist.

• lbriner 5y ago
  How would that help? Engineering is probably even more polarised than general science because engineers are all about the black-and-white. The difficult part is that life is much more nuanced. Even if a woman's brain is objectively different than a man's, there might be a social or environmental reason, it might or might not have an effect on their abilities in different areas. Maybe if women and people of colour were given 500 years of time like white men, then maybe their brains would be the same as men. Who knows? The danger is probably not science per-se but the pressure to find nice summaries to difficult problems. You would get a PhD on "women aren't as clever as men" much more easily than "the differences between mens and womens brains are really complicated and hard to understand"
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • avalys 5y ago
    That's kind of my point. Engineers are about black and white because that's what's required to make decisions, to ship things, to actually make something work. Actionable truths are black and white. Anyone can say "Oh, it's nuanced, it's complicated, it's hard to say for sure." The challenge is in penetrating that nuance and identifying what it is possible to make definitive, black-and-white statements about (i.e., to find the truth). To the extent that any group in society does this for a living, it's engineers.
• rvense 5y ago
  Actually, you should talk to a couple of them, because each will have their own version of the absolute, obvious truth (and a long list of reasons why everyone else is wrong and dumb) and then you can just pick the truth you like the most.
• SquibblesRedux 5y ago
  Regarding truth, I would prefer the counsel of a mathematician over that of an engineer. That said, I would prefer an engineer over a mathematician when my car breaks down.