Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

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Belief in astrology looks a lot like the personifying animals or anthropomorphizing of inert items. Maybe the toaster hates you, or maybe it's just faulty and confirmation bias is strong.

Belief in astrology puts words to the chaos and randomness of life. There's something very human about how we try to add life and agency to everything: mother earth, ghosts, forests, grumpy co-workers, broken toasters, and the actions of those around us that don't make sense. We try to breathe life and meaning into everything. That's why I don't get too keyed up about it. I think plenty of people "believe" in astrology about as much as they believe the toaster hates them, which is probably quite a bit.

We have to remember, as STEM people we have to see the world exactly as it is, without any superstition or mystery. But the average person has the ability to live in a world filled with mystery and magic that is backed by a lifetime of confirmation bias.

What if /every/ printer hates you, though? No, don't answer that.

You think that by studying engineering you see the world as it is?

More like I'm faced with realities when other people see magic. When the WiFi signal is spotty, the reality of the situation forces me to understand at least the basics of how it works and how the signal is getting blocked. When my database is acting slow, I can't just say "well the moon is half so..." I have to instrument and figure out what's happening and fix it. That at least pulls away a lot of the mystery.

When you're responsible for something you have to understand it better (or at least get good at making justifications). All people do this, they just typically aren't responsible for keeping an object or program working.

I don't see why you would have a superior mental model about subjects you are not intimately familiar with the details of.

I don't recall making the claim of having a superior mental model. I make the claim that STEM workers cannot rely solely on mystical thinking, we have to apply the scientific method to perform our jobs. This gives us a tool at our disposal to pull back the mysteries in other areas of our lives. Flaky toasters, keyboard keys that stop working, the way light effects our bedtime routines. We don't need to rely on confirmation bias, we can apply the scientific method. Of course anyone can, but we're often forced to do it for hours a day, so we get a lot of practice disregarding our natural instincts in favor of observation and record keeping.

Hmm, well you effectively said you "see the world as it is" and that would typically be understood to be a claim that you have a superior mental model, I think.

>I can't just say "well the moon is half so..."

With a good BOFH excuse generator you could. https://bofh.d00t.org/

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