Conversation

Was talking to chemE clients if mine in fact about designing an “Arduino for chemE” type student program to market their tech. The problem is almost any level of chemE capability quickly enabled stuff like bomb making.
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I was mostly being flippant tbh, but it worries me when a theory-practice divide isn’t accompanied by mutual appreciation of uniquely salient experiences of the other side. Seeking Jungian integration with the shadow is perhaps too much to expect, but a bit if self-doubt perhaps.
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I am not a pilot, but for eg core pieces of the command and control models I came up with for my postdoc research were the result of conversations with a USAF veteran friend who flew missions in 1991 Iraq and was starting his PhD around the time I was leaving for postdoc
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Engineering PhD programs produce their share of “spherical cows in a vacuum” work too but the redeeming feature is if they don’t talk to practitioners/industry at least they produce mathematically cute results that are pretty even if useless
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A client of mine who’s a legendary engineering bigwig in industry made the astute remark that unlike practicing engineers who like to solve problems, engineering PhDs often succumb to the temptation to admire the problem instead, which I fully cop to and own 🤣
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A big corporate battle I fought at Xerox was resisting “agile org” shit that attempted to suck me into a scrum-of-scrums and insert effectively a lean six sigma political officer into my team. Burned half my political capital fighting 🤣 “Org agile” = Stalinism of agile
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