Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Engineers are cold and dead inside

A UK paper reports:
A study carried out by psychology researchers in Sweden has shown that people who go into engineering are less caring and empathetic than those who enter professions such as medicine.

Trick-cyclist Chato Rasoal and his colleagues determined this by surveying 200 students from six different study programs, using a "well-established questionnaire" which apparently reveals the degree of imagination, the ability to assume the perspective of others, and whether the subject cares about others.

The results were clear-cut, apparently: engineering students cared nothing for other human beings' feelings and had few of their own. They were cold-hearted and uncaring, remorseless human machines. By contrast the medical students were warm and bursting with empathy and love.

You might be speculating at this point that this is because a lot of medical students are women but hardly any engineering students are, and indeed Rasoal et al openly admit that "it's well known that women are more empathetic than men".
A reader commented:
"I cannot explain this bias against teaching math"

Really? You can't explain the bias against teaching math?

Math is logical. It requires and teaches logical and precise thinking about issues. When you confront a math problem, you look at the information, apply a formula, and achieve a result. Anyone who approaches the problem achieves the same result as long as they apply the formula correctly.

Judges hate this. They hate being told that the "right" answer is something other than what they think the answer should be. Logical, straightforward application of principles to achieve a result without biasing your analysis to achieve a desired result is anathema to judges and most of the legal system.

If dad teaches kids to look at the world rationally and logically, those kids might realize that the judges and lawyers that guided them away from their father are wrong.

I say this as a lawyer.
I am getting this T-shirt:
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When did some judge show that he was biased against a dad teaching math ?

George said...

Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph and Judge Heather D. Morse both complained about me teaching my daughters math and taking them to a math contest. They did not spell out their concerns, but they did use it to take my kids away.

Anonymous said...

They complained about everything you did with your daughters.