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I would add to my sibling comment here that one should note that a particular characteristic of the engineer (or software developer) is the ability to internali
by tekacs 14y ago
I would add to my sibling comment here that one should note that a particular characteristic of the engineer (or software developer) is the ability to internalise all of the layers of a system and to be able to treat it as whichever subset of the layers are relevant at any given time.
Doing so hardly means that one considers all such systems equivalent or indeed that one doesn't think of a reductionist view as just the most reified (though pretty damned vague) possible view of the system.
- mikeash 14y agoThat's a great point. All layers are correct, but most won't be useful for a given problem. If you're thinking about, say, crowd reactions, then you don't want the "meatbag" model. Instead, you need a higher-level psychological model. However, if your problem is "what kind of injuries result from a bomb", then the "meatbag" model is right on. Thinking of the body as a loose confederation of fundamental particles is fairly useless when trying to decide how much to charge for a product, but it's an excellent model when e.g. figuring out how much radiation a person will absorb from a source. No layer denies the usefulness or reality of any of the others.
- ars 14y agoWe can agree here. And note that I had no issue with the use of the word meatbag to describe bomb effects. It was your use of the word "ultimately" that I objected to.