Karnickel

For example, https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee...

> ...used to describe engineers and other technical folks assuming their technical knowledge of systems (usually computer, mechanical/electrical) gives them expertise in solving other complex issues.

Most of health care is a power/influence and social problem: Who gets to control things, who gets the money, who gets influence over the streams of money through the system? That's not an engineering problem but power play. Even if you _could_ show, using science, that you would get better outcomes with other methods, I don't think the people struggling for the honey pot care.

That's why thinking an engineer could build a better health care system seems misguided to me. Better machines to be used as part of the system, sure, but not the system itself. That's politics and hard-core power struggle for the money first of all. If the currently relevant people cared about the health outcomes they would already have changed the system. After all, that "U.S. Spends More on Health Care Than Other High-Income Nations But Has Lower Life Expectancy, Worse Health" (Americans Get Less Health Care, Spend More for It) [0] is not exactly news.

[0] http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/...

My grandfathers mechanical calculator (German): https://i.imgur.com/jBDUHPp.jpg

He used it even though he had an electronic calculator. Common business calculations seemed to perform much faster and more reliably than on the electronic calculator (1980s). You had to check every single number and operation you typed into the electronic calculator, but you could do quite a bit without looking, just by feel, with this mechanical one. Multiplication for example, you just turn the crank handle for each round.

Which he didn't write - you did. You even put it in quotes, nice try. The discussion brings out the worst in some people here.

I don't understand this comment. How are the build tools Jetbrain's fault? Confused...

We are missing a lot of context - much of which you can't supply here even if you wanted to. For example, it seems entirely plausible and not exactly rocket science that not eating the wrong foods (for a given person - what "wrong" means may vary widely and wildly depending on their context!) is better than eating it. For an example (of the example), if you eat a lot of high glycemic index foods it's not hard to guess why your blood sugar is doing better without it.

This is the problem with all those reports from people who say they are doing so much better during a fast.

I can't speak for any other country, obviously culture plays a role, but in Germany we just had an article in one of the top two news sites (and this is the much more reputable one of the two) [0] that says in a poll [1] 1/3rd of students said they'd like to become a "Beamter", which is a special status for life-term government employees who cannot be fired and have their own pension scheme.

Job security was the number one concern overall (63% of said so). Income was only in fifth place. There was a big difference between the sexes, the share of women who wanted to work for the government was much higher (42% vs. 23% of men).

But that's not all - most students prefer to work for very large companies, giants like Siemens, BMW etc. regularly top the ranking of places where students want to go to. Few want to go to small and medium companies, even though we have a lot of them. Even fewer want to work for a startup or even found one.

I am certainly not critical of that attitude, I doubt that throughout history there ever was a big part of humanity that preferred insecurity and excitement and (often dubious) "chances" that actually depend on quite a bit of luck quite heavily over friends, family and a solid secure basis. That is if that was available of course, often people were forced into being more adventurous by circumstances.

[0] (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsstart/jeder-dritte-stud...

[1] (PDF) http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-Studentenstudie-...

Just before where you found that quote the text is a link to another article that talks about those things.

> it'd change gear when I'd prefer it didn't,

That may be an issue with the particular model?

In all the "automatics" I drove, American as well as Japanese models (the latter only several Hondas), I had no problem to know and control very precisely when the shift up or down would occur. I would drive up a hill and I knew exactly if I pressed down just a millimeter more the care would shift, which I delayed from happening until the ascend got less steep. That level of control was easy to get with only a little bit of experience with the specific car/transmission.

> I don't think it's a larger part of population, just much better organized.

Point accepted, but those are the ones driving much of society, when the others are just watching on the sidelines. In such diverse things as elections to getting a beating, the passive bystanders don't matter.

    > The concept of cat might be present in the world objectively

It exists in a world with sensors similar to that of humans, and hardware and software made by humans mirroring their world experience. You are still within the exact same (world) box.