Watching Elon Musk's recent movements made me think again; engineerism; As always, we should avoid generalizing a certain group, but just as there’s an image associated with Wall Street, we can’t deny that certain images are associated with engineers;
It is related to the characteristics of the field; While theoretical approaches are emphasized in science, engineers are more focused on experimenting and fixing as they go;This approach has brought a lot of important progress and advances to our society;And this engineering mindset is becoming more important in an increasingly complex society;
It’s a recursive loop: engineers bring new technology, which naturally requires people to understand it better, and thus people with an engineering mindset gain more power in society;
I call this engineeringism;This engineer-led approach has made things that were considered impossible achievable; For example, Bill Gates made unparalleled improvements in combating malaria using his engineering background;
However, engineers often oversimplify problems;Simplification or thinking by substituting with a model is encouraged in engineering, but in social problems, we always need to care for the individuals ignored within these models;
This is where politics interferes;While we can distinguish important and less important problems in engineering, in real-life problems, due to the restriction or assumption that every individual has equal rights, we need to give equal weight to each individual or at least consider compensation;Ignoring individual dignity and treating them as a whole might create a clear model, but it infringes upon one of the most important premises of our society;