A more standard definition in my tenure in academia is that scientists solve problems because they want to know the answer. Engineers solve problems because they want the problem to be solved.

In any case, the difference is just, heh, academic.

I’m very much the latter.

Agreed.

I might also argue that those people are all still engineers.

Engineer just means “problem solver”. Everyone gets paid for solving problems.

The real question in my head is how far does this go?

Sometimes the problem is that these burgers need flipping. Protein disk translocation engineers? I’m cool with that.

I always thought about going to be a farmer. Then I watched some videos from farmers and realized they are also engineers.

A large faction of engineers, especially software-type engineers, have these types of hobbies.

I’m sitting here right beside the heirloom quality (compared to most furniture) coffee table I made in my garage with my nearly complete wood shop.

I make stuff in two ways in my day job. I design something and someone else makes it, or it’s just some idea as software.

Engineers are a type. We’re just wired differently from most other people.

Governments are organized according to political processes rather than rational ones.

Even under ideal conditions, any (especially larger) organizational body is extremely difficult to keep from falling into these types of irrationality.

We have many names for variations on the phenomenon. I’ll cite groupthink. You can fall down a rabbit hole on your own from there.

Pretty much all major books are published as audiobooks as well. Even ones that have computer code written in them, which is not something that you’d ever expect to have read out loud.

It used to be that books would be “narrated for the blind” where not a lot of attention would be put into the audio. Nowadays, there tends to be a lot more effort put into them. I suppose that’s because they don’t need to be packaged as 12 to 20 cassette tapes or CDs any longer.

There’s the added element that a narrator can ruin or improve things. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a wonderful book, but the narrator displays an unprofessionally slim knowledge of physics.

Then there’s World War Z. I’m not sure that there’s a better way to tell that story than the audio book. It’s the exact interview style that the author intended.

Orson Scott Card really likes audio books, so the Ender’s Game series is really good.

Absolutely.

My cat regularly draws blood. Cats are much less human bred than dogs, but, in any case he can’t really maul a child. Same with chihuahuas and plenty of other small dogs.

Your last paragraph seems pretty extreme to me. I agree in principle and do advocate for trying to remove these genes from the gene pool, which may involve careful breeding and/or letting them go extinct.

I’m curious if there’s a story behind that paragraph?

It’s more complicated than that. If your can’t stop your lab from licking a stranger to death, that’s completely different from not being able to stop your pitbull or doberman from mauling a toddler.

Yes, people should be responsible dog owners, but only certain breeds regularly snap and kill or maim.

If you don’t think that dog breed is a good predictor of behavior, you have not spent enough time around dogs.

For thousands of years dogs have been bred for specific purposes. These behaviors are innate. They do not need to be taught. Sure, you can train them to be better, but the behaviors are written all over their genes

My grandparents had shepherds. The dogs had never seen sheep or been taught anything about herding, but they would attempt to herd all my cousins when they were children, then get agitated when the children wouldn’t herd. Here’s some puppies doing it

Here’s some pointers pointing. They have not been taught this (and frankly I can’t imagine even training most dog breeds to do that)

Here’s a boxer dog boxing. Here’s one spinning. They aren’t taught this, and they all do it.

There’s hounds rolling in stink. There’s sight hounds and smell hounds. There’s retrievers retrieving, being irresistibly drawn to water, and carrying around things very gently. There’s huskies being extremely energetic and vocal.

I could go on.

Do you really think that dogs that have been bred to fight other dogs to the death and bear enormous amounts of pain (game) before giving up are not dangerous? You’re mental.

Sure they’re sweet to their owners. That’s because people who breed animals for blood sports are not the kind of people who would have trouble immediately removing from the gene pool any of their animals that are disloyal.

It’s not like it’s just pitbulls. Dobermans are implicated too. They’re guard dogs but for humans rather than predator animals.

People with agendas can play all kinds of statistical games to show what they want to show. In the scientific world, these kinds of tricks stand out. That’s why any non-trivial summary statistic is useless without a large text explaining the methodology.

This is one of those things that is so obvious it boggles my mind that people even question it.

Of course dogs that are bred to murder are dangerous.

Most people suck at software engineering.

Plus, there’s always the temptation to do it the shitty way and “fix it later” (which never happens).

You pay your technical debt. One way or another.

It’s way worse than any gangster.

Fun fact. One (anecdotal) way of relieving sea sickness is to start driving the boat.

There could be something to it, too. You’d be focusing your eyes on the water and anticipating the motions.

I’m assuming the 1997 in your name is your birth year.

If that’s correct, Larson stopped this comic quite a while before you were born.

You live in a very different world from the people that this comic was written for.

I very much don’t disagree, but one of the reasons we hear about these issues in the US is that we have a much larger “minority” (meaning not the people in power, even if there is a plurality) population.

In places like South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, there’s either a homogenous population where this doesn’t make sense as a criticism or it’s just not being reported on. There’s huge amounts of racism all over the world.

The US and Canada have problems, but there are going to be pains as we identify and try to correct these racial injustices.

Remember: while colonialism and triangle trade slavery were the worst examples of racism, and the West invented that, it did not invent racism.

What it did invent was feeling bad about racism and trying to improve things.

This is not to defend or deflect anything. It’s more that I find “consciousness raising” to be effective.

AI is not a meaningful term.

If you ask people if a piece of software that never loses at tic tac toe is AI, most will say yes. Everyone I’ve asked that didn’t already know why I was asking said yes.

I cannot separate that piece of software from any piece of software.

I’ve literally had this conversation with the marketing department. It’s marketing. Tell me what you want to say is AI, and I’ll give you a justification.

My great aunt Ginny (long gone) also used to be a dish.

I’m closer to the old lady that the young ladies.

Can I do /c/fuckimold ?

Also. Let’s just say… I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

Yes… interesting… I’m not sure how to respond.

Are you responding to my post or one you made up? You seem to be putting a lot of words in my mouth.

Of course I mean clade. Of course humans are apes. Of course scientists say birds are dinosaurs. You even say that “no one is arguing that.” And that’s exactly how taxonomy works.

Scientists say “non avian dinosaurs” amazingly often. That statement doesn’t make any sense unless birds are dinosaurs.

You seem to have stumbled on the fact that fish is not a useful term because you cannot come up with a consistent definition of fish that doesn’t include beloved character actor Margo Martindale without excluding things that are obviously fish. It’s the same with “tree”.

You are correct that dinosaurs are not birds, but birds are dinosaurs in the same sense that you are a mammal.