<p>^The problem with your argument is that very few scientists, or any other type of professional, possess all these skills. Some theoretical physicists may be poor experimentalists, some lawyers may be great researchers and poor persuaders in a courtroom, and we all have come across brilliant teachers that can’t communicate their ideas properly. It’s the reason we train some people to become scientists and others to become engineers, the skills may be different but both are expected to put in time and effort.</p>
<p>The notion of the brilliant scientist or engineer that has an “aha!” moment without effort is a myth; that mythical creature that is capable of devising a ground-breaking theory and later on builds a marvelous machine! Yeah, no. </p>
<p>I understand some of you have a vested interest in believing that somehow you are superior or more brilliant than others because you mastered a field that many Americans believe is only for a “gifted few.” A comment such as " Nothing, but by your logic it should take people a long time and lots of effort to get it" hints of snobbery, as if scientific breakthroughs happen without much sacrifice.</p>
<p>From my experiences as a current undergrad and from tutoring others in basic math, I can tell you that whenever I tell people math is easy and what’s challenging is putting the time to understand it I usually see two things happen: 1) the person gives up because they can’t be bothered to put in time or 2) they invest time studying and their work improves gradually. I always remind people that the brain is just like any other muscle in the body, once give it some challenge it grows. At some point the person should reach his/her natural limit but luckily many of us do not know where that limit is.</p>
<p>Telling people science/engineering is hard simply satisfies the small minority that derive pleasure from thinking they are intellectually superior to others that “don’t get it.” Quite frankly, that sickens me.</p>
<p>That is no myth, good sir. It happens all the time in a research setting. You have no idea how many times I am in the shower or sitting on the toilet and the solution to a problem just comes to me. Admittedly, myself and many other researchers have the somewhat unfortunate trait that many of these problems are running in “low power mode” in the back of their brain, but there are a lot of solutions that come with little effort. The hard part is then proving that they work. No one ever claimed that was easy.</p>
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<p>Ah, but engineering is hard. It certainly isn’t easy to invest the time and effort necessary to master most engineering branches. Trust me, I loved the curriculum and I did pretty well in it during my undergrad, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. It is incredibly hard to make yourself do all that work when you have friends going out every night and all you want to do is go out with them but instead you have to work. If that isn’t hard, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>Like I said in an earlier post on another thread, most engineers who drop out do so because they had too hard of a time not in mentally grasping the material, but with devoting the time necessary to grasp the material. Sure, different people have different mental capacities, but many of them could do engineering anyway if they were so inclined to expend whatever time and energy was necessary for them as an individual to learn the material. That time and energy does vary from person to person though, and for some people, it is just too much.</p>
<p>^So you have basically re-explained my position. It’s not a mental challenge but a dedication/time challenge. </p>
<p>And no, scientific breakthroughs do not happen in the shower. Newton worked for 2 years developing infinitesimal calculus (Leibniz also achieved it independently), Einstein worked for a decade on GR (or was it SR?), Darwin had to take a trip to the Galapagos to make his observations, etc. All these people received assistance from previous scientists that contributed to their respective fields.</p>
<p>The majority of the humans we admire had to put in a lot of time learning whatever it was that made them great. Very few woke up one morning and suddenly composed a symphony, out of thin air.</p>
<p>Side note: I have to leave this house or else the heat will drive me insane. We’ll continue this fun conversation later.</p>
<p>It is a little bit of both. There is definitely a time aspect to it. However, there is a mental aspect. Someone with a higher “mental capacity” is going to have to spend less time than someone with a lower one, so they will be much more likely to stick with it. It is a very in-depth and time consuming material, and anything that causes it to take more time than average, such as someone maybe being a little “slower” than everyone else, makes it more likely that said person will get disheartened and move to something less time consuming (read: easier). Time and difficulty are often interchangeable. In general, the harder something is, the more time consuming it is. It isn’t a perfect correlation, but the majority of things follow that pattern.</p>
<p>Also, I will again tell you that “Aha!” moments are very real. Sure you aren’t going to suddenly say “aha” and have instantly postulated a valid theory of everything, but those “Aha!” moments do exist, and often lead a scientist to the solution of the little problems on his/her way to developing the larger theory. Trust me when I say this, those “little problems” are often quite big in and of themselves. Those “Aha!” moments are as valuable as they are real.</p>
<p>^ I think you misunderstood my post again, Enginox. Let me put it to you a different way.</p>
<p>You asked if your post was inherently difficult to understand. I said it wasn’t.
I pointed out that the entire point of your post is that it takes time and effort to really understand something.
Ergo, you can’t expect people to read what you wrote and understand it immediately. A lot of what you write is what we refer to as a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in the biz.</p>
<p>And I never made any representation that I wasn’t snobbish. But then again most everybody is to a degree.</p>
<p>I can also say ‘aha’ moments exist. Of course in a different sense, I’ve never been in a true research setting and I’m not a scientist with a doctoral degree (yet), but I can definitely say that I’ve been sitting around thinking on the car ride to school or when I’m trying to fall asleep when I realize a solution to a problem, it doesn’t even have to be scientific. This is the way the brain works, you have things that you simply begin to process with one trigger. It’s like a memory, a whiff of a familiar smell can bring back a flood of memories, for example.</p>
<p>I don’t know what you have against people having differences in intellect. I’m the first one to say that arrogance will never get anyone anywhere, and I disassociate with people who are very arrogant. However, it’s not realistic to say that everyone has the same mental capacity. Yes, researchers and famous scientists had to put in the work, they had the added luxury of loving what they did. This does not mean that they were just as smart as everyone else.</p>
<p>There is a good mixture in it all. Someone who puts in enough time can understand something thoroughly, but for some people it’s just very difficult. I know a lot of people who studied day and night for physics, they were very studious people too, and they never could fully grasp what some concepts meant. That’s just an example, but there are thousands more.</p>
<p>You can pretend to be disgusted with people who you may consider to be arrogant, but you’re only putting yourself on a higher pedestal in doing that.</p>
<p>I am also going through the same concerns, I want to be an engineer, yet my AP History and AP Literature courses are my best grades. I even got a B in physics. But I honestly believe that what even if I don’t have as much talent for physics and mathematics, I can still be a great engineer. What I lack in talent I’ll make up with hard work, you are not predetermined to be something, you choose what you want to be. Even if you aren’t naturally gifted at something, if you like it, go for it!</p>
<p>Talent facilitates success. But in the end, all that really matters is the amount of work you put into it. I am confident that if you want to be an engineer, and you work hard enough, you’ll be a great engineer regardless of your natural born talent.</p>