Science without Validation in a World without Meaning

Your view of engineering doesn't fit with my experience. Certain areas of engineering are quite conservative and take that approach, using primarily proven designs (e.g., structural mechanics, fire protection). Licensed professional engineers generally follow that pattern. But this is not characteristic of engineering as a whole.

E.g., a small side project of mine is a device I intend to get a patent on. I understand the physical mechanism (the science) behind the device but have only a vague idea of what the actual device itself will look like. It's going to take a fair amount of experimentation to figure that out. Experimentation and design are fairly closely linked in engineering, and this was emphasized in my education.

Add on top of that the engineers who basically just experiment with various poorly understood systems. I'm thinking in particular about the industries with chemical processes and chip fabrication here. They might not have any clear understanding at all at first about why certain changes have certain effects. Now, some of these engineers might not care and accept that something works without understanding why. But many of them will look into that.

> Non-STEM folks might have a hard time understanding either field, but they might also be less likely to assume that they already do.

You identify a real phenomena, but I don't think there's a reason to single out engineers here. My own experience with physicists is that they are typically overconfident about their own fluid dynamics knowledge, for instance.

You are deeply into "Not even wrong" territory.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Did you forget HCQ already? Lots of "positive reports" and yet controlled studies shows that it kills more Covid patients than leaving them untreated.

We have data and hypotheses showing that it's mostly continuous exposure that matters (which means that nongroup workers are better off than we expected and casual interactions to buy groceries and such are safer than expected), and yet everybody wants to get back into groups--which is known wrong. Two Mother's Day gatherings account for more than 50% of the Covid cases in Santa Cruz county.

Data by itself is meaningless. Data leads to a "falsifiable hypothesis" which can then be tested. AFTER the test passes or fails, you modify your Bayesian priors and your working tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Remember how the scientific method works: if you make a hypothesis, it's the most fragile thing in the universe -- a single falsification is all it takes to send you packing.

So, every time someone trots out "the plural of anecdote is not data" when presented with a refutation, this tells us something important... Like it or not, that's just how it works.

A group's CFR is almost the only thing that matters to that specific group. If the CFR is low, it literally does not matter at all how, or how fast you got infected -- the statistical outcomes are now known! The "continuous exposure" vs. "casual interactions" thing? That R-0; interesting, but almost irrelevant vs. CFR. In fact, once low group-CFR has been ascertained, the "normal behavior case" R-0 defines the societal infection/immunity rate required to achieve their group's contribution to societal herd immunity, but otherwise is of little interest: the average group participant just wants to gain immunity, as quickly as possible, to provide protection for the high-risk groups.

So, the fact that multiple independent instances of (accidentally measured, statistically significant) high rates of group infection without demise, leading to a low group CFR are extremely surprising, and that should have led to a "stop work, tools down" moment for those engineering our societal response. But, it did not.

That is disappointing.

I think the most disappointing thing, to me, is how many in our society are more than ready and willing to throw the innocent, high-risk elderly and those with co-morbidities "under the bus", just to avoid their own (very low) CFR.

Take it like a man/woman.

Because your own stated criterion is that we need to be able to justify what we're currently doing based on scientific knowledge. We cannot justify most of the things we're currently doing on that basis.

> The idea is we should live in reality

We apparently don't agree on what "reality" actually is, at least with respect to how much of an emergency CO2 emissions are. You think they're a dire emergency. I think they're not an emergency at all. You will, I take it, claim to justify your belief that they are a dire emergency based on some kind of scientific knowledge. But it isn't. Nobody has a good enough predictive track record about the climate to make such a claim. So this claimed "knowledge" isn't actually knowledge at all; it's just people's beliefs and hypotheses and speculations. And that isn't a good enough basis to dictate public policy to everyone. Which is one of the key points the article we are discussing in this thread is making.