SoundAndMotion
Active Member
My goal is a good-natured, civil, fun, back and forth about scientists and engineers. If this thread becomes hostile or endless back and forth sniping, I’ll beg Amir or Thomas to move it to fight club, or just delete it.
Forty years ago, I started working in a Tokamak Fusion Research Lab. Since no neutrons were ever produced, there was no fusion, and a better name would have been Plasma Physics of Tokamaks, but, you know, politics. Roughly half the faculty, post-docs and grad students were engineers, the other half scientists (physicists). There was a friendly rivalry between the two groups, which went right over my head at first. I didn’t get the difference. Since then, after a BS in Physics and PhD in Neurobiology, I have always worked alongside both, some very smart scientists and very smart engineers.
… and the friendly rivalry continued.
My super-biased take (which incorrectly assumes two monolithic and completely separate groups):
Scientists are open-minded skeptics (with some relevant knowledge too). Due mainly to quantum mechanics and special relativity 100-ish years ago, we are open to counter-intuitive, strange, crazy ideas that fly in the face of every textbook. The ideas can go completely against common sense. We’re open to almost any idea, and are willing to take a further look, if convincing evidence if provided (open-minded + skeptic). “Convincing” is absolutely dependent on how counter-intuitive or crazy the idea is. QM and SR are excellent examples, but I can’t think of others, so they are rare. This supports the need for convincingness.
We think all knowledge is potentially incomplete, and may need to be supplemented with new information, but there would always be something like the correspondence principle.
Unfortunately, some twist this honesty into “we don’t know everything. You can’t prove that quantum-something-or-other can’t explain how these magic rocks improve sound when placed on the cables”. But that is the cost of being honest.
It is fun for us to think about how could a crazy idea be true. How can you test the idea?
I know many scientists won’t subscribe to my take.
Engineers are knowledgeable, smart skeptics. They don’t need to be open-minded, because they have proven knowledge. “Don’t open your mind so much that your brains fall out - ROFLMAO” They are very practical - they need to get stuff done and don’t have time or desire to entertain crazy, unproven ideas.
It is an utter waste of time to even think about every crazy idea in, for example, audio. Even if some new quantum-effect is found, this would lead to a correspondence principle, that shows the new effect is irrelevant to all things audio. Maxwell’s Equations, Coulomb’s Law and Kirchoff’s Law explain EVERYTHING audio. We can measure everything relevant to audio. Even if the measurement has never been done, tell us exactly what you want to measure, and we’ll find a way to measure it.
I know many (most?) engineers won’t subscribe to my take.
Let’s see if this leads to fun ribbing or a flame war. If appropriate, I’ll pull from the last couple decades of my work to compare scientific and engineering approaches to auditory (or just sensory) perception.
Forty years ago, I started working in a Tokamak Fusion Research Lab. Since no neutrons were ever produced, there was no fusion, and a better name would have been Plasma Physics of Tokamaks, but, you know, politics. Roughly half the faculty, post-docs and grad students were engineers, the other half scientists (physicists). There was a friendly rivalry between the two groups, which went right over my head at first. I didn’t get the difference. Since then, after a BS in Physics and PhD in Neurobiology, I have always worked alongside both, some very smart scientists and very smart engineers.
… and the friendly rivalry continued.
My super-biased take (which incorrectly assumes two monolithic and completely separate groups):
Scientists are open-minded skeptics (with some relevant knowledge too). Due mainly to quantum mechanics and special relativity 100-ish years ago, we are open to counter-intuitive, strange, crazy ideas that fly in the face of every textbook. The ideas can go completely against common sense. We’re open to almost any idea, and are willing to take a further look, if convincing evidence if provided (open-minded + skeptic). “Convincing” is absolutely dependent on how counter-intuitive or crazy the idea is. QM and SR are excellent examples, but I can’t think of others, so they are rare. This supports the need for convincingness.
We think all knowledge is potentially incomplete, and may need to be supplemented with new information, but there would always be something like the correspondence principle.
Unfortunately, some twist this honesty into “we don’t know everything. You can’t prove that quantum-something-or-other can’t explain how these magic rocks improve sound when placed on the cables”. But that is the cost of being honest.
It is fun for us to think about how could a crazy idea be true. How can you test the idea?
I know many scientists won’t subscribe to my take.
Engineers are knowledgeable, smart skeptics. They don’t need to be open-minded, because they have proven knowledge. “Don’t open your mind so much that your brains fall out - ROFLMAO” They are very practical - they need to get stuff done and don’t have time or desire to entertain crazy, unproven ideas.
It is an utter waste of time to even think about every crazy idea in, for example, audio. Even if some new quantum-effect is found, this would lead to a correspondence principle, that shows the new effect is irrelevant to all things audio. Maxwell’s Equations, Coulomb’s Law and Kirchoff’s Law explain EVERYTHING audio. We can measure everything relevant to audio. Even if the measurement has never been done, tell us exactly what you want to measure, and we’ll find a way to measure it.
I know many (most?) engineers won’t subscribe to my take.
Let’s see if this leads to fun ribbing or a flame war. If appropriate, I’ll pull from the last couple decades of my work to compare scientific and engineering approaches to auditory (or just sensory) perception.
Later
, how very Scandinavian progressive of you .. you never let me down in that regard 
