Engineers banned from philosophy conferences

[CopperBrompton]

I enjoyed this :-)

From http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1879

 

[marinyork]

Do you speak from personal experience?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

However engineers, it seems, are more likely to become terrorists...

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Both my Dad and big brother are engineers/technicians. Should I be worried??

 

[Globalti]

Blimey, that article linked by FM really does miss the obvious doesn't it? Engineers know how to make a big bang. Simple.

 

[Arch]

Not engineers specifically, but when we were doing cycle promotion roadshows, we found a lot of academics had trouble with the concept of fun.

We had various bikes for people to try out, to show them how much variety there was, and that there was a bike for every kind of ride and rider - mainly to encourage utility use and commuting and so on. But we also had fun stuff. Micro bikes, bikes with eccentrically spoked wheels, stuff to just play on. And whenever we were doing a gig at a University, some academic would stroll up and ask "And what's the point of that one" (or if they were very academic, 'rationale'). "oh, just fun" we'd say, and a fair few would just look bewildered...

Not all of course, we had plenty of professors trying out the microbikes and having a whale of a time. But kids, and members of the public seemed more able to just go "Hey, cool!" and throw themselves into it.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Blimey, that article linked by FM really does miss the obvious doesn't it? Engineers know how to make a big bang. Simple.

The research it is discussing doesn't miss that at all - it is just not an explanation that holds in reality. Just because someone has the knowledge and ability to do something, it does not explain the choice to do it or not. But this is a turning into a subject for P&L (and already has been, if I remember rightly)...

 

[Shadow]

we found a lot of academics had trouble with the concept of fun.

Off on a tangent, reminds me of a dinner that was nearly ruined for the other guests when a schoolteacher could not accept one wine was better quality than another. He could grasp that a Bentley was better than, say a Tata, or a Mont Blanc was better than, say a Bic, (or now I might say a Pinarello is better than a BSO from a supermarket) but not that one wine could be better than another. Crazy!

 

[Arch]

Off on a tangent, reminds me of a dinner that was nearly ruined for the other guests when a schoolteacher could not accept one wine was better quality than another. He could grasp that a Bentley was better than, say a Tata, or a Mont Blanc was better than, say a Bic, (or now I might say a Pinarello is better than a BSO from a supermarket) but not that one wine could be better than another. Crazy!

Odd... Although....

I suppose it's down to palate. Mine isn't all that refined, I know the flavours I like, and the ones I don't, and I can say that one is more subtle than another, but I probably couldn't tell one wine from another on the basis of taste (apart from broad differences). I like to think that I could accept there was a difference though, even if I couldn't detect it. But then, if I can't taste it, it doesn't matter to me - perhaps that was his issue.

But then, I don't care what make my gear components are, as long as they work, and I'm dubious about some of the claimed benefits of forking out a fortune on 'better' stuff...

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

That clone argument is a very poor example. There must be an original to clone. Thereafter they are all clones. QED.

Does that make me an engineer?

Can I go and build a bomb now?

 

[taxing]

The clone argument is daft because the clone would be younger (it would have to be born like a normal baby, so if the cloned person was 20 when they were cloned, they would always be 20 years older than the clone), the clone would have grown up differently and would have different life experiences, and they would have around 10 small differences in their DNA (even twins do, they're down to small errors made when the body replicates the DNA).

Identical twins are more alike than artficial clones, and you'd never ask if you could tell them apart 'in a meaningful sense'.

(I did my MA dissertation on cloning in literature so I've thought a lot about it.)

 

[marinyork]

That's at the heart of the argument though. If there was a way of making them identical even with the same memories what would happen (and the subject of many a science fiction film)? What about Heraclitus's river?

 

[taxing]

Then they would fight to the death.

It all seems a bit cut and dried to me. If you were able to create exactly the same person with the same memories and feelings (which you would never be able to anyway), then obviously you wouldn't be able to tell them apart because they would be identical, and both of them would be convinced that they are the original and the other is the copy. They would both have exactly the same knowledge so you wouldn't be able to test them on that. It's obvious really, like making an identical copy of a coin. Can you tell which is the original? No. You made an identical copy, that's what identical means.

 

[Hover Fly]

Odd... Although....

I suppose it's down to palate. Mine isn't all that refined, I know the flavours I like, and the ones I don't, and I can say that one is more subtle than another, but I probably couldn't tell one wine from another on the basis of taste (apart from broad differences). I like to think that I could accept there was a difference though, even if I couldn't detect it. But then, if I can't taste it, it doesn't matter to me - perhaps that was his issue.

You are not alone, read about the "Frederic Brochet experiments" when some "experts" were fooled into thinking dyed white wine was red wine.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Blimey, that article linked by FM really does miss the obvious doesn't it? Engineers know how to make a big bang. Simple.

Not if you actually read the article, no:

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary.