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Comment by ukulele | Hacker News Reader

> The real problem is that the engineer’s mindset, wherein one weighs the available evidence, and accept and incorporate new evidence even if it contradicts what you previously believed, has never been more rare.

This is the author's premise. It would have been nice to get some discussion around why that is the case (or even that it is true), but alas the article simply states it.

Ironic to provide no details given the subject matter.

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You're right that it would be nice if the article would provide more evidence to back that claim up (especially given the article's content), however I don't think it's such an outlandish claim if you look at the facts. To greatly oversimplify (with the inherent dangers of oversimplifying), suppose 50% of the population believes news item "A" is true while the other 50% of the population believes "not A" to be true. There could be different reasons for such a scenario, but if "A" is something that can actually be verified with relative ease, then having such a high percentage of people disputing "A" could very well imply that way too many people are more interested in holding on to an opinion that suits their agenda (be it psychological, political or other) than to seek out what is true.

I mean, even engineers don't think and act like that when it comes to politics. They don't think and act like that even when it is about technology, but they are already invested and really want to be or at least be seen as right.

Example 1: anyone who refuse new architecture or tech cause it is new (and that exists a lot outside startup world).

Example 2: anyone who jump into new tech even when it is irrational and not ready or simply not suitable for task at hand.

Example 3: all engineers who talk with utter conviction about history or art or political/social problem - after they spent like an evening on wikipedia and cherry picked whatever fit their pre-existing simple worldview.

All exists and are frequent.

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