Most mad scientists are actually mad engineers.
Comment on STEM
WastedJobe@feddit.de 3 months ago
My engineering friends and me propose that physicists should be referred to as theoretical engineers.
Steve@startrek.website 3 months ago
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 3 months ago
As someone with an engineering degree and a science degree, scientists are absolutely nothing like engineers.
Gork@lemm.ee 3 months ago
They’ve got some things in common.
Technical aptitude. Complete unawareness, or purposeful neglect, of social norms. Science related dad jokes.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 3 months ago
True, but I mainly mean in terms of their attitude towards research and their level of skepticism and critical thinking when presented with new information.
Engineers are always thinking in terms of “how can I make this work?” and scientists are trained to think in terms of “where does this theory/method break?”
This means that in general, engineers are far more likely to assume one positive result is significant, whereas scientists are far more likely to be looking at and looking homes in experiment methodology. This is a generalization, but in my experience, engineers are far more likely to fall for pseudoscience BS. Granted, my experience is mostly in chemistry and chemical engineering, but this idea in general has been a topic of discussion and research in peer-reviewed literature for years.
Literati@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Similarly, from an engineer’s perspective, scientists are a great addition to the working group when you need to find the flaws in the system, but awful when you actually just need something to go into the real world and work 80% of the time ;)
Especially when you’re time constrained.
PrimeMinisterKeyes@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Doing research, I used to work with mathematicians, engineers AND physicists on a daily basis for years. Physicists were the least fun. Most of them seemed to think of themselves as a sort of Jesuits of Science. As in: “I just figured this out, and already it’s set in stone, why do you even argue with me?” Mathematicians and engineers were a lot humbler, more down-to-earth. Also, some of them were astonishingly edgy in a very positive way, and I like that.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’ve heard applied mathematics used for us physicists but that one’s new, nice
oce@jlai.lu 3 months ago
There are different kinds of physics researchers and it doesn’t look like what physics lessons show in university, which is mostly theory. Most are not theoricians, they work on experiments and analyze results, they design and build instruments similarly to engineers. It seems the main difference is the kind of question they want to answer to: scientific question vs client need.
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 3 months ago
What of experimental physicists?
marcos@lemmy.world 3 months ago
“Theory engineers” would be precise and correct.
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 3 months ago
Not at all. People (engineers?) seem to forget that experimental physicists exist
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 3 months ago
I propose engineers not be allowed to name things. Not everything needs to be an “engineer”
Doombot1@lemmy.one 3 months ago
What are you, an engineer engineer?
circuitfarmer@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Now hiring for an Engineer². Don’t apply if you dont have 20+ years experience with LLMs
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 months ago
We aren’t the ones who did that. You need to have taken statics and thermo otherwise you’re just a sparkling tradesperson
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
an enginear
AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 3 months ago
What if I took statics but swapped thermo for emag theory? I feel like that’s pretty even.
lightnegative@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Hey, don’t knock the Sandwich Engineers at Subway. They do the Lord’s work