[dj_mc_merlin]

It's a playful jab at a category of people I am part of too, although I do not share that belief. The statement I made is wrong on purpose regardless (for light comedic effect): not only engineers hold that belief, nor are they the only ones who do.

There is a significant overlap (higher than a random person's picked from the population) between engineers and what I would call "fundamentalist rationalists". That is, people who believe in reason and science to the point they wrap the speedometer back around to religious belief again. Those people become unable to think outside that framework and consider nuanced solutions. Not everything worth solving has measurable or falsifiable solutions. The world can be very uncertain and work against all common sense at times. This doesn't mean one shouldn't attempt to make sense of it obviously, but science does not a god make. It may, hopefully, but pretending it is that way now is no good.

[TeMPOraL]

I'd honestly consider your take as lacking nuance. Or lacking a dimension.

Accepting uncertainty doesn't mean abandoning objectivity. On the contrary - difficulties in objectively measuring things or falsifying hypotheses are best handled with mathematical tools, which absolutely can work with uncertain quantities (that's what probability theory is for). Throwing hands in the air and saying "it's too difficult therefore there's no objectivity", or "it can go whichever way, so it may as well go the way I like", is not the solution.

[dj_mc_merlin]

I don't disagree with that notion actually. I personally do not believe in objective truth, philosophically speaking. I do believe in creating ever more useful incarnations of a relative truth, and that so far the methods which you mentioned have been the most useful.

There is no golden hammer however. To give a concrete example, I believe our understanding of mental issues using a scientific framework is woefully inadequate. In the future, we may posses enough information to be able to apply scientific principles. In the present, we have managed to control some mental illnesses to a degree using pharmaceutics.

Talking with various people who have had the misfortune of being born with troublesome minds and experiencing my own mind has led me to believe that a large amount of mental illnesses, especially depression and anxiety, are misidentified due to our infatuation to treat the mental plane as analog to the physical body, so as to be able to apply our scientific knowledge to it. The body is hardware, hard and physical, the mind is software, it is changeable. Many are born into this world however without the necessary tools or aptitude to actually go through this process of change and heal their mind when it gets into a broken state. Their frustrations pile up, making them ever more ineffective, all while they are blind to the fact that they could wake up the next day and.. feel completely fine.

It is none of their own fault in a way, as these skills are barely ever taught, and not too many people seem even aware that it's something just as possible as moving your arm. They treat it as if the only way they can "get fixed" is external, as if their car broke down.

Humanity did and still has ways of undergoing these processes. Rituals of progression from one stage of life to another, as well as yearly/monthly etc. rituals affirming one's position in life were more important than they are nowadays. As much as "they do nothing", the mental effect was most definitely not nothing. The human brain always seeks meaning, and lack of stimulus is its greatest enemy.

That is not to suggest that the world was an idyllic paradise full of meaning before. Unlikely. But it's hard to deny God did die somehow.

[robocat]

> Furthermore, only engineers believe most of the important issues in the world actually have an objective answer to them.

No true engineer believes that. All engineers must make compromises. Anyone that uses black and white thinking simply cannot engineer (unless you are using the term in a strictly legal sense).

[robertlagrant]

I'm not sure that the other end of the rationality axis is "nuanced".