North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#361

Post by ddingus » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #358

ddingus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I love it and will vote to continue it every time. Do not mind if it is a jobs program. People need the work. Rain sucks. Handling gas sucks. I get to catch up on a text, queue a show up for driving and pretty much never mind a wait.

Don't you think there's some other job they could be doing that benefits society more?

Nope.

To clarify:

I am part of society and value my time. Having fuel pumped is a great deal. I benefit significantly. Others do as well. Apparently enough of us do.

Besides, basic labors really add up in our lives. They provide great value and the people who do them should earn enough to live a reasonable, dignified life same as anyone else.

I do not want to do basic labors, but will when required. There are more interesting uses of my time. Getting the use of that time is how we should value basic labors.

I value that highly.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#362

Post by ddingus » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #347

ddingus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I love it and will vote to continue it every time. Do not mind if it is a jobs program. People need the work. Rain sucks. Handling gas sucks. I get to catch up on a text, queue a show up for driving and pretty much never mind a wait.

queue a show up for driving shouldn't you not be watching shows while driving? Or do you mean podcasts or something?

Shows are aural, visual, etc.. when driving, I listen, though the content may contain video. Love listening to all sorts of stuff in the car.

I may abuse the general term "show", and am happy to own that as well as can't be arsed to improve. To me, it is all just a show.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#363

Post by ddingus » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #358

ddingus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I love it and will vote to continue it every time. Do not mind if it is a jobs program. People need the work. Rain sucks. Handling gas sucks. I get to catch up on a text, queue a show up for driving and pretty much never mind a wait.

Don't you think there's some other job they could be doing that benefits society more?

Second point: I do not feel it is necessary to maximize to that degree. We do not need to do that.

A little slack in the system is a very good thing. Think people with troubled past getting a start to build on. That is necessary, or we pay much harder in other ways.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#364

Post by xdmr » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

A lot of people seem to be splitting hairs over whether this guy's testimony or report in the trial is or isn't "practicing engineering," and whether that means that he's therefore clearly in violation of the rules and should be punished, or whether this proves that professional licensing is evil and should be abolished.

What's missing is the fact that the conduct in question happened in a courtroom. If I drive over a bridge and it collapses and kills me, I don't get to hire a lawyer and an expert witness from the afterlife and have them try to impeach the credibility of the bridge designer or demonstrate the unsuitability of his plans and, if I manage to convince a jury, I get to be resurrected. Since I can't do this, the state enacted some rules about what kind of qualifications the guy designing the bridge has to have.

But in a courtroom, if I don't like this unlicensed engineer the other side wants to put on the stand, I can try to prove he doesn't know what he's talking about. I can hire my own engineer to help me come up with tricky questions to make a fool of him on the stand and maybe prevent him being accepted as an expert. I can cross-examine him with help from my own engineer to prepare. I can have my own engineer testify to rebut his claims. I have all sorts of options besides causing him to be threatened with violation of professional licensing laws.

The point is that the professional licensing laws exist to protect people in situations like driving over a bridge. They do not exist to protect the public from the risk that unlicensed people may testify in court about engineering, thereby potentially producing injustice. This is because lawyers already exist to do this job, and are extensively trained and licensed to do it. That's why the lawsuit attacks the professional licensing laws as _overbroad_, not inappropriate in the context of certifying people to design bridges and that kind of thing.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#365

Post by ddingus » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #358

ddingus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I love it and will vote to continue it every time. Do not mind if it is a jobs program. People need the work. Rain sucks. Handling gas sucks. I get to catch up on a text, queue a show up for driving and pretty much never mind a wait.

Don't you think there's some other job they could be doing that benefits society more?

These may be three sub discussions, which is why they are separate replies.

Frankly, I would love a Federal and State based program to get more basic labor done. Think of the WPA and CCC from New Deal era times.

So many people need skills, an out from or alternative to service work. Not a thing wrong with service work, but many will want or need to do better. There are simply not enough better jobs for that to happen.

Our parks, roads, towns, many things need work. So, let's get that work done. People can get some real skills out of that stuff. Great! I happen to have many of them growing up how and where I did. I think nothing of building, repairing, whatever. It is familiar and I was shown the good stuff by skilled people. Frankly, these skills can be worth 6 figures in a life. Fix it, help others, improve it, build it, etc...

And when we have all that work in progress, maybe we can then discuss whether pumping gas is a priority or not. Nice problem to have, if you ask me. How can we have it?

That is the kind of what is worth what discussion I would welcome and require to reconsider fuel attendants.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#366

Post by unholythree » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #307

Swenrekcah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. some distracted guy on his cell phone accidentially rushing out in front of some car, getting killed in the process and traumatizing some driver I think this comment demonstrates the perverse value system I’m commenting against. I don’t mean this as an insult to you, merely to point out how people have been programmed to think people shouldn’t be able to live in a city without being terrified of their lives so…

> Cars have no business driving faster than 15-20mph on a city steet. Where do you live where you think it is reasonable to set a speed limit below 35 mph?

In New Orleans unless otherwise marked, streets with a neutral ground (median) are 35mph and without are 25mph. I'm usually pretty happy with that arrangement as both a motorist and pedestrian.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#367

Post by xdmr » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

dasudasu wrote: post #108

nomdep wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the article it says he declared that he wasn’t a licensed engineer. At most, you could argue that his expert testimony is not valid, saying that it is illegal it is a whole different deal. It smells like corruption of the NC government to me.

"I'm not a medical doctor, but here is a bunch of medical advice that should be used to prosecute this defendant." It doesn't sound that great either way. Either you have the expertise to make such judgments, or you don't, and shouldn't try to pass off legal opinions you can't legally make with a disclaimer, as if that absolves everything. I can fully understand someone getting irritated at this and trying to go one…

> "I'm not a medical doctor, but here is a bunch of medical advice that should be used to prosecute this defendant." It doesn't sound that great either way.

Yeah, it sounds like something the opposition's lawyer should try to prevent being accepted as expert witness testimony. I'm not a lawyer, but I have seen "My Cousin Vinny" so I understand that there are procedures for doing this.

On the other hand, maybe the opposition's lawyer wasn't able to prevent the witness from being accepted as an expert because the witness actually was an expert and ought to have been accepted as an expert, in spite of not being a doctor. Maybe she was a professor of pharmacology or something. Thus she could justifiably claim to say with expertise "X drug would be very likely to kill a patient of type T and should not be prescribed to them." But this sounds a lot like medical advice (I mean, a person with condition T who heard the testimony might decide not to take drug X), even though it isn't. It's expert witness testimony.

We try to prevent people from giving medical advice without a license because medical advice tends to be given in private to people who tend to trust it implictly and will thus suffer the consequences of it being dangerously wrong. When medical advice is given in public in front of a hostile enemy lawyer, this is less of a concern.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#368

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

xf1cf wrote: post #114

Swenrekcah wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the concept of “jaywalking” as a punishable offense is revolting to me.

Ignoring the ford conspiracies how exactly should jaywalking be treated then? It's both a danger to the drivers and the people. We can't get rid of cars and streets. That cat is over a hundred years outside of the bag. It's moved on, had it's own family, and died. Jaywalking as a punishable offense makes sense to me at least. The level of punishment is often excessive certainly. $250 fine for stepping onto the street…

[deleted]

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#369

Post by bastawhiz » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #215

bastawhiz wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acupuncture is snake oil, but I would very much prefer knowing that my acupuncturist has been checked out by someone qualified to check their skills. Just because it's snake oil doesn't mean that there are not expectations around its safety and application.

> checked out by someone qualified to check their skills Well sure, we'd all like that. But those of us who have experience dealing with government regulatory bodies (even justifiable ones like building inspectors, fire inspectors, etc.) are skeptical for good reason. The competence of your licensing overlords will vary greatly.

The alternative is private bodies that answer to nobody, or no regulators at all. The remedy to bad government should not be no government, it should be reform and oversight.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#370

Post by gavinhoward » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #267

gavinhoward wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the nurses lose their license if there is an element of truth to what they are saying? For example, vaccines probably don't cause autism, but it's possible they could be an aggravating factor. Further research necessary.

>Further research necessary. The autism link to vaccines isn't at the "further research necessary" stage, it is at the "not absolutely impossible but much evidence against" stage. The only reason the link exists at all is that vaccines and first signs of autism can happen at similar times and often a vaccine will make a person/small child briefly feel unwell which gets pointed to as a "first sign" because humans find…

Until it's absolutely impossible, further research is necessary. Who knows? It could be a combination of things. Perhaps vaccines are not aggravating factors by themselves; maybe you also need to combine them with, I don't know, Tylenol or another pain killer.

Saying the equivalent of "the science is settled" is always not true because how could we possibly know all of the variables that matter. And in science, all factors matter.