
Mr. Fix It - The Engineer's Mentality in Politics - adam
http://theamericanscholar.org/mr-fix-it/
======
VLM
My favorite quote, SUPPOSEDLY describing the traits of a liberal arts grad as
the superior opposite of a techie:

"Here are some of the things that the humanities, and the habits of alertness
that they foster, will teach you: that people have different but equally valid
perspectives; that the truth is not necessarily hard and precise; that
judgments of value cannot be reduced to judgments of fact; that society will
never be a smoothly functioning machine."

The problem with his claim, is he's described the role of an architect /
designer / analyst better than I've ever seen in print, anywhere. Despite it
supposedly being his intent to slam techies, I've never seen such an eloquent
description of my experience with database management and design. That's
exactly how I spent 90% of my brain power on the job, all day long.

The ideas and descriptions, amazing. The thesis and conclusion, laughable.

I think the author also completely (intentionally?) missed the whole "dilbert"
trope and its valuable contribution to political debate.

------
dccoolgai
The great irony is that in writing this, he exposes the fundamental conceit of
the "poli-sci" complex that has brought the USA to its knees. The things he
quotes as the reason poli-sci-types and not engineers should be the ones
running government is that they learn "that people have different but equally
valid perspectives; that the truth is not necessarily hard and precise; that
judgments of value cannot be reduced to judgments of fact; that society will
never be a smoothly functioning machine."

The problem is that those things are all _INTUITIVE CONCLUSIONS_. You could
learn them by never getting a Lib Arts degree and never really even studying
them formally. In fact, I would say most Lib Arts people I know struggle with
those things and most engineers/scientists seem to get them on a fundamental
level. The difference is that engineers and scientists dedicate themselves to
understading how to dissect and solve problems - even when the solutions might
be difficult or counter-intuitive to get to.

We are categorically worse off as a nation for handing our government over to
the poli-sci complex. It is just the epitome of conceit that someone who never
solves any complex problems should be allowed to annoint themselves as
legislators over those that do.

Go down the chain of control for the Presidency. You have to get to like 16
(Secy of Transportation or something like that, I forget) before you find
someone with a real science or engineering degree. It's pathetic and IMO, it's
the source for most of this country's problems.

~~~
zerostar07
While i'm fond of it, there is nothing like a proof that empiricism is right
and everything else (even metaphysics) is wrong. That said, i also don't
believe running a government is much different than organizing any other kind
of hierarchy, be it of animals or machines, it's a sort of engineering. In
that sense, the practice of turning everything to popularity/likability
contests is at least baffling; yet there is nothing better than democracy, and
people still believe in invisible hands, political or otherwise.

------
thwest
This essay is pure defensive talisman. People use this hand waving to dismiss
models with conclusions they don't like all the time. Yes, every engineering
model makes simplifications about the universe, but so does every political
policy. The responsible thing to do is to give models a proper analysis- what
it solves, what it makes problematic, what it highlights and what it ignores.
Yes, Engineers too often stop at the correctness of the model, and refuse to
make moral or aesthetic judgements about the adequacy or appropriateness of
it. That doesn't forgive the author's attempts to prevent scientific modelling
of society.

------
TeMPOraL
> The endless fuzzy muddle of public life is going to seem despicable to
> people who are used to pursuing their ends with clarity and rigor. But
> society isn’t a building. Its parts are people, not struts or circuits. That
> is why a humanistic education is far more useful to the policymaker (and by
> extension, the citizen) than a technical one.

I call it the "binary geek fallacy". Some people tend to assume that
scientists, engineers and especially programmers deal _only_ with hard facts
and precise measurements, think in "zeroes and ones" (literally heard that in
a recent discussion with friends) and reject emotional thinking in favour of
logical, which - they say - isn't able to describe the entire reality (or even
the more important parts).

It is of course wrong. The thing they don't seem to understand is that math is
capable of not only describing "hard facts and precise measurements", but
fuzzy facts and educated guesses as well. And it does it much, much better
than intuition, or "heart", or common sense. Moreover, STEM thinking allows
you to _abstract_ over those sophisticated, supposedly too imprecise things,
to get something one can work on. If something is too difficult to comprehend,
we'll keep using Science and Maths and Engineering on it until it becomes
easy, and thus we'll have another tool in our arsenal. That is how progress in
thinking is done.

There's also no problem with (false) logical vs. emotional thinking modes
dichotomy. Just pull both of them into the model you work with, and you'll be
fine.

Math is nothing more, than applied thinking - human brain at its best.

>Here are some of the things that the humanities, and the habits of alertness
that they foster, will teach you: that people have different but equally valid
perspectives;

People do not have different but equally valid perspectives, it's a recipe to
pass bullshit around.

> that the truth is not necessarily hard and precise;

Of course it's not. But engineers can, and do deal with it quite well, using
methods much better than waving hands and doing things because they feel or
sound good.

> that judgments of value cannot be reduced to judgments of fact;

Wait until neuro- and cognitive scienctists disassemble the brain. A new
chapter will start in discussion about values.

------
Nursie
This article is laughable. Quite how someone gets paid to write provocative
arse-dribbling of this standard is beyond me.

I don't think engineers (and for the sake of this argument I'm going to
include all sorts of techies in that definition) and scientists should run the
show exclusively, no. But we do tend to be intelligent and results-oriented
people and ignoring us completely is foolish. Not only that but we're more
likely to insist on evidence based policy over partisanship or lawmaking based
on gut reaction.

Plus so much of the world runs on tech of various form these days that
lawmakers without any tech education or knowledge can only ever create
nonsensical legislation.

------
precisioncoder
Wow this article seems deliberately offensive, even provocative. I was first
angered, then frustrated and now amused by it. It certainly was emotionally
entertaining for me at least. Surprised to run across this sort of thing on
Hacker News though.

~~~
mturmon
Same feelings. Here's another piece that also demonstrates his desire to
provoke:

<http://theamericanscholar.org/upper-middle-brow/>

In this case, the kind of upper-middle-brow cultural consumers he is examining
(in a rather unfriendly way) is the readers of the American Scholar.

So it's not just throwing stones at engineers. (And we _are_ a touchy bunch,
as this thread shows. ;-)

------
seregine
There is an attitude towards engineering that seems to belong to non-technical
writers, especially authors of short opinion pieces. In the pursuit of a
simple narrative, it reduces an activity full of complex trade-offs and human
factors to a binary caricature of its juvenile stereotypes.

------
quanticle
This isn't wisdom. It's mere cynicism that's trying to pass itself off as
wisdom.

>But society isn’t a building. Its parts are people, not struts or circuits.
That is why a humanistic education is far more useful to the policymaker (and
by extension, the citizen) than a technical one.

Of course society isn't a building. Who was arguing that it was? But many of
our problems _are_ technical in nature, or, at the very least have technical
solutions. Moreover, without at least some understanding of the scientific
background for these problems, it's very difficult for a policy maker to know
whether their suggestions will have beneficial or harmful consequences. I
mean, that's exactly what we're seeing in Congress right now, with regards to
Internet regulation. Politicians are proposing laws for which enforcement is
either impossible or for which enforcement would require massive infringements
on freedom of expression. Do they do this out of malice? No. They do this out
of ignorance. They simply don't know the consequences of the things they are
proposing, and so they propose (and sometimes pass) laws that have harmful
unintended consequences that wipe out any possible benefit from those laws.

>Here are some of the things that the humanities, and the habits of alertness
that they foster, will teach you: that people have different but equally valid
perspectives; that the truth is not necessarily hard and precise; that
judgments of value cannot be reduced to judgments of fact; that society will
never be a smoothly functioning machine.

People do not always have "equally valid" perspectives. That is the very
centrist bias that allows out and out untruths to pass unchallenged. This is
why it's possible for a creationist to come on television and have equal time
with an evolutionary biologist. Your perspective is valid insofar as your
premises are based upon evidence about the world as it is. It is not valid if
your premises (e.g. all species on Earth were created by a divine intelligent
designer) have been proven false.

In addition, while it is true that judgements of value cannot be reduced to
judgements of facts (i.e. the "is-ought problem"), one must acknowledge that
judgements of value must be based upon judgements of fact. If you're basing
your values upon incorrect facts, your values are very likely to be mistaken.
For example, if you state that another person is not deserving of moral
consideration, that is a judgement of value which may or may not be valid.
However, if your justification for that judgement is hearsay evidence or
religious bias, then that judgement starts to look very shaky.

>It is characteristic of the engineering mentality—whose representatives are
so often male and so often adolescent, in spirit if not in age—to suppose that
our fundamental problems are resolvable.

What you consider adolescent, I consider _hopeful_. After all, what
alternative do we have to supposing that our age-old problems are solvable?
Your cynical resignation to the world as it is? If everyone on this planet had
that attitude, we'd still be huddling in caves. Progress of every sort -
technological, economic, social - occurs because there are individuals who
believe that we as a society can do better. That we can resolve our problems.
That we can dream of a world that is better than the one we have today.

For an article that speaks in such profundities about wisdom, I find this
piece to be profoundly unwise.

~~~
ArbitraryLimits
> It is not valid if your premises (e.g. all species on Earth were created by
> a divine intelligent designer) have been proven false.

Sigh...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability>

~~~
Wintamute
How is taking one isolated sentence and pedantically linking to a Wikipedia
that highlights a subtle error while missing or ignoring the obvious thrust of
the _entire_ argument in any way adding to this discussion? Come on now.

~~~
ArbitraryLimits
It's not a subtle error, and it's not peripheral to the argument either.

The entire middle third of the comment is the standard engineer's fallacy that
because the laws of physics are absolute and not relative, people's values
should be also, and all conflict could be avoided if people were just
rational. The main evidence offered is this aside about "science" "proving"
the non-existence of god, so its fallaciousness is highly relevant. (There's
also the fun of pointing out a fallacious and therefore irrational arugment in
support of being rational, I'll admit it.)

Every college student in a technical major who has to take a humanities class
for general ed goes through this phase, it's understandable. But it's just as
important to grow up and leave it. Values are not rational, but that doesn't
mean you get to ignore them.

~~~
Wintamute
Nowhere in the "entire middle third of the comment" does he mention, or allude
to, any of the following:

\- That people's values are absolute, or in anyway similar to the laws of
physics.

\- The existence, or non-existence of god, proving it, or otherwise.

\- That values are irrational.

\- That you get to ignore people's values.

You're putting words into his mouth. I think he's got quite interesting things
to say about moral relativism, and his view point is hardly as naive as you
think it is, but you're not hearing it.

------
zerostar07
Politics is one thing that has been touched very little by technology. In
fact, most of modern sovereign-state politics is run on 18th century
enlightenment ideas. One would expect that people could be voting from the
comfort of their homes, not just every 4 years, but a lot more often on
matters that affect them directly, like local issues. Also, political
discourse should not be based on putting on 2 shows on TV every 4 years. The
internet is a great medium of discourse, and can be used to bring up the
issues that really matter and the politicians that can actually deliver,
instead of the ones willing to succumb to the powers that control media/big
capital.

I am aware of very few platforms that use the internet for what it's best at:
giving everyone a voice. Things like <http://liquidfeedback.org/> are only a
start. I would bet that if the right tool existed, you could base a whole
government on it.

------
waterlesscloud
Relevant, and maybe a little more palatable discussion of similar topics. "So
What Exactly Is A Technocrat?"
[http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111116759...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111675931523936.html)

------
drharris
As soon as I saw the statement that everybody's opinions are equally valid, I
realized this must be satire. Only in a massive joke would somebody think that
any two opinions on a matter are both equally valid. Compare the person who
has thoroughly researched all sides of an issue and come to a proper
conclusion with a person who has been persuaded by media and special
interests, and call that equally valid? Sorry, some of us are simply smarter
than the average, and our opinions are worth more. Not giving in to the
"everybody's equal" BS.

------
swampthing
I'm curious - what do you think prompted the author to write this piece?

~~~
tomjen3
He needed an excuse to look down on engineers.

~~~
Nursie
Don't worry, soon we will take up residence in our underground tech caverns,
and then we shall farm and eat his kind.

------
bjhoops1
I'll need to see some data to corroborate this.

------
tehwalrus
this article made me rather cross! I'll post here what I commented on the
article's discus, in case anyone is interested / wants to rebuff me.

Now that the author is done insulting me ("adolescent, in spirit if not in
age") let me reply: we know (from science, not from politics) more and more
about "how people work" - for example, see here a talk from 2010 about the way
the languages we speak affects our perception and preferences (
[http://fora.tv/2010/10/26/Lera_Boroditsky_How_Language_Shape...](http://fora.tv/2010/10/26/Lera_Boroditsky_How_Language_Shapes_Thought)
) - this is not wishy washy philosophy but empirical experimental psychology.

The thrust of this post is downright negligent and while some of what the
author says is reasonable, I take objection to this snippet (among others):

"people have different but equally valid perspectives; that the truth is not
necessarily hard and precise;"

this sort of relativism is utter nonsense (perhaps excluding some moral
judgements) - how economies works is a deterministic thing, which is
nonetheless incredibly complicated, highly sensitive to initial conditions
including fluffy things like 'public mood'. This doesn't make the truth any
less precise or hard, just difficult to calculate, like weather patterns.

Over the centuries we have garnered an awful lot of data, both on state
governance and economies, and (one of) the reason(s) engineers and scientists
get cross with politics is that humanities graduates do not understand how to
look at this data and learn from it.

We are sick of contradictory facts being shouted from one side of the radio
argument to the other, without anyone bothering to check them (or the
presenters bothering to know what they're talking about by reading a properly
researched briefing before going on air, preferring as they do to improvise.)

Now, before someone accuses me of breaking the "firefly rule" ("sooner or
later they'll come back around to thinking they can 'make people better' ")
let me also add the caveat that I'm not in favour of forcing everyone to learn
a second language (although that's actually not a bad idea, we already try to
in schools) or anything worse. I am in favour of redesigning our existing
institutions (government, education, etc) in line with how evidence suggests
they will be more effective at fulfilling their own goals. Evidence-based
policy is considerably more valuable than the author seems to realise.

~~~
zerostar07
On the other hand, playing the devil's advocate, it's remarkable that a system
where, sometimes uninformed people, make decisions based on opinions they hear
even works at all. There is very little empirical research on the value of the
uninformed, but i wouldn't rule out the possibility it might be found to cause
some benefit.

~~~
tehwalrus
Oh, there are always geeks in the sidelines! :) The party machines have
researchers, and there are think tanks which actually try to do some real
investigations etc - as long as they sit with the appropriate set of
ideological guesses of the politician in question then they get adopted. It's
not totally random (like genetics) as with such small populations (of
politicians) that really wouldn't work ;)

------
rockmeamedee
There is an attitude towards politics that seems to belong especially to
liberal arts graduates, and even more, to B authors pushing their next book.
You pick up whiffs of it on the discussion threads, in the blog posts and
talks. It expresses itself, with the weary arrogance of the guy who fixes your
coffee, as a contempt for engineering as hopelessly mechanical. The answers
are robotic and don't take humans into account, the implication goes, or at
least the route to them doesn't. Public policy ought to be left to the people
who know how to get things done: the political science graduates and liberal
arts thinkers.

You can understand these feelings, to a certain extent. 'Idea people' deal
with people and their imprecise measurements. Authors must look intelligent
when pushing bullshit theories. The bailout is either great or not; the
country either stands up or it doesn't. Neither matters unless the argument is
well written. The endless technical muddle of public life is going to seem
despicable to people who are used to pursuing their ends talking about their
feelings.

But society isn't a drum circle. Its parts are people, who need struts and
circuits. That is why a STEM education is far more useful to the policymaker
(and by extension, the citizen) than a liberal arts one. Here are some of the
things that the STEM fields, and the habits of alertness that they foster,
will teach you: that when people have different but equally valid perspectives
you shouldn't give them shit for doing engineering; that Truth just means
matching our models of reality, sometimes several values can fit the model,
that does not both make them right; that judgments of value are influenced by
several judgments of fact in our brains, factors like priming, cognitive
biases and learned behaviors affect every decision you make; that society will
never be a smoothly functioning machine, but proper use of our tools and
technology can help.

Blog posts arguing cute but nevertheless wrong all-compassing theories of the
world, which appeal to the kind of person I’m talking about, and which are
usually far more fiction than science—that is, the human complexity of
science—tends to give them bad numbers upholding theories that are way too
orderly to be plausible as manifestations of human nature. Perhaps that is why
our political discussions often involve the same, tired wrong arguments. We
either go Keynes, Hayek, or are replaced by socialists. Not for nothing does
the idea of the silver bullet remain the central figure of the liberal arts
imagination.

I've never written a post critiquing the idea that we are heading towards a
multiplanetary civilization. I have no idea if it's possible or not, and I
know enough not to make predictions that far out into the future. It is
characteristic of the liberal arts mentality—whose representatives are so
often biased enough to throw around statements like 'adolescent of spirit if
not of age', to suppose that our fundamental problems are unresolvable. The
thinker believes himself possessed of superior wisdom. In fact, he has no
expertise. Wisdom is not to be found in an essay; its formula is experience
plus reflection. Engineering is the management of human affairs, the never-
ending calibration of interests, vanities, and corruptions. It depends on
knowing, how things work, and how people do to build a better world.

