When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

A few weeks ago, Brad Warbiany wrote a piece on Engineering at The Unrepentant Individual. It was inspired by - even a response to - another piece on Engineering that was posted by Chris Byrne at The Anarchangel.

Byrne says:

Engineering is the art of HOW. How things work, how things are built, how things interact and react, how problems are solved.

Engineering is the fusion of the theoretical and empirical. Scientist understand WHY things work, technicians know THAT things work if they do certain things... but engineers understand HOW things work (and to do so must understand much of the other two), and this understanding allows them to do and build, and fix new things.

I agree completely. Engineering is a philosophy more than a career. And Science is, too. And it is possible to meld the two to some degree, but most people don't. (Being a technician is not a philosophy so much, but more of a training. Like any training, I believe anybody can learn to be a technician.)

In my life, I have been employed as a technician, and a scientist, and an engineer. I have not yet been able to determine which of the three I really am at heart. I believe I used to be more of a scientist, but developed an engineering attitude when I was in the Navy. That was done in order to get out of being a technician, by the way. I don't know that I agree with Byrne's idea that a true engineer is an engineer about all things, and I am not alone in that. There are some systems and topics I just don't find very compelling. I don't much like the inside of my computer case. I am a technician about the machine - about both the software and the hardware. How many items/systems would I have to feel this way about to be a technician at heart?

Unlike young Dilbert, I was not an engineering child prodigy. I was good enough at taking things apart, but I wasn't always so good at putting them back together. With the limited financial resoures I had at my disposal, every toy or gadget that I rendered useless was a lesson to leave well enough alone. Combine this with the manner in which my curiosity was dulled by a series of unscientific elementary school teachers, and by high school I was much more a scientist than an engineer. I wanted to know, but not do.

But perhaps I misunderstood all of those years ago. After all, my refusal to take my car apart was not because I didn't want to know how it worked. In fact, there are only two questions that make sense about a car - how does it work (Engineering) and what do I have to do in order to operate it? There is no Why? Being too poor and lazy to investigate it myself does not mean I wasn't an engineer. It means I wasn't a good engineer.

Brad Warbiany describes himself as having been "born an engineer" (and he may soon find what it is like to raise an engineer). Brad notes the Engineering philosophy drives him in his study of politics.

...every day, I look around me and try to figure out how the system works, because I can only give myself the best chance to benefit from it by understanding its workings.

Part of my writings about politics are a desire to figure out and improve the system. I don’t say government doesn’t work because we have the wrong people running it, I say government can’t work because the system has flawed incentives that cause it to fail. It doesn’t matter all that much who we elect unless the system itself changes. My recent dissatisfaction with the Republicans is largely because they promised to change the system, but instead simply said “plug me in”. Of course, understanding the “How” of a political system doesn’t necessarily allow it to be changed, because often the “How” is highly linked to ballot choices of people who refuse to even question or investigate that same “How”.

I have had thoughts along these lines before, so I loved reading Brad's article. I expect I will be making reference to it more than once. Keep an eye out.