Massimo on Engineers, Intellectualism and Timothy Ferris.

[Note: this article has three main areas; first a summary of an article extolling engineering and attacking "intellectuals", by Timothy Ferris at WIRED; second, a rebuttal from a self-designated "intellectual", Massimo Pigliucci; and third, an analysis by me, an engineer by training and trade (disclosure).]

The pursuit of ungrounded ideas (Philosophy) has been maligned, and Massimo Pigliucci is riding his high horse to its defense. An article in WIRED by Timothy Ferris takes some shots at the pretenses of social progress due to intellectualism as compared to the gains to humanity provided by technology. In other words, it’s the engineers vs. the “intellectuals”. Surely Ferris knew that the “intellectuals” have words as their only product, and that they would surely use them to mount a counter attack.

Starting somewhere in prehistory, Ferris claims that humans, being without words, were fact-based. They would learn by seeing and doing, then repeating to find out what worked. If it worked it became knowledge, and all without the use of words. Then along came words and language, and some folks figured out that they could create knowledge just by thinking in words. This was the beginning of the “idea” era, where facts weren’t needed so much any more:

” A new class emerged — the intellectuals.

Being an intellectual had more to do with fashioning fresh ideas than with finding fresh facts. Facts used to be scarce on the ground anyway, so it was easy to skirt or ignore them while constructing an argument.”

Intellectuals from Rousseau and Max to Freud and Feyerabend all get taken to task over being factless:

” Eventually it became fashionable in intellectual circles to assert that there was no such thing as a fact, or at least not an objective fact. Instead, many intellectuals maintained, facts depend on the perspective from which are adduced. Millions were taught as much in schools; many still believe it today.

Reform-minded intellectuals found the low-on-facts, high-on-ideas diet well suited to formulating the socially prescriptive systems that came to be called ideologies. The beauty of being an ideologue was (and is) that the real world with all its imperfections could be criticized by comparing it, not to what had actually happened or is happening, but to one’s utopian visions of future perfection. As perfection exists neither in human society nor anywhere else in the material universe, the ideologues were obliged to settle into postures of sustained indignation. “Blind resentment of things as they were was thereby given principle, reason, and eschatological force, and directed to definite political goals,” as the sociologist Daniel Bell observed.”

Compared to the “factless” intellectuals are the engineers, those who actually test their hypotheses against reality:

” While the intellectuals were busy with all that, the world’s scientists and engineers took a very different path. They judged ideas (“hypotheses”) not by their brilliance but by whether they survived experimental tests. Hypotheses that failed such tests were eventually discarded, no matter how wonderful they might have seemed to be.”

Then Ferris makes the point that engineers do make errors which are obvious and which they correct, on their way to providing longer, healthier, more productive lives for humanity, while increasing knowledge, wealth, and happiness. He gives statistics which are not important to the argument, but are evidence as subpremises.

But Ferris is not done with the mongers of untethered ideas. First he roundly trashes the output of those who deal in ideas rather than in facts. According to Ferris, the factless idea-mongers have come up with some hideous and massively deadly ideologies. Then he makes his misstep: he mentions names (Hitler). He should know that he cannot get away with that. No matter if that is actually the subject matter of his point. Undeterred by internet rules, Ferris charges ahead with tallies of human deaths brought about by the “ideas” of Communism and Fascism. Says Ferris, channeling Massimo's coming response:

” That this is not more widely known and appreciated, but instead is so often brushed aside as somehow irrelevant to the argument at hand, demonstrates the extent to which the dead hand of ideology still grips many a mind.

Comparing the consequences of the two competitors, Ferris makes this conclusion:

” Needless to say, this verdict has not yet been taken to heart by all ideologues. Basing one’s opinions on facts is, after all, hard work, and less immediately gratifying than fuming with intellectual fervor. Hence the far left continues to attack free trade and the pharmaceuticals industry, no matter how many people’s lives have been improved or saved thereby, while the far right rejects every scientific finding that trespasses on its presuppositions, from biological evolution to global warming.”

Then he makes his main point:

” What is fading, it seems to me, is not the world of ideas but the celebration of big, pretentious ideas untethered to facts. That world has fallen out of favor because fact-starved ideas, when put into practice, produced indefensible amounts of human suffering, and because we today know a lot more facts than was the case back when a Freud could be ranked with an Einstein.”

Massimo Pigliucci is not pleased with Ferris or his post. In a rebuttal, Massimo spends two paragraphs in Ad Hominem and Well Poisoning before even addressing the ideas in Ferris’ article. Ferris’ article is

” a quasi incoherent rant”, and

” a stereotypical piece of anti-intellectualism, and

” Richard Hofstadter (the sociologist who authored the classic Anti-intellectualism in American Life) could have used him as a poster boy. Hofstadter defined anti-intellectualism as “a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.” Indeed, Hofstadter even identified the precise category of anti-intellectualism to which Ferris’ rant belongs: instrumentalism, or the idea that only practical knowledge matters and should be cultivated. In America, the attitude traces its roots to the robber barons of the 19th century, as exemplified by the attitude of Andrew Carnegie about classical studies: a waste of “precious years trying to extract education from an ignorant past.”

This of course, is not the concept which Ferris uses to attack intellectualizing. Massimo proceeds to completely ignore the fatal concept which Ferris presents - the untethered thinking of the intellectualizers. Instead, Massimo accuses Ferris of Scientism, and a "resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind". This is false, and it is a Red Herring used to draw us away from Ferris' actual point.

And, Ferris engages in

” cherry picking examples, distorting history, and simply ignoring what is not convenient for his thesis.”

Massimo’s third paragraph is hardly better, stooping to mentioning Montaigne as the inventor of the writing style which Ferris should not wish to be compared with. A slam on the style? Really, Massimo? And then, the Ferris article is

”standard fare among scientistically inclined people”

So five paragraphs in, the only actual, factual complaint is that Ferris didn’t treat Rousseau with respect, but instead identified some of his disciples. It is not until paragraph #6 that Massimo makes a direct charge: Ferris has created a Straw Man: intellectuals have also created some good things, too. At least Massimo says he thinks so.

Massimo:

” capitalism and democracies are also the result of “armchair speculations” by intellectuals, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, not to mention the founding fathers of the United States of America.”

All of a sudden these things are favored by the intelligentsia? When did that happen? (Hint: only when an argument can benefit from it).

”And part of the reason science is so well regarded these days is because of the preparatory groundwork work laid out by the intellectuals of the French Enlightenment, including some of Rousseau’s strongest critics, like Voltaire.”

This is not true. Science was valued long before the hideous French Revolution. Descartes, Locke, Bacon, Boyle, Newton, and many others pursued science completely independently of, and well before, the French Enlightenment. Plus it is difficult to think of the French Enlightenment without images of the guillotine being applied to all of those who were not favored by the “enlightened”.

” While science has without a doubt made our lives more comfortable and last significantly longer, it has had relatively little directly to do with the development of the above mentioned ideas, which are the true backbone of the progressive society that Ferris praises so much.”

The claim the Rousseau was responsible for them is equally false. And the untethered, circular reasoning of the encyclopedists is also not responsible for them. Mill was born nearly three decades after the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and was not responsible for democracy in the least. And Adam Smith influenced Marx. So the self-righteous claim to high value for intellectualism is a hard case to make.

” Moreover, science itself has been the handmaiden and enabler of much pernicious ideology, beginning with the technological efficiency with which fascism and communism were able to kill tens of millions of people during the 20th century.”

This is both an admission to pernicious ideology and a weak Tu Quoque, so weak as to be ludicrous, of course. “Handmaiden? Enabler?” To place any blame on “science” for the ideological decisions of the leaders of Fascism and Communism is absurd in the extreme. Do we blame shower heads for the gassing of millions of Jews, Gypsies and other minorities? Do we blame locks for securing them in the fake showers? Do we blame pliers for pulling out their gold teeth? Technology was not the cause for the racist, eugenic horror. Technology was, in fact, a tool of the ideologists; but technology also aided in the defeat of these ideological terrors; technology is ideologically neutral. Massimo's attempt to smear technology is, well, it's just a smear.

The anti-science counter-attack by Massimo is nothing more than an emotional reaction to the attack launched by Ferris. Massimo takes it seriously enough to have constructed a thoroughly venomous and Ad Hominem counter attack. Ferris is right about one thing, although in incorrect terms: Intellectualism is untethered. It is not only untethered to the factoids produced by science, it is also untethered to any axioms or First Principles that might be useful in determining the validity or coherence of the arguments being made. And Massimo never even mentions this concept, which was the main point of Ferris' article, much less does he try to refute it. Rather Massimo makes war on minor points and non-points, and makes an arrogant and self-righteous stand... facing the wrong way.

And that is the real difference between engineering and intellectualism. Engineering is not just well grounded in the laws of physics, it is also well grounded in procedures for determining the validity of each prototype in functioning, functioning well, and not functioning in any deleterious fashion.

Not so intellectualism. There is nothing more to intellectualism than the opinion of whoever is opining (in this case, Massimo). There are no axioms that are acceptable to these opiners. Thus, their arguments are either circular, infinite regresses, or no effort is made to substantiate them whatsoever – they are taken to be valid by virtue of the grandness of the opiner.

But being untethered (that’s a good word, Ferris), they have no value as fact or truth or anything other than merely opinion of some person somewhere. Engineering, on the other hand, produces tested products, products which are modified if they fail the tests and are made more robust until they pass the tests. Name a philosophy or opinion that has that to its credit.

Massimo is not really anti-science. He claims science to be on his side, but the science he claims is as ungrounded as his other opinions. Massimo comes from a background of theoretical evolution, where making up “plausible” stories counts as science. So he is right at home in philosophical opining since it is the same skill set.

Massimo, then, has not been subject to any of the consequences of his product, and that is the final difference between engineers and philosopher / intellectualizers. Engineers are constantly aware of the consequences of what they do, on the society which receives their technology, and on themselves if their intellectual efforts are faulty. Not only are their products tested constantly, so are the intellectual specifics which go into them.

With philosopher – intellectualizers, there is not any objective testing until a concept is implemented on an unwary and unlucky populace. And when an implemented concept fails, the intellectual denials begin: it wasn’t implemented right; it wasn’t enough; the implementers were biased; there’s a vast right wing conspiracy, yada yada. Consequences for failure of intellectualized projects are borne purely by those who are burdened with the failed concept – never the conceivers, the ideologists.

All through this intellectuals remain confident in their superior abilities to determine the right and righteous paths to a better society. Not to mention their moral obligation to do so.


To recoup, engineers and philosopher – intellectualizers differ in important ways:

1. Engineers work upward from basic axioms, trusted physical laws, and valid prior engineering developments which are reducible to the basic axioms.

Philosopher – intellectualizers reject the concept that there are basic axioms, so they produce opinions which are based on circular arguments, infinite regresses, or no validation attempt at all. In fact, as Massimo shows, logical fallacies are sometimes served as intellectual pablum, and are swallowed easily and without consequence by sympathizers. Smarmy self-righteousness can cover for being groundless.

2. Engineers use skepticism as a method of analysis, for example double checking against basic principles in design reviews by objective peers, and producing prototypes for testing before producing final products; skepticism is not an absolute worldview.

For Philosopher – intellectualizers, Skepticism is a tool also, but for them it is a tool for repressing contrary notions by asserting that “you cannot know that”, and sure enough, ungrounded competition can’t be known when pressed hard enough, Skeptically. But then comes the paradox: neither can the original argument, nor for that matter, the value of skepticism itself.

3. For engineering, the value of a logical basis is demonstrable materially. If the engineering has been illogical, it will fail at the prototype testing level, if it wasn't caught in the design reviews. For engineers, illogic has consequences.

For Philosopher - intellectualizers, logic is claimed of course, but the application is optional. There is no amount of material testing that will reveal the illogic of pure ideas, until the actual implementation either succeeds or fails, and the consequence of that lies with the victims of the implementation.

4. Consequences of illogic for the engineer are tangible: he will incur failure at prototype and the pressure to rectify the logical input.

Consequences to the Philosopher – intellectualizer are practically none. Failures are always someone else’s fault.

5. Moral content. Engineering is morally neutral. Moral content is provided by the ideology of the user of the technology.

The product of the Philosopher – intellectualizer is generally a form of moral content: “society should do X in order flourish”. So these products have a direct moral consequence.

6. Materialist Content. Engineering is purely materialist, and voluntarily so. But not Philosophical Materialist, which is an irrational extension of voluntary materialism.

Philosophy – intellectualizing is not materialist in the least, because it does not use physical facts or axioms, and it uses physics only as a comparison for analogies, not as a direct source of evidence.

So, oddly, engineering, while materialist, is not Philosophically Materialist, and Philosophy – intellectualizing is Philosophically Materialist but uses no material evidence.

In short, engineering is grounded both logically and materially; philosophy and intellectualizing are not grounded, either logically or materially, but are relative to the person doing the opining.

It’s understandable that Massimo is irritated; the curtain of intellectualism is being drawn back and there is no grounding behind it.