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Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

Are you an electrical engineer? If not, maybe I shouldn't be talking to you

"Real engineers provide information to help people better-understand the subject matter at hand."

Not necessarily. Engineers are not educators, they are problem solvers. Now when it comes to providing information, telephone operators at directory assistance do that too. That doesn't make them any more qualified to design amplifiers than an audiophile wannabe electronics design engineer.

"The phonies are the ones who ridicule and "laugh at" whoever they deem unworthy of technical discussion."

Apparantly pointing out other people's technical blunders is not in the scope of an engineer's permitted activities, especially if his words are sometimes less than kind. Engineers are not allowed to get exasperated at repeated stupidities. Being walking calculators they are not subject to human emotions and reactions and such display is unacceptable from them.

"I've often heard more-sane technical comments on audio from some who couldn't recognize a quadratic equation than from some who trumpet their experiences with partial differential equations...."

A rock in a steel oil drum tumbling down a hill may make a lot of noise but that's all it makes. It's hardly surprising when another rock thinks that noise is music. If you can't solve differential equations, you cannot become an electronics design engineer. You may become a technician or a tinkerer and even produce something useful now and again but that is not the same thing as being an engineer. Engineers don't guess. Engineering doesn't rely on theorizing, that and the testing of theories are the province of scientists. Engineers apply proven scientific principles to solve well defined problems and the efficacy of their solutions can be tested objectively and evaluated in terms of how well they met their stated goals. The rest is voodoo. If people who are engineers engage in experimentation based on wild unproven hunches, then at that moment they are not performing engineering, they are tinkering. Engineers when they are engineering don't guess.

"There are too many self-proclaimed "experts" out there...."

Yes there are, and engineers here call those people for want of a better word "subjectivists" or....snake oil salesmen.

"...try to disqualify people from technical conversation because of "lesser credentials.""

Technical conversations of necessity involve technical issues which engineers can become knowledgeable about because of their very rigorous training. While engineers normally don't ridicule those who were trained in other lines of work because they didn't have the opportunity, the interest, or quite frankly the capacity to become engineers, they can't take their bogus theories and fantasies seriously either. And that is stil true even if those bogus ideas are expressed by other trained people who should know better because of their own technical education. BTW, just because someone is trained in one area of engineering, that doesn't make him qualified as an expert or even particularly knowledgeable in another. A civil engineer is no more qualified to design and electronic circuit than an electrical engineer is to design the foundation and steel superstructure of a building. As for software engineers, other than writing computer programs, I have no idea what they are qualified for professionally (and I'm not even certain they should be considered engineers. That's something I'll have to think about.) This notion of interchangeability, adaptability, or universal technical knowledge is a common mistake among managers who assign technical experts in one field to take charge of a project or oversee a department whose work in another they know little or nothing about. The results are often a disaster and the people who actually do the work become demoralized and quit.

Engineering (real engineering, not other professions with the word engineer tacked on to it) and the physical sciences are among the most difficult, rigorous, and demanding fields of endeavor to train for and practice. Unlike many other professions such as law, medicine, history, or education, the memorizing of lots of facts after reading endless voluminous tomes and attending countless lectures is not the goal of a such an education. The facts can always be looked up in a book. Engineers and scientists are taught HOW to think, not WHAT to think. And therein lies the big difference. This forum was created to focus on technical discussions. There are other forums here more suitable for mental masturbation such as Cable Asylum.



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