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UC Berkeley physics professor and author Richard Muller gives an entertaining interview on why politicians and other opinion leaders should understand the basics of physics to create smart public policy
Engineers (of which I am one) have a tendency to have a bug up their butt when it comes to being MORE right about something. It was the way they were raised and the way they were schooled. Your importance relies on being right, so some of the most vitriolic arguments ever were done in the engineering and scientific community.
Engineering code is written by a bunch of English as a Third Language non literarily inspired word hacks that do not know how to state a procedure clearly if it came up and bit them on whatever prominent body part was sticking out at the time. Not only that, it is done bya bunch of them that have different ideas about what is important and how actual physical data needs to be interpreted for design code.
They are not politicians, for sure!
They are also not advertising executives, spokespersons or diplomats.
So while I say that many Engineers have the knowledge to make a system work better than anythnig we have ever seen before, they would not be able to convince a fish that water is good for it.
There was one president of the United States who was an engineer. Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer.
People think that Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer, but he wasn't. While in the Navy, Carter had enrolled in a class to become a certified nuclear plant operator, but upon the death of his father, Carter left the Navy (and the nuclear course) to take over the family farm.
Engineers (of which I am one) have a tendency to have a bug up their butt when it comes to being MORE right about something. It was the way they were raised and the way they were schooled. Your importance relies on being right, so some of the most vitriolic arguments ever were done in the engineering and scientific community.
Engineering code is written by a bunch of English as a Third Language non literarily inspired word hacks that do not know how to state a procedure clearly if it came up and bit them on whatever prominent body part was sticking out at the time. Not only that, it is done bya bunch of them that have different ideas about what is important and how actual physical data needs to be interpreted for design code.
They are not politicians, for sure!
They are also not advertising executives, spokespersons or diplomats.
So while I say that many Engineers have the knowledge to make a system work better than anythnig we have ever seen before, they would not be able to convince a fish that water is good for it.
Having spent 22 years working with engineers I hearty agree with this assessment. I finally figured out that the most annoying thing I could do with a stubborn engineer was to throw my hands up in the air and walk away. Man that p*ssed them off! It also forced them to stop and listen.... sometimes.
It wouldn't hurt if they knew the basics of Logic, either. And Statistics. And Probability.
Or, maybe, just "Scientific Method for Future Presidents".
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