Mr. Fix It - The Engineer's Mentality in Politics

> In addition, while it is true that judgements of value cannot be reduced to judgements of facts (i.e. the "is-ought problem"), one must acknowledge that judgements of value must be based upon judgements of fact. If you're basing your values upon incorrect facts, your values are very likely to be mistaken. For example, if you state that another person is not deserving of moral consideration, that is a judgement of value which may or may not be valid. However, if your justification for that judgement is hearsay evidence or religious bias, then that judgement starts to look very shaky.

You've committed the same error. One ramification of the is-ought divide is that ultimately, ethical norms are assertions divorced from empirical basis. Saying that 'murder is wrong' is epistemologically very similar whether it is based on some religious text or something like "what would society be like if we allowed people to murder each other?". It is simply expressing a preference for one empirical state over another empirical state, and absent some transcendental determinant, no final conclusion can decisively be reached.

Actually, I don't really see the problem with viewing society like a building. We have a constitution, an economic system, and the rule of law, all of which combine to form a societal foundation; this foundation has been flexible enough to scale our society from 13 states and a few million people to 50 and hundreds of millions; some people (slaves, etc.) were left out of the building and have slowly been brought in, though they were given the worst rooms...

The problem the author has with this is in the next sentence: "Its parts are people, not struts or circuits." I find this somewhat silly. When examined in numbers, humans are quite predictable, or fields like sociology and anthropology wouldn't exist. Advertising wouldn't be effective. Why shouldn't we approach the development of society from these perspectives? Even if it isn't some sort of panacea that can solve all our problems, it should at least be a step up from the mishmash of business interests, religion and pandering that controls large parts of our government and society currently.

> The endless fuzzy muddle of public life is going to seem despicable to people who are used to pursuing their ends with clarity and rigor. But society isn’t a building. Its parts are people, not struts or circuits. That is why a humanistic education is far more useful to the policymaker (and by extension, the citizen) than a technical one.

I call it the "binary geek fallacy". Some people tend to assume that scientists, engineers and especially programmers deal only with hard facts and precise measurements, think in "zeroes and ones" (literally heard that in a recent discussion with friends) and reject emotional thinking in favour of logical, which - they say - isn't able to describe the entire reality (or even the more important parts).

It is of course wrong. The thing they don't seem to understand is that math is capable of not only describing "hard facts and precise measurements", but fuzzy facts and educated guesses as well. And it does it much, much better than intuition, or "heart", or common sense. Moreover, STEM thinking allows you to abstract over those sophisticated, supposedly too imprecise things, to get something one can work on. If something is too difficult to comprehend, we'll keep using Science and Maths and Engineering on it until it becomes easy, and thus we'll have another tool in our arsenal. That is how progress in thinking is done.

There's also no problem with (false) logical vs. emotional thinking modes dichotomy. Just pull both of them into the model you work with, and you'll be fine.

Math is nothing more, than applied thinking - human brain at its best.

>Here are some of the things that the humanities, and the habits of alertness that they foster, will teach you: that people have different but equally valid perspectives;

People do not have different but equally valid perspectives, it's a recipe to pass bullshit around.

> that the truth is not necessarily hard and precise;

Of course it's not. But engineers can, and do deal with it quite well, using methods much better than waving hands and doing things because they feel or sound good.

> that judgments of value cannot be reduced to judgments of fact;

Wait until neuro- and cognitive scienctists disassemble the brain. A new chapter will start in discussion about values.

> The problem the author has with this is in the next sentence: "Its parts are people, not struts or circuits." I find this somewhat silly. When examined in numbers, humans are quite predictable, or fields like sociology and anthropology wouldn't exist. Advertising wouldn't be effective. Why shouldn't we approach the development of society from these perspectives?

Of course we should. It's called abstracting things. And, just as you write, it's much more effective than "the mishmash of business interests, religion and pandering that controls large parts of our government and society currently."

> It is simply expressing a preference for one empirical state over another empirical state, and absent some transcendental determinant, no final conclusion can decisively be reached.

But humans tend to universally value some states over other, and it seems to be hard-wired into our brains. I think that when the neuro/cognitive scientists finally disassemble our firmware, we should have a new, interesting take on this problem.