An article by an electrical engineer, published in a political journal, about climate change... I had low hopes, which were met.
IMO few categories of professions have a harder time understanding cutting-edge science than engineers. That is because they think they know science because they use similar mathematical and technical tools, when in fact the professions do the exact opposite of one another.
Engineers use what is known and understood to construct systems that can be validated. Scientists investigate unknown systems to try to construct knowledge and understanding.
The worst thing, professionally, for an engineer is to not know or understand your work. The worst thing, for a scientist, is to spend too much time on things that are already known and understood.
Engineers love to point out how scientists don't know, and can't prove, whether their climate models are accurate. Scientists know that that is the whole point of building such models. Working without knowing whether you're correct is not epistemological conflict. It's the fundamental condition of being a scientist.
Yes, it would be better if we knew everything and only consulted systems that are provably correct. But we don't. And the only way to expand what we know is to spend a ton of time doing things that we don't know.
We haven't found any other way to do it. Writing hand-wringing articles about the state of science from the sidelines does not advance human knowledge. You can't expand the map by standing inside the border and complaining about how hard it is to see past it.
IMO few categories of professions have a harder time understanding cutting-edge science than engineers. That is because they think they know science because they use similar mathematical and technical tools, when in fact the professions do the exact opposite of one another.
Engineers use what is known and understood to construct systems that can be validated. Scientists investigate unknown systems to try to construct knowledge and understanding.
The worst thing, professionally, for an engineer is to not know or understand your work. The worst thing, for a scientist, is to spend too much time on things that are already known and understood.
Engineers love to point out how scientists don't know, and can't prove, whether their climate models are accurate. Scientists know that that is the whole point of building such models. Working without knowing whether you're correct is not epistemological conflict. It's the fundamental condition of being a scientist.
Yes, it would be better if we knew everything and only consulted systems that are provably correct. But we don't. And the only way to expand what we know is to spend a ton of time doing things that we don't know.
We haven't found any other way to do it. Writing hand-wringing articles about the state of science from the sidelines does not advance human knowledge. You can't expand the map by standing inside the border and complaining about how hard it is to see past it.