Let’s leave liberal/conservative out of this. People can draw their own conclusions as to what these purported traits and training lead to.
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What engineers don’t do well is make emotional arguments and extrapolate the wrong conclusions from a few data points.
Agreed, but for some of them it isn’t due to lack of practice.
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Engineers as a whole do not take biology. They may only take one year of chemistry (ChemEs take years of chem and maybe biochem). They do not tend to take high level classes in liberal arts fields.
So very few engineers actually have the educational background to understand evolution in depth, some vague high school discussions on Darwin may be in the far distant past. Geology is well, for geologists and maybe a few petro folks (interesting to mix creationism and climate warming denial here). So creationism … maybe.
Global climate modeling is done on spherical coordinates on a rotating planet and is very complicated . although the diatribe about it being nonsense is really 20 years old, computers are now up to the task of giant models, the models are decades old and have been tested likely by almost everyone who has run the whole model (that’s what modelers do). We are also all being manipulated by big oil, SUV manufactures, developers of far flung suburbs with huge commutes - and politicians are too shallow and lobbyist influenced to make policy, or we likely would have been driving Priuses 10 years ago instead of Escalades and Tahoes. $4 oil put an end to that …
Lack of liberal arts classes can limit the amount of critical thinking outside of engineering, since you will rarely debate in an engineering class or have dissenting opinions (there is one answer in college engineering classes and who has time to find #2 anyway). I had a liberal arts major roommate decry this about engineers, but then again, she had taken no real math since high school, or science, so well … both sides are missing something.
And finally, being a talking head expert likely pays better than most engineering jobs, especially for folks with limited interest in original thought, who are likely not consultants or high level engineers. Managers are busy managing and are paid more, also probably can’t spout their opinions at the water cooler due to sensitivity training.
20-30 years ago engineers were often first generation college folks, many really needed to be able to independently support themselves after 4 years and get off of dad’s payroll. STEM has a lot more mystique today since STEM jobs are fairly plentiful, nerddom is no longer an issue, and people like tech (well mostly they are waiting for their next iPad). So the demographic has changed. Also, middle or upper middle income families worry about their kids and their retirement due to years of recession and poor job outlook, so STEM is more attractive to parents too.
I think this is the mechanics and tinkerers, so yes that is now a stereotype, but was probably much more true 20-30-50 years ago. People worked on their cars (so obviously did not have chauffeurs or nice cars, just some junker with a bad tranny) and went into ME … a few had gremlins in electrical system so became EEs.
My flagship state U was filled with first generation college, blue color family, engineers …
In boom times, liberal arts majors are not seen as a waste of time and ROI is not always number one priority.
CALS faculty is living in fear of rogue cows or birds eating their GMO seeds.
The biggest STEM major is biology, and good jobs in biology are not especially plentiful compared to the number of biology graduates.
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf
See page 51.
I hate to burst your bubble, but with the possible exception of the anti-vaccine movement, all of the psuedoscientific beliefs that I mentioned are predominantly believed in by conservatives, whether it be “climate change is a myth” or “evolution is a lie”.
Already dealt with computer science. People in math and chemistry are typically more religious than those in physics or biology. And yes, majoring in physics would be really difficult to reconcile with being a creationist, as modern cosmology essentially requires a billions year old Earth and makes Genesis a pretty unlikely story.
Moreover, this is empirically true. Only 7% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences report belief in a personal god.
As a little bit of critical thinking should reveal to you, engineering would appeal more to a guy who likes to tinker with cars than would theoretical physics. Majors in the pure sciences are more theoretical and abstract.
I don’t think you understand what “design” means. In the worldview of an engineer, all the designs s/he sees would be ones designed deliberately, not through a dumb, unintelligent, emergent process.
You do not understand what a logical fallacy is. Hint: accusing someone of appealing to their authority is not itself an appeal to authority fallacy!
Non sequitur. Whether scientists sometimes talk outside their expertise has nothing to do with whether engineers do. We are talking about PSEUDOSCIENCE here; if you want to complain about scientists designing bad pipes, make another thread.
I apologize that you don’t understand the concept of a statistical trend.
You honestly think it’s difficult to believe that a scientist would be less likely to make errors in science than an engineer?
Well, I appreciate your personal testimony. I’ve noticed it among engineering students, but I think there is a lot of selective sampling here; I’m pretty sure I run into a lot more among the general populace, just finding idiot savants sticks out at you more.
And yet, I’ve never tinkered with my car but enjoyed the theory behind why the world works the way it does and I went into engineering. In fact, I never really tinkered with much of anything other than Legos, yet I got a degree in mechanical engineering.
This is a vast over-generalization and really quite ignorant. This is not the worldview of the typical engineer. I’d also argue that the process of evolution is not “dumb” or “unintelligent” in the sense that it is quite beautiful and even mathematically rigorous in some sense. Further, in my interactions with other engineers, I have met very few that would tend to believe that evolution is a lie.
Yes. Those in the hard scientists are not necessarily any more or less rigorous than those doing engineering. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if those doing research in the hard sciences have a greater tendency to exhibit confirmation bias than those doing research in engineering based on the fact that the pool of money is larger and there is therefore less incentive for exaggeration and self-aggrandizement. In reality, though, I would suspect that both groups of science-based professionals are approximately equally-likely to make scientific errors. There is nothing special about scientists versus engineers.
Once again, you have nothing to back up this statement.
Lets talk about the “link” you posted, “Engineers of Jihad”. It’s a paper that attempts to propose several “possible” reasons why engineers are over-represented in violent Islamist extremist groups in the middle east. It does nothing to show a link between Engineers and “PSEUDOSCIENCE”.
A chart (using data from 1984) that shows “Percentage distributions of self-reported views on religion by highest
degree achieved, males only”. Lets look at the top 4 and the percentage that described themselves as “deeply religious”.
Engineering 14.9%
Economics & Business 14.5 %
Natural Sciences 12.6%
Arts & Humanities 15.2%
Oh, look, folks in the Arts & Humanities are the highest, go figure. The group that’s the least religious? Law grads, I could have told you that!
What stats? The above numbers? That 14.9% of engineers think of themselves as “deeply religious”, then Engineers must be a bunch of “creationists, truthers, global warming deniers, or anti-vaxxers”?
You’re posting on a forum filled with engineers. We went to school with engineers, we work with engineers, we like engineers. We like atheist engineers and we like “deeply religious” engineers. As a group, I wouldn’t describe our peers as anti-science. That’s just silly.
post #44, you made too many general comments.