9 ms·

This is your brain on engineering

48 points by jaboutboul 13y ago

red12ooster 13y ago
I'm all for promoting women into STEM fields but this just feels like a really half-assed effort to market another (possibly inferior) kinex/lego type product
- brianfinkel 13y ago
  Yes. Parents who really want their girls to appreciate STEM can simply sit down with them, do something technical that is age appropriate, and encourage them to work hard at understanding things. And that's exactly what boys need, too!
  - Moneta_xi 13y ago
    Also there shouldn't be pressure on boys or girls to be anything in particular. Parents should encourgae their children to find what they like and encourgae and nuture that.
    - jaboutboul 13y ago
      totally agreed. as engineers we'd all love for our children to follow in out footsteps, but if everyone was in STEM professions, what would become of the world?
greenwalls 13y ago
If engineeing can do this imagine what engineering can do.
weland 13y ago
This would have been a nice video, were it not for the last frame. "Girls are more than princesses... they are our greatest resource." Nice. Not sexist at all, 'cause it says nice things about girls. But it does bring an interesting point: "at age 7, girls begin to lose confidence in math and science". I wish there was a source to that, because the way I remember it when I was a kid, math and science weren't exactly popular subjects among any of the 7-year old kids I met, but this is something I can relate to. I actually am an engineer (EE), studied a lot of hard math and use a lot of hard math in my day job. But, were it not for a complexity of factors that basically boiled down to "You can either do programming, which you like, so it's not a big deal, or you can study history and starve happy", I wouldn't have gone into this job. Were it to base my decision solely on what I did in school, before university, I'd have gone into something as far removed from mathematics and physics as possible. For all my pre-university years I have hated mathematics with a passion. The queen of all sciences that promised to open many doors to understanding the universe largely consisted of various ways in which to (tediously) do things we have calculators for during the first eight years, and then of various ways in which to (tediously) do things that don't say anything about the universe. Physics, which supposedly had to be about explaining how the world works, was largely about how quickly trains reach cities and the greatest skill I was taught there was reasoning about why the results you get in real life are an order of magnitude away from what you get on paper. Due to my passion for astronomy, I knew there was more to Physics, but I was so utterly disgusted with Mathematics that one of the main reasons I chose EE instead of CompSci was that I wanted to make sure they don't put math in my coding. In retrospect it was actually a good decision, but for different reasons. Enter first year EE now, where the first thing you do is these two semesters of advanced fucking calculus (background: where I live, there's a good proportion of calculus that's actually done in high school. Most Calculus I courses I've seen in American universities actually cover what is 11th and 12th grade material around here). Now, I wasn't afraid of them -- I hated mathematics, but not being stupid, I was good enough at it. But holy mother of numbers now it made sense. Now the other thing you do along with those two semesters of calculus is two semesters of Physics. Well shit: mechanics now made sense. But it was actually a combination of factors that made it make sense. The first one was Philosophy. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why people thought Newton was such a genius, nor why classical mechanics was considered to be so beautiful. It wasn't until put in its proper context that I understood how incredible Newton's contributions were. No one bothers to tell school kids about how people thought that the natural state of objects was rest, not motion, and that it wasn't until Newton figured out that and how to mathematically talk about changing quantities that we could understand how and why bodies move. Now it felt like Physics and Mathematics were true to their promises; prior to that, it seemed to me that they were just these boring, obnoxious tools adults built because they lacked intuition. The other one was analytical mechanics but that's probably not as important. Four years of EE later, I finally began to grasp what really was fascinating about math and science. They allowed me to do a lot of things: reason about the world around me and about how correct my reasoning is, provide a framework upon which to build and test inventions and help me think about why we do some of the things we do. None of these are even remotely touched before university. Granted, they can't be done rigorously before the basics are laid out, but at least some basic treatment should be there. But no. All everyone, girls and boys learn, is how to solve for x, never even suspecting that the real challenge and beauty is in formulating problems in terms of "solve for x".
- tormeh 13y ago
  >prior to that, it seemed to me that they were just these boring, obnoxious tools adults built because they lacked intuition This is exactly how I feel about math in a range of subjects. math is often useful, but sometimes it's just getting in the way. Not everything needs a mathematical proof. Sometimes, it's just formalistic masturbation. recurrent artificial neural nets are tricky to describe mathematically. That doesn't mean we should abandon research in them.
- MikeTLive 13y ago
  It will be people with your insight that will turn the education systems on their head and allow human society to move to the next level.
  - weland 13y ago
    Let's hope it will be people with insight even better than mine :-). Thanks!
rubiquity 13y ago
I know the purpose of this ad is to promote young women to explore engineering, but does anybody else hate the whole "Engineering jobs are growing faster than any other industry!" meme? I hate it for a couple reasons. The first reason is that it's a lie. Software Engineering? Sure, it's growing. Electrical Engineering? Maybe. Mechanical Engineering? Hell no. The second reason is that I remember when I was growing up all the hype was "Become an Accountant!! It's growing rapidly!" Now look around at everyone with an accounting degree. Whoops.
- melling 13y ago
  No, I don't. Maybe you get an undergrad engineering degree then decide you want an MBA or law degree. Don't you think the world would be a little better off if more people spent more time studying math and science? Do you think the second half of the 21st century will require people to know more science and math, or less?
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Depends on when the singularity occurs.
  - Jgrubb 13y ago
    This is completely off topic, but I was thinking about this statement just the other day -- "Don't you think the world would be a little better off if more people spent more time studying math and science?" -- in the context of this abominable new educational policy that we have here in the US called the "Common Core Curriculum". I don't understand the Common Core well enough to really come up with policy ideas about it, but the gist of the idea is that our children here in America are not as good at Math and Science as other countries, and that we should be very alarmed by that supposed fact. The response has been to cut back on arts, music programs, physical education in order to spend more time "teaching" kids to get better grades on test about Math and Science. I had this thought, and I wonder if it's controversial. Might it be okay that some kids in other countries are better at math and science than our kids supposedly are here? Is that the only set of skills that America is going to need in the 21st century, to the detriment of pretty much everything else? I don't think so, personally. I think it's more important that kids get a well rounded experience, even if that means lower scores on some tests that couldn't possibly be an accurate measure across global cultures. I'm sorry, I'd have made this shorter but I didn't have the time.
aioprisan 13y ago
uh, title typo?
- jaboutboul 13y ago
  fixed. thanks.
sanoli 13y ago
Yeah, that last frame... I don't know, so girls are our greatest resource because... they will be childbearers? Probably not the original intention, but it didn't go very well.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - davidiach 13y ago
    Cause staying home and taking care of the child brings absolutely no value to the world, right?
- brianfinkel 13y ago
  I also object to the suggestion that either gender is superior. Girls are our "greatest resource?" Really? What about boys? How would people respond if I made a video suggesting that boys are greatest? After all, they're bigger and stronger, and have had more scientific achievements. I'm not an expert, but I actually think that there is current data to suggest that boys today are having much more trouble learning and focusing than girls. I think there might even be more girls enrolled in college than boys.
herge 13y ago
This is the group that stole the Beastie Boy's song and broke Adam Yauch's dying wish, right?
- czottmann 13y ago
  Short answer: yes.
  - abvdasker 13y ago
    Long answer: yes.
- drcube 13y ago
  I remember the Beastie Boys controversy, but what's this about a dying wish?
  - herge 13y ago
    As per wikipedia: "In his last will, he left instructions that his music could not be used in advertising [...]".
- robg 13y ago
  It was a parody of a misogynistic song.
czottmann 13y ago
And here's the original video on YT, minus the Wired framing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog
whileonebegin 13y ago
I get the point they're trying to make, but putting a little girl in a kitchen with pink pastel colors, a princess egg, and other gender-biased artifacts defeats the purpose. It only reinforces the idea that girls are different and need to be treated that way. I suppose it eases gender-biased parents into buying more constructive toys for their girls, but that's only addressing the symptom, not the problem: equality.
brianfinkel 13y ago
I don't get this company. Encouraging girls to do technical stuff is awesome (just as awesome as encouraging boys!), but why are their building toys all purple and pink and girlie? That seems like a contradiction to me. We have a 5 yo daughter and immerse her in all kinds of technical stuff (along with our 2 yo son), like building toys, 3d puzzles, math games, chess, etc. I would love for her to be a killer engineer! But I have no interest in these pink building toys. There are so many far better gender-free toys. Knex, Superstructs, Legos, Magnatiles, Tegu blocks, etc., are just a few that are far more appealing to me as a parent. As a society, we do seem to have a "princess problem," but I just don't see how pink building toys can solve it.
- pera 13y ago
  I don't see how a color could be a problem...
  - brianfinkel 13y ago
    I don't think the color is a problem, other than it appears to be the chief innovation from this company. It seems to me that if you want your daughter to get traction with STEM, you need to provide her with interesting, high quality materials and spend time exploring them with her. Maybe I'm missing something, but i think there are already superior, better priced materials than these, so where is the value here?
  - brianfinkel 13y ago
    Also, if you're going to eschew the princess thing, then why adopt the princess palette?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
  "But I have no interest in these pink building toys." They're not for you, dogg.
- bbarn 13y ago
  This might seem unrelated, but in the bicycle racing world, most of your high end manufacturers now all make a women's specific model (for differences in body morphology, etc). When they started doing this, some manufacturers went all in, made really great well thought machines for actual racing women. Most though, took their men's model's, shrunk them a size, and painted them pink, purple, baby blue, or put floral print on them. It's a process described as "Shrink and Pink" in a not so positive connotation. It actually seems to HURT sales from ancedata figures gathered from friends who run or work at Bicycle shops in my area. The common opinion is that making something pink or girly colored off puts more women than it draws. In the last 2 years especially, women's manufacturers have responded.. with normal non-pastel colors.
avaku 13y ago
There were lots of woman scientists in USSR, and I don't think there was gender-related discrimination... Much fewer than men, but probably not for the reasons that are now popular to attribute to this phenomenon. Just saying...
Bartweiss 13y ago
Interesting - I certainly understand the intent but those notecards brought to mind a lot of questions. One that I don't see mentioned elsewhere is about "By age 13, more than half of all girls are unhappy with their bodies." I'd love a source not because I doubt that it's true, but because I want to see a number for boys. 13 is the start of puberty, and most kids are clumsy and squeaky and looking longingly at the kids who are already attractive or athletic or just not so damn awkward. I take their point, but I didn't like my body at 13 and it wasn't because of gender roles. It's because my body didn't work very well.
Wintamute 13y ago
Girls should be attracted into STEM by developing an educational/social environment that nurtures any indication that an individual female (or male) child is showing some interest. Tempting girls into the field by dangling a carrot on a stick in the form of higher wages seems demeaning and backwards. What's more, in an age where automation is taking away more and more jobs it seems sensible to cultivate attitudes where enjoyment of work and achievement is valued more than direct personal income generation. In any case, research shows that in countries where females are the most financially and socially free to do what they want they naturally tend towards roles related to medicine, caring and education, leaving the highly systematic jobs to men (engineering, computer science etc.). There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, its just a difference, but we just need to make sure that anybody of any gender that exists on the spectrum of humanity is as free as possible to do what makes them happy.

48 points by jaboutboul 13y ago

I'm all for promoting women into STEM fields but this just feels like a really half-assed effort to market another (possibly inferior) kinex/lego type product

brianfinkel 13y ago
Yes. Parents who really want their girls to appreciate STEM can simply sit down with them, do something technical that is age appropriate, and encourage them to work hard at understanding things. And that's exactly what boys need, too!
- Moneta_xi 13y ago
  Also there shouldn't be pressure on boys or girls to be anything in particular. Parents should encourgae their children to find what they like and encourgae and nuture that.
  - jaboutboul 13y ago
    totally agreed. as engineers we'd all love for our children to follow in out footsteps, but if everyone was in STEM professions, what would become of the world?

greenwalls 13y ago

If engineeing can do this imagine what engineering can do.

weland 13y ago

This would have been a nice video, were it not for the last frame. "Girls are more than princesses... they are our greatest resource." Nice. Not sexist at all, 'cause it says nice things about girls. But it does bring an interesting point: "at age 7, girls begin to lose confidence in math and science". I wish there was a source to that, because the way I remember it when I was a kid, math and science weren't exactly popular subjects among any of the 7-year old kids I met, but this is something I can relate to. I actually am an engineer (EE), studied a lot of hard math and use a lot of hard math in my day job. But, were it not for a complexity of factors that basically boiled down to "You can either do programming, which you like, so it's not a big deal, or you can study history and starve happy", I wouldn't have gone into this job. Were it to base my decision solely on what I did in school, before university, I'd have gone into something as far removed from mathematics and physics as possible. For all my pre-university years I have hated mathematics with a passion. The queen of all sciences that promised to open many doors to understanding the universe largely consisted of various ways in which to (tediously) do things we have calculators for during the first eight years, and then of various ways in which to (tediously) do things that don't say anything about the universe. Physics, which supposedly had to be about explaining how the world works, was largely about how quickly trains reach cities and the greatest skill I was taught there was reasoning about why the results you get in real life are an order of magnitude away from what you get on paper. Due to my passion for astronomy, I knew there was more to Physics, but I was so utterly disgusted with Mathematics that one of the main reasons I chose EE instead of CompSci was that I wanted to make sure they don't put math in my coding. In retrospect it was actually a good decision, but for different reasons. Enter first year EE now, where the first thing you do is these two semesters of advanced fucking calculus (background: where I live, there's a good proportion of calculus that's actually done in high school. Most Calculus I courses I've seen in American universities actually cover what is 11th and 12th grade material around here). Now, I wasn't afraid of them -- I hated mathematics, but not being stupid, I was good enough at it. But holy mother of numbers now it made sense. Now the other thing you do along with those two semesters of calculus is two semesters of Physics. Well shit: mechanics now made sense. But it was actually a combination of factors that made it make sense. The first one was Philosophy. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why people thought Newton was such a genius, nor why classical mechanics was considered to be so beautiful. It wasn't until put in its proper context that I understood how incredible Newton's contributions were. No one bothers to tell school kids about how people thought that the natural state of objects was rest, not motion, and that it wasn't until Newton figured out that and how to mathematically talk about changing quantities that we could understand how and why bodies move. Now it felt like Physics and Mathematics were true to their promises; prior to that, it seemed to me that they were just these boring, obnoxious tools adults built because they lacked intuition. The other one was analytical mechanics but that's probably not as important. Four years of EE later, I finally began to grasp what really was fascinating about math and science. They allowed me to do a lot of things: reason about the world around me and about how correct my reasoning is, provide a framework upon which to build and test inventions and help me think about why we do some of the things we do. None of these are even remotely touched before university. Granted, they can't be done rigorously before the basics are laid out, but at least some basic treatment should be there. But no. All everyone, girls and boys learn, is how to solve for x, never even suspecting that the real challenge and beauty is in formulating problems in terms of "solve for x".

tormeh 13y ago
>prior to that, it seemed to me that they were just these boring, obnoxious tools adults built because they lacked intuition This is exactly how I feel about math in a range of subjects. math is often useful, but sometimes it's just getting in the way. Not everything needs a mathematical proof. Sometimes, it's just formalistic masturbation. recurrent artificial neural nets are tricky to describe mathematically. That doesn't mean we should abandon research in them.
MikeTLive 13y ago
It will be people with your insight that will turn the education systems on their head and allow human society to move to the next level.
- weland 13y ago
  Let's hope it will be people with insight even better than mine :-). Thanks!

rubiquity 13y ago

I know the purpose of this ad is to promote young women to explore engineering, but does anybody else hate the whole "Engineering jobs are growing faster than any other industry!" meme? I hate it for a couple reasons. The first reason is that it's a lie. Software Engineering? Sure, it's growing. Electrical Engineering? Maybe. Mechanical Engineering? Hell no. The second reason is that I remember when I was growing up all the hype was "Become an Accountant!! It's growing rapidly!" Now look around at everyone with an accounting degree. Whoops.

melling 13y ago
No, I don't. Maybe you get an undergrad engineering degree then decide you want an MBA or law degree. Don't you think the world would be a little better off if more people spent more time studying math and science? Do you think the second half of the 21st century will require people to know more science and math, or less?
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Depends on when the singularity occurs.
- Jgrubb 13y ago
  This is completely off topic, but I was thinking about this statement just the other day -- "Don't you think the world would be a little better off if more people spent more time studying math and science?" -- in the context of this abominable new educational policy that we have here in the US called the "Common Core Curriculum". I don't understand the Common Core well enough to really come up with policy ideas about it, but the gist of the idea is that our children here in America are not as good at Math and Science as other countries, and that we should be very alarmed by that supposed fact. The response has been to cut back on arts, music programs, physical education in order to spend more time "teaching" kids to get better grades on test about Math and Science. I had this thought, and I wonder if it's controversial. Might it be okay that some kids in other countries are better at math and science than our kids supposedly are here? Is that the only set of skills that America is going to need in the 21st century, to the detriment of pretty much everything else? I don't think so, personally. I think it's more important that kids get a well rounded experience, even if that means lower scores on some tests that couldn't possibly be an accurate measure across global cultures. I'm sorry, I'd have made this shorter but I didn't have the time.

aioprisan 13y ago

uh, title typo?

jaboutboul 13y ago
fixed. thanks.

sanoli 13y ago

Yeah, that last frame... I don't know, so girls are our greatest resource because... they will be childbearers? Probably not the original intention, but it didn't go very well.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- davidiach 13y ago
  Cause staying home and taking care of the child brings absolutely no value to the world, right?
brianfinkel 13y ago
I also object to the suggestion that either gender is superior. Girls are our "greatest resource?" Really? What about boys? How would people respond if I made a video suggesting that boys are greatest? After all, they're bigger and stronger, and have had more scientific achievements. I'm not an expert, but I actually think that there is current data to suggest that boys today are having much more trouble learning and focusing than girls. I think there might even be more girls enrolled in college than boys.

herge 13y ago

This is the group that stole the Beastie Boy's song and broke Adam Yauch's dying wish, right?

czottmann 13y ago
Short answer: yes.
- abvdasker 13y ago
  Long answer: yes.
drcube 13y ago
I remember the Beastie Boys controversy, but what's this about a dying wish?
- herge 13y ago
  As per wikipedia: "In his last will, he left instructions that his music could not be used in advertising [...]".
robg 13y ago
It was a parody of a misogynistic song.

czottmann 13y ago

And here's the original video on YT, minus the Wired framing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNAB9GFDog

whileonebegin 13y ago

I get the point they're trying to make, but putting a little girl in a kitchen with pink pastel colors, a princess egg, and other gender-biased artifacts defeats the purpose. It only reinforces the idea that girls are different and need to be treated that way. I suppose it eases gender-biased parents into buying more constructive toys for their girls, but that's only addressing the symptom, not the problem: equality.

brianfinkel 13y ago

I don't get this company. Encouraging girls to do technical stuff is awesome (just as awesome as encouraging boys!), but why are their building toys all purple and pink and girlie? That seems like a contradiction to me. We have a 5 yo daughter and immerse her in all kinds of technical stuff (along with our 2 yo son), like building toys, 3d puzzles, math games, chess, etc. I would love for her to be a killer engineer! But I have no interest in these pink building toys. There are so many far better gender-free toys. Knex, Superstructs, Legos, Magnatiles, Tegu blocks, etc., are just a few that are far more appealing to me as a parent. As a society, we do seem to have a "princess problem," but I just don't see how pink building toys can solve it.

pera 13y ago
I don't see how a color could be a problem...
- brianfinkel 13y ago
  I don't think the color is a problem, other than it appears to be the chief innovation from this company. It seems to me that if you want your daughter to get traction with STEM, you need to provide her with interesting, high quality materials and spend time exploring them with her. Maybe I'm missing something, but i think there are already superior, better priced materials than these, so where is the value here?
- brianfinkel 13y ago
  Also, if you're going to eschew the princess thing, then why adopt the princess palette?
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
"But I have no interest in these pink building toys." They're not for you, dogg.
bbarn 13y ago
This might seem unrelated, but in the bicycle racing world, most of your high end manufacturers now all make a women's specific model (for differences in body morphology, etc). When they started doing this, some manufacturers went all in, made really great well thought machines for actual racing women. Most though, took their men's model's, shrunk them a size, and painted them pink, purple, baby blue, or put floral print on them. It's a process described as "Shrink and Pink" in a not so positive connotation. It actually seems to HURT sales from ancedata figures gathered from friends who run or work at Bicycle shops in my area. The common opinion is that making something pink or girly colored off puts more women than it draws. In the last 2 years especially, women's manufacturers have responded.. with normal non-pastel colors.

avaku 13y ago

There were lots of woman scientists in USSR, and I don't think there was gender-related discrimination... Much fewer than men, but probably not for the reasons that are now popular to attribute to this phenomenon. Just saying...

Bartweiss 13y ago

Interesting - I certainly understand the intent but those notecards brought to mind a lot of questions. One that I don't see mentioned elsewhere is about "By age 13, more than half of all girls are unhappy with their bodies." I'd love a source not because I doubt that it's true, but because I want to see a number for boys. 13 is the start of puberty, and most kids are clumsy and squeaky and looking longingly at the kids who are already attractive or athletic or just not so damn awkward. I take their point, but I didn't like my body at 13 and it wasn't because of gender roles. It's because my body didn't work very well.

Wintamute 13y ago

Girls should be attracted into STEM by developing an educational/social environment that nurtures any indication that an individual female (or male) child is showing some interest. Tempting girls into the field by dangling a carrot on a stick in the form of higher wages seems demeaning and backwards. What's more, in an age where automation is taking away more and more jobs it seems sensible to cultivate attitudes where enjoyment of work and achievement is valued more than direct personal income generation. In any case, research shows that in countries where females are the most financially and socially free to do what they want they naturally tend towards roles related to medicine, caring and education, leaving the highly systematic jobs to men (engineering, computer science etc.). There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, its just a difference, but we just need to make sure that anybody of any gender that exists on the spectrum of humanity is as free as possible to do what makes them happy.