Science without Validation in a World without Meaning

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.

So, there are no neutral decisions. "Waiting until we're more sure about something" is not actually waiting, it is an affirmative decision to disregard what we think we know right now. That can be a valid choice, and something to debate, but it's fundamentally different from the feined neutrality of the concept of waiting to see.

To make such an argument requires attacking that knowledge directly, showing specifically how it's wrong. Not just vaguely complaining that it's not good enough yet.

This is actually well-understood in public policy when it comes to other areas like economics or defense; leaders act to address needs in real time, making the best decisions they can with the information available to them. "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.” ― General Patton

Engineering, as a discipline, cannot cover all of life. It largely constrains itself to situations that are understood, and can do so because there are other complementary disciplines that create the knowledge it uses. But in public policy there's not a complementary Earth or society that we can wait for.

I disagree, strongly. A big part of the point of building such models is to get models that are more accurate than the currently-existing models.