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somejan comments on Debiasing as Non-Self-Destruction - Less Wrong
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"One sign that science is not all bogus is that it enables us to do things, like go the moon."
I was wondering if engineers were less biased than other scientific types? They deal with the practical and concrete all day long, and they see their ideas either succeed or fail before their eyes--such as landing on the moon or exploding on the launch pad. Unlike social or psychological researchers who have the option of clinging to their theories through thick and thin, engineers are trained to identify and abandon incorrect ideas as quickly as possible.
I studied engineering as an undergrad, and I believe it taught a form of objectivism. Or perhaps it simply revealed it.
I was also a fighter pilot for a number of years. Clinging to incorrect assessments about one's abilities, strenghts, weaknesses, or about others' could get one killed pretty quickly even in peacetime. Or perhaps overconfidence is necessary even to begin such a dangerous career. I think it's a wonder I'm still alive after all I've read here on your blog.
Apparently not.
There's a surprising correlation between studying engineering and being a terrorist. I don't know if the correlation holds up for people who actually work in engineering rather than just having studied it.
I also haven't seen anything that looks solid about why the correlation exists.
Might it be that engineering teaches you to apply a given set of rules to its logical conclusion, rather than questioning if those rules are correct? To be a suicide bomber, you'd need to follow the rules of your variant of religion and act on them, even if that requires you to do something that goes against your normal desires, like kill yourself.
I'd figure questioning things is what you learn as a scientist, but apparently the current academic system is not set up to question generally accepted hypotheses, or generally do things the fund providers don't like.
Looking at myself, studying philosophy and also having an interest in fundamental physics, computer science and cognitive psychology helps, but how many people do that.
It's hard to say especially since terrorists are a tiny proportion of engineers, and it would be good to study engineers rather than guessing about them.
Engineer-terrorists mystify me. Shouldn't engineers be the people least likely to think that you can get the reaction you want from a complex system by giving it a good hard kick?
As another datapoint (though I don't have sources), I heard that among evangelical church leaders you also find a relatively higher proportion of engineers.
Isn't that assuming the reaction they want isn't for part of the system to break? We wouldn't have inducing armageddon as a goal, but other optimization systems don't work exactly as we do.
The reaction they want is the one their religious system directs, and the process that created those rules was different than the process that created humans, so I think you're indirectly anthropomorphising the religious system.
Some religious people do want to set off armageddon, and some terrorists want to start ethnic/racial wars. However, my impression is that some terrorists have more specific political goals.
Anyone who's done much repair knows the value of percussive maintenance.
Engineers would be much more used to received abstract rules being useful than other people (would be).