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Well engineers are the Most critical people in our world. Look around you, if you stripped away all engineers, you would have nothing and would be sitting in a field or a forest, with nothing around you.
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Hmmm, tell that to the Egyptians. We still can't replicate the pyramids. </p>
<p>In any case, who feeds the engineers- FARMERS! I rest my case. ;)</p>
<p>Engineering-</p>
<p>I'd rather not send myself to hell just so I can brag about how much warmer I am.</p>
<p>Man, I work two jobs and go to University and blah blah blah...</p>
<p>I still think that it would be harder to live off fast food pay than doing any sort of schooling. Really. I could not imagine being a member of the working poor at all.</p>
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even if the original post was sarcastic, i think the sentiment is pretty true...</p>
<p>it's so funny to see kids on here all, "oh, sob, sigh, i'm an engineering student at MIT, my life is hell...it's so hard to get a good GPA..." people would kill to be in your shoes, so instead of whining about how the liberal arts majors have it easier, think about how tough it is to live off of minimum wage and put your great minds to something ****ing useful, haha.
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<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>I believe most farmers are agricultural engineers.</p>
<p>and the Egyptians were also engineers,</p>
<p>No doubt engineering requires a powerfully logical mind and a dose of ingenuity. But one thing that always gets me is how engineers see everything as a mechanism, a lab report if you will. They are incapable of imporvisatory insight, of acknowledging the organic variables that life encompasses. Career-wise, almost all stagnate in their mid to late thirties, as, by and large, they make very poor leaders/managers.</p>
<p>dwincho is this why most engineers are hired in management positions over students who study management. Ive seen many more companies looking to take fresh undergrad engineering students, and making them managers, than companies hiring straight management students, even those with a MBA are not good enough.</p>
<p>Engineering is the most Critical field in the world today. Not many could function without engineers. Like i said before if ya strip out everything that engineers have done on this planet, then we would be below cavemen again. Not even that.</p>
<p>You mentioned farmers, but without engineers(Environmental, Chemical and Agricultural, etc...), farmers could never produce enough food for todays population, and we would not even have the population size that we have today, if it were not for engineers, as doctors couldn't heal as they do. The average age would be back down in the 20's and possibly lower. Farmers are engineers as they use sophisticated techniques to get the biggest yield of crops. Much of it is derived from experience, which makes it a forum of engineering.</p>
<p>Those who majored in a liberal arts field make the best managers. Managing is all about interacting with people (the emotional quotient) and identifying and solving problems (the intelligence quotient). Engineers are rightfully known for lacking in the EQ department.</p>
<p>Yes engineering has done many great things for mankind. However, don't forget that engineering is simply applying concepts from the pure sciences into the world at large. You need the research to have been done, the concepts to have been established, for engineering to then take place.</p>
<p>A lot of farmers are "engineers" in their own right. </p>
<p>Is this engineers having the biggest wee wee thing going to just start being on every area of this site? I am just curious.</p>
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You mentioned farmers, but without engineers(Environmental, Chemical and Agricultural, etc...), farmers could never produce enough food for todays population
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My point (I mentioned the farmers) is that farmers can be self-sufficient. Engineers can't- at least, not all of them. I've often wondered what would happen to the world if we lost electricity- big problem, eh?</p>
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we would not even have the population size that we have today, if it were not for engineers, as doctors couldn't heal as they do. The average age would be back down in the 20's and possibly lower.
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Considering the fact that the world will become overpopulated, that's hardly worth celebrating. ;) In any case, your average age figure is ludicrous- the average life expectancy in ancient times was mid-forties, and it was not at all uncommon to live into the seventies. Medicine really hasn't done that much.</p>
<p>OK....um so what do you want us to do? Worship engineers? You make it seem like every other profession is worthless. Seriously, without financiers funding their research they would have gotten nowhere.</p>
<p>Most engineers don't need any money. Learn what an engineer is.</p>
<p>In response the the originating post - it's a good lesson to anyone why people should avoid using drugs - as this poster (in other posts) has (commendably) openly admitted using serious drugs</p>
<p>Keep your mind sharp, avoid damaging one's brain - try jogging or swimming and stay away from drugs</p>
<p>This thread just brought to mind how there are some things in life we can control, such as how much effort we put into things, choices we make, etc.
But there are also many things we can't control.
A Christian author wrote that God does not distribute gifts and talents equally, and people aren't all given the same opportunities in life either.</p>
<p>Not to be crude, but if you were born with an IQ of 80, had some physical problems as well, and were raised in an abusive, poverty-stricken environment, would you be where you are right now? Given that level of ability and such, no matter how diligent and determined you might be, you might never become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. And it wouldn't be your fault, and you shouldn't be looked down on for that either.</p>
<p>Ultimately, we can only do the best with what we have been given. And if you've been given a lot, it would be expected you'd accomplish more (or things of a different nature) than someone who was given little. </p>
<p>Of course, there are some people who have brains and opportunities in life but don't use them. But we can't all too often judge because we don't always know someone's life story.</p>
<p>I don't think someone who flips burgers is any more or any less important than someone who is a doctor or lawyer. They all contribute in different ways, and a lot of times, they probably are doing the best they can.</p>
<p>When we look at others whom seem to have better lives than ours, we need to know that as our life looks worse and more and more peoples lives start to look better and better than our own, and then we must struggle through our current life; and know that we are so much closer to heaven than these people. We once had the lives of these blessed people, who we look highly upon today, but we are so much closer to Heaven, as we are almost complete in repaying our sins. Don’t take your hard life as a sin; take it as a blessing as if Heaven is very close. We shall also take death as a blessing; all of this can be explained for those who die young, there time on earth is complete as all sins are repaid, now its there time to go to heaven. So those who seem to have the better life now, they do and they will enjoy it, but they have many lives of suffering ahead, while we have very few left.</p>
<p>I agree largely with plot93. Human beings are valuable because they are human beings. Is engineering a new luxury sedan really going to help humanity in any enduring way? How does the ability to design that car make someone any more worthwhile than a person with a lower IQ who nonetheless holds a stable job and is a warm, caring individual or more useful to society than a social worker who rescues children from abusive situations?</p>
<p>Engineering, like many academic pursuits, takes a lot of brains, that's for sure. But intellectual capacity is not the only variable in the complex equation of human and social value.</p>
<p>^Good add-on to an already good point.</p>
<p>The kid flipping burgers at Mickey D's may be a great human being, who works hard for what he has, who treats people with respect and lends others a helping hand, and maybe who will raise a great, kind kid. He is, IMHO, worth 1,000x more than a some Harvard grad embezzling money from a firm. You don't measure somebody's worth by how fast they can do math problems. A human being is shaped by so much more than that. Any of you read Brave New World? Come on, now. I thought you all were worth so much more than your burger-flipping counterpart.</p>
<p>And now that we've established that intellect isn't the sole means of measuring a person's worth (and that there are subtler ways of contributing to society), let's not assume /engineers/ are the only smart people. Who's to say a fast food worker isn't writing the next great American novel on the side? Many famous authors worked "menial" jobs. I consider myself pretty damn smart, but **** me if I can do my multiplication tables. I can write a better essay than any kid in AP Physics, though...society's great artistic minds (musicians, painters, poets, novelists) and otherwise (brilliant presidents, journalists, activists) are absolutely VITAL to a society. Engineering is NOT the sole intellectual contribution to the world (nor the most important), and to assume so would be disgusting.</p>
<p>"the best judge of a man's character is how he treats people that cannot do anything for him"</p>
<p>i work at a fast food place, and it is def a lot harder than i thought it would be. i've gotten pretty good at it, but there are some people who have been there a while and can do stuff 1000x faster than me. i work with this woman who's 22. she works with me from 9am-6ish, then goes to work at stop & shop until 3am. she has 2 kids and lives with her boyfriend and is really independent. i have a lot of respect for her b/c doing that is a hell of a lot harder than sitting in class all day.</p>
<p>I work in a fast food place, and it's pretty much a joke. The people there are people who didn't have ambition when they should have, and their lives are now as big of a joke as their profession. If they're doing this kind of a job, and working multiple jobs or otherwise, and have kids, they deserve no kind of respect (not absolute, but generally quite acceptable as a philosophy). School, if one gives it the effort it deserves, is endlessly more difficult than fast food type jobs. Learning is infinite, there's always more you can do to better yourself, a job like that is just something you go and do. When you're done, you're and you go home and just sit, maybe watch TV. If someone approaches college properly they should have much less free time.</p>
<p>I thought the original post was strictly talking about the nature of the work, not who is more valuable or better as a human being. The fact that certain things like majors or jobs are harder than others in terms of nature isn't elitist, it's just the truth. If you've been poor your whole life and you're working to support your family, that's one thing. But if you have a college degree and you can't get a decent job, then it's probably because you were slacking off or lack the job skills, so of course you aren't going to get any respect.</p>