Reason as memetic immune disorder on LessWrong; Engineers and woo on RationalWiki. (The latter is mediocre and one day I’ll get around to making it better.) Salem Hypothesis: “In any Evolution vs. Creation debate, A person who claims scientific credentials and sides with Creation will most likely have an Engineering degree.”
The problem you describe is that engineers can get away with all manner of quite remarkable crankery as long as their engineering works.
One should keep in mind that the cranks are exceptional. Most engineers are perfectly normal geeks who respect science and mathematics as things that work independently of what humans think of them. However, engineer arrogance about fields not their own—and by extension, technologists in general—is stereotypical for a reason, and can easily slip into not understanding what the heck you’re pontificating on. Biologist impatience with transhumanists’ assertions is almost standard, for example.
Most don’t take it as far as Andrew Schlafly of Conservapedia, who, despite having been an electrical engineer before he studied law, is deeply suspicious of the concept of complex numbers.
Reason as memetic immune disorder on LessWrong; Engineers and woo on RationalWiki. (The latter is mediocre and one day I’ll get around to making it better.) Salem Hypothesis: “In any Evolution vs. Creation debate, A person who claims scientific credentials and sides with Creation will most likely have an Engineering degree.”
The problem you describe is that engineers can get away with all manner of quite remarkable crankery as long as their engineering works.
One should keep in mind that the cranks are exceptional. Most engineers are perfectly normal geeks who respect science and mathematics as things that work independently of what humans think of them. However, engineer arrogance about fields not their own—and by extension, technologists in general—is stereotypical for a reason, and can easily slip into not understanding what the heck you’re pontificating on. Biologist impatience with transhumanists’ assertions is almost standard, for example.
Most don’t take it as far as Andrew Schlafly of Conservapedia, who, despite having been an electrical engineer before he studied law, is deeply suspicious of the concept of complex numbers.