Here a Retired Engineer Expounds

I am a retired electronics engineer/businessman, here is some background and a CV.  Over time, I’ve come to the realization that current orthodoxy, particularly in the areas of our founding principles, how life started and global warming is wrong.  To make matters worse, we are teaching our kids to think anyone who disagrees is crazy or stupid.  As Plato reportedly said, “Wrongdoing is the result of false beliefs.”  The world would be a better place if everyone understood the truth of these matters.  This website is a forum to provide an engineering perspective and to compare ideas using post blogs.

An Engineering Perspective

Designing things that work, which is what I’ve spent my life doing, requires that one must understand underlying principles and realities.  The laws of nature and truth are unforgiving.  An engineer cannot make things work otherwise.    An engineer learns early on that perfect solutions are a mirage – all designs are compromises balanced to achieve the best overall result.  For new designs, an engineer can never anticipate all problems.  Design is an iterative process.  Most problems are not scientific or theoretical; the constraints are mostly logical and practical. 

Interestingly, much theory and technology my career has involved apply to the topics addressed on this website, including feedback control, process control systems, information theory, computer hardware, and software with associated languages and protocols, sensors, actuators, neural networks, thermodynamics, and chemistry.  Future posts will address these connections.

And Then There is the Truth

Today one can find “proof” that his or her beliefs are true.  It is human nature for one to develop a world view, and once acquired, it is human nature to defend it regardless of any evidence against it.  Powerful special interests have been able to convince a large portion of the population of things at worst, just plain wrong and at best, have a small grain of truth.  The three topics discussed on this site are what this engineer feels are the most egregious examples at this time.  Moreover, to make the situation worse, the education system, media, entertainment government even fact checkers have all succumbed to the groupthink that these topics have become.  Even at that, approximately half of the population does not buy into the arguments because they all defy common sense.

Those that do not buy into the groupthink regarding these topics do not have the quantity and quality of materials and information to make their case.  By the time I was out of college, I was on the opposite side of the fence on all three of these topics.  However, as the years passed, I became skeptical of some orthodoxy that did not meet the common sense smell test. As a result, studying such topics has become a hobby hence this website.

Finding the Truth

My experience is that finding truth requires study, particularly of original sources.  As an example, if you want to understand the laws of motion, an excellent place to start is reading what Galileo and Newton had to say on the topic.  Not only does this give one a historical perspective, but a more profound understanding based on following the thought processes used by those who developed the theories.

A personal example came as a result of not being comfortable with my understanding of Maxwell’s equations when I graduated from college.  A good understanding of electromagnetic theory is fundamental to electronic engineers because it is the underpinning of just about everything electronic.  A few years out of school, I stumbled across a talk that Maxwell had given to a scientific society.  In it, Maxwell walked one through the reasoning underpinning the concepts.  The result was a much deeper understanding and added appreciation of the theory and Maxwell’s accomplishments.  The concepts are not that hard to understand even though the geometry complicates the math.

My passion and hobby have become analyzing and understanding the “why” of our universe. Also, it leads to a worrisome wife when I am reading Molecular Cell Biology for recreation.