Hacker News Reader

Comment by mieseratte | Hacker News Reader

I'd had an engineer recently fracture his foot running in a race.

He took a day off, went to a doctor and was told he need to wear a boot, stay off his foot for a while, etc. He proceeds to come into the office, proudly informing everyone how he knows better than the doctor, and that he only needs to rub peppermint oil and wear a compression sock. All while hobbling around the office, clearly in pain. Everyone pleaded with him to heed to the doctor's advice, and I even showed him how I have a messed up arm from a childhood incident that improperly healed and tried explaining the necessity of heeding basic medical guidance.

Didn't matter, this engineer "just knows" better than a doctor.

This is a weird world.

View on HN

This sounds like a delusional person who happens to be an 'engineer', rather than someone who who is 1st & foremost, or archetypally, an engineer.

Its so common for engineers to have excessive confidence in their opinions about subjects far beyond their areas of competence that there's a term for it: engineer's disease (or engineer's syndrome).

This is true for the general population though. The only reason why the term exists is because other engineers expect it not to apply to engineers. Really the concept says more about us and our expectations of educated engineers rather than the engineers with bad opinions.

You could even go so far as to say those wielding the term also fall under the term: outside of your expertise, you're assuming engineers shouldn't have bad opinions. There's evidence abound that this is wrong - engineers can have bad opinions just like the general population. Yet some still insist on calling it out as "special" despite presenting no studies showing they're more likely to have these bad opinions.

You might find this study interesting[1]. The paper sensationalizes it a bit IMO by classifying people as "bullshitters" when it seems to me more like "overconfidence" in their knowledge. Quality of the study/headline aside, I do wonder if there's a selection bias for knowledge overconfidence in engineering as parent comment suggests. I would imagine people who make good engineers are the type who aren't intimidated by "knowledge gaps" and they assume (rightly or wrongly) that they'll be able to figure out a solution even where they have little or no expertise.

[1] [PDF] http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf

> This is true for the general population though.

Not really. Engineer's disease is specific to engineers, because at its core is the implicit belief that engineering (and science/math) is the ur-discipline whose mindset and techniques are universally applicable to all problems. That often comes with the attitude that other mindsets and techniques are inferior (e.g. those from the humanities in particular) and/or that engineers are more competent and can easily master needed parts of other disciplines when they choose (and thus the practitioners of those disciplines have little authority).

It is something I have noticed, too. Engineers seem more likely to trot out their degrees and claim expertise in matters outside of engineering.

(this does seem to apply to "software engineers", too. But maybe I shouldn't elaborate).

OTOH, most of my fellow scientists are pretty chill and readily admit the boundaries of their knowledge.

I'd need to see some rigorous comparisons to other professions to conclude it's "so common".

The mere act of naming an "engineer's syndrome" could arise from the fact it's peculiarly remarkable against type, or satisfying to resentful observers - rather than actually common. And, once named, such a designation would tend to collect confirmation-bias-feeding anecdotal examples.

I've encountered cranks from every walk of life. I see more engineer cranks, too, but that's simply because professionally, I interact with more engineers than, say, hairstylists or bricklayers or actresses. And have you ever let a taxi/uber driver just expound on their confidently-expressed theories-of-the-world?

I've met a number of very smart engineers who believe that because they can think through engineering problems rationally and solve hard challenges, that they can apply that skill to biomedical / sociological / other complex problems (and that the experts in that field are less intelligent than they are). The problem is when they lack the academic background and rely on what they already believe to be true, regardless of whether it's factual.

I've met many "archetypal" engineers that are totally off their rockers when it comes to alternative medicine.

Me too. (Indeed, some would say that about me!)

But without a comparison to the base rate of "off their rockers when it comes to alt medicine" in the general population, that 'many' doesn't mean much. And alternative medicine is very very popular across many populations!

"I think we can build that in a week"

Sounds like this person confused advice for a sprain with his fracture. In case of a sprain (ligament injury), the standard of care has changed over the years: whereas the advice was to immobilize the injury and rest, now it is to start using it again as soon as possible. Of course, I’m not a doctor and there might be all sorts of exceptions to this.

A fracture is totally different and needs different care.

I think a good engineer knows when to heed the advice of subject matter experts.

It is not just engineers—recall Steve Jobs’ Fruititarian approach to health.

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com