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Vaniver comments on Confusion about science and technology - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: NancyLebovitz 23 October 2013 12:27PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 23 October 2013 06:42:51PM *  3 points [-]

Have you tried to test your idea? Are engineers better than scientists at predicting which results will turn out to be true?

A core difference between scientists and engineers is that engineers only need one working prototype to validate a design, and scientists only need one strong counterexample to invalidate a hypothesis.

(Note that some fields where practitioners call themselves scientists but operate much more like engineers, with 'studies' as prototypes.)