> "Each person leads with their beliefs and emotions. . ."
This is a common problem but there's something I'd call the Feynman solution, as he describes it in several of his lectures (New Zealand QED lecture I think). It's probably applicable to engineering problems as well as to scientific research.
Basically, you have to train yourself not to be emotionally tied to a particular outcome. In Feynman's case, he was talking about scientific theories about the nature of the universe, in the context of a question about whether he 'liked' quantum theory or not. As he put it, you don't get to tell nature how to behave, if you want to understand nature you're going to have to accept that some cherished theory or other that you wanted to be true is going to end up in the garbage bin of failed notions. A corollary is, have something else to get emotionally involved in, family, art, music, etc.
It seems the same with engineering of all sorts. Love that brilliant code you wrote, love that language you've spent all that time learning, love that system you spent a decade building, love those architectural blueprints you slaved over for six months? If it doesn't work for the problem at hand, it's best to toss it out the window and try something else, and getting emotional about it is a mistake. Equivalently, tossing something that works just because you have antipathy towards it for some reason is not the way to go.
Otherwise you end up like all those physicists who hated quantum mechanics so much that they either quit physics or spent decades of effort on futile attempts to refute it.
I think comparing people in groups who are competing for glory and promotions to idealistic scientists trying to find the truth of the universe isn't accurate.
Science is a collective endeavor that transcends any group boundaries. The objects of study are simple physical entities. They don't have dreams or goals and cannot be negotiated with.
People in corporations have a strong vested interest in being attached to goals that would help their own careers. People job hop so often it's easily possible that any concern shown for the good of the company isnt sincere. Nobody will come out and say - I built this solution and my promotion depends on it so we just go with this. Anyone savvy will learn to couch their interests in the language of collaboration and solidarity. Repeat this across hundreds of people at many different levels and you have the dysfunction that is typical to any large organization.
The only way to fix this is to work on culture and incentives. And it's a constant work in progress. At scale everything becomes about culture.
Even science isn't free of this hence the saying - "Science advances one funeral at a time".
Eventually this happens to companies too and hence we need a way for companies to die without taking down the world with them. Hence I would say - Capitalism advances one dead company at a time.
Well, Kuhn talks about two competing paradigms. In the corporate world, you have a large number of people with contrary interests--in other words, n-paradigms where n > 2.
“ It seems the same with engineering of all sorts. Love that brilliant code you wrote, love that language you've spent all that time learning, love that system you spent a decade building, love those architectural blueprints you slaved over for six months? If it doesn't work for the problem at hand, it's best to toss it out the window and try something else, and getting emotional about it is a mistake. Equivalently, tossing something that works just because you have antipathy towards it for some reason is not the way to go.”
I am pretty good at this when I can work alone but once you have team members and have to justify things to management it gets increasingly hard.
That's the part they keep forgetting. Often, in the face of a management hierarchy, foolhardily perpetuating a failing approach (until team change) can be a better strategy than trial and error. This is not the fault of the ICs, but rather a problem with how deep management strategy goes (not deep at all) versus how deep management thinks it goes.
They can't distinguish failing strategies from good ones, but they can see, and punish observed mistakes. With such management, admitting mistakes or justifying strategy changes can be a very stupid approach.
> spent decades of effort on futile attempts to refute it.
They did just the right thing trying to refute it. They did as much good as those who spent their time trying to prove it. That's how science works by trying to prove it and disprove it.
They didn't get the glory of being right but their work was very important to show that QM could not be proven wrong.
Emotional detachment to engineering solutions is one of the hallmark of the maturity of a senior engineer. Senior here means in general being separated from new and inexperienced engineers, not to particular title.
Then another level beyond senior is that engineers start to be able to have emotional attachment to engineering problems. It's like back to the beginning when someone is new and inexperienced. The difference is that the attachment now is about the joy of learning, instead of the frustration of feeling not be able to solve the problems easily.
>Otherwise you end up like all those physicists who hated quantum mechanics so much that they either quit physics or spent decades of effort on futile attempts to refute it.
Of course, there is a lot of hindsight at work here. If one of those physicists had succeeded in refuting quantum mechanics then we'd remember them as geniuses ahead of their time. I suspect that the practice of individual scientists in choosing which hypotheses to confirm or refute is highly irrational in general. It's just that we remember the people who guessed right (or who really did have some kind of deep insight – it's hard to tell).
I had no idea there was physicists that quit the field. Does anyone know any articles or anything on this? Sounds interesting to read what their thoughts were.
I'm by no means a physics historian. I'm pretty sure quantum physics pissed off Einstein so much he spent the rest of his career trying to refute it. "God does not play dice with the universe". I'm just some jackass on the internet, so I'll leave it to Hawking to talk about emotional attachment to determinism https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/does-god-play-d...
This is a common problem but there's something I'd call the Feynman solution, as he describes it in several of his lectures (New Zealand QED lecture I think). It's probably applicable to engineering problems as well as to scientific research.
Basically, you have to train yourself not to be emotionally tied to a particular outcome. In Feynman's case, he was talking about scientific theories about the nature of the universe, in the context of a question about whether he 'liked' quantum theory or not. As he put it, you don't get to tell nature how to behave, if you want to understand nature you're going to have to accept that some cherished theory or other that you wanted to be true is going to end up in the garbage bin of failed notions. A corollary is, have something else to get emotionally involved in, family, art, music, etc.
It seems the same with engineering of all sorts. Love that brilliant code you wrote, love that language you've spent all that time learning, love that system you spent a decade building, love those architectural blueprints you slaved over for six months? If it doesn't work for the problem at hand, it's best to toss it out the window and try something else, and getting emotional about it is a mistake. Equivalently, tossing something that works just because you have antipathy towards it for some reason is not the way to go.
Otherwise you end up like all those physicists who hated quantum mechanics so much that they either quit physics or spent decades of effort on futile attempts to refute it.