[gall]

With all due civility, this is stupid. The fact that we as a species are short staffed and short on time doesn't mean that engineering strategies are inappropriate. On the contrary, they're the only game in town. Triage and problem selection are themselves algorithms with defined optimisation criteria. That you take issue with the selection of those criteria (e.g. elegance, aesthetics) by people trying to solve their personal pain points doesn't repudiate the framework.

[smackjer]

IF engineering strategies are not always inappropriate, does that necessarily imply that they are always appropriate?

I think the point of the post is that there's more to life than "frameworks". Not every problem is worth solving, and not every problem is an engineering problem.

[lmm]

What's a non-engineering problem? The examples given in the article, love and happiness (I don't believe in free will), certainly are engineering problems; or rather, treating them as engineering problems (the "lifehacker" approach) will generally lead to greater success.

As for some problems not being worth solving, sure. But that's a key facet of the engineering/lifehacking approach: don't prematurely optimize, and don't try and optimize anything until you've figured out how to measure your goal.

So unless you have an example of a problem where engineering strategies don't apply, I'm going to keep applying them.

[smackjer]

The question isn't whether problems should be solved using engineering strategies -- in general, I agree that they should. Rather, it's whether everything in life is an engineering problem.

Here's an example: When I was 18 I wanted to listen to some new music. This was when we got our music on CDs, and we didn't have algorithms like iTunes Genius to help us find something we might like. I bought something just because I liked the cover art. Fortunately I ended up liking the album. (It was this one: http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/dink/dink/)

[lmm]

Which shows... what, exactly? That a non-engineering approach to music discovery is better? No, you got lucky. That your music discovery procedure was adequate and not worth investing time to optimize? Sure, but that's an engineering judgement.

[sopooneo]

I'm not looking for official citation, but it seems unjustified to state that "treating [love and happiness] as engineering problems will generally lead to greater success." I am open to that possibility, but it doesn't seem at all obviously true to me. For many people, I feel like letting there brains run on instinct works well for many problems. I feel confident there are certain problems where conscious decision making can actually get in the way.