As an engineer — T Clark

I'm also an engineer by degree, though I'm not a practising one.

In order to do my job, I have to know things about the world and I have to know how I know them. — T Clark

I thought that all an engineer has to know is how to create things and achieve things when one does NOT know. An engineer is a master of not knowing.

In the process of coming to know things — T Clark

You never come to know things. You just come to know what is not the case - that the retaining wall cannot fail through this and those particular mechanisms. But there may be a mechanism that you have not considered through which it can fail. There are always assumptions that can be wrong, etc. That's why engineers use things like factors of safety, and so on so forth.

Engineers have just perfected an art of making rational decisions in the uncertainty encountered in the real world.

You never come to know things. You just come to know what is not the case - that the retaining wall cannot fail through this and those particular mechanisms. But there may be a mechanism that you have not considered through which it can fail. There are always assumptions that can be wrong, etc. That's why engineers use things like factors of safety, and so on so forth. — Agustino

The word "know" has a low falutin, everyday meaning that we are all, or almost all, familiar with. We don't need justified true belief. We don't need to worry about radical doubt. We need to make decisions. Everyone who is reasonably intelligent and self-aware understands that knowing something always has uncertainty included. There are ways of dealing with the uncertainty, e.g., as you indicated, factors of safety.

Do you have any favorite sources of information that would be of interest?

I like Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy for philosophy, Wiki is often surprisingly detailed and can have good references too. For work, I've got a few books that I've used a lot: 'Matrix Computations' by Golub and Van Loan which is a Bible for dealing with matrices, 'Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models' by Andrew Gelman for statistics.

Also MITOpencourseware, Khan Academy and Stanford have a good Youtube presence for mathematics in general. The number of times I've had to look something basic up on Khan is very high.

Do you have any favorite sources of information that would be of interest? — T Clark

I don't really have favorites. For any basic level online skills (I work in development & marketing atm), udemy.com - for advanced level stuff, learning by yourself, thinking, and asking around on forums. Also books.

Quick references w3schools.

So, I guess you could say that my favourite source of information is myself:



Someone sent me this on email and I was listening to it in bed last night - and I realised that it is absolutely true. There is no teacher, no guru, no book, no leader, no master, no saviour - it all depends on you. You alone can figure things out, nobody else can tell you what you ought to do. And this is especially true when you're in business for yourself. I often find myself after a long day of work struggling to read some information, almost as a compulsion, for no purpose other than, who knows, it might be helpful sometime. There is this automatism that somehow someone else could have the answers that I need, and if I just read that, I could move 1000 steps at once, instead of just one step.

My favorite source is direct observation and study of that which I experience. I then search of the beaten track whether it be the library, the Web, Youtube, wherever for unorthodox views. This is where I will find the most creative and most interesting thoughts of what I've observed. I'm always looking to push the boundaries. What is done is done. I'm looking to do more.

The number of times I've had to look something basic up on Khan is very high. — fdrake

I hadn't thought of that. Another good example of generosity with information just for the love of sharing.

I don't really have favorites. For any basic level online skills (I work in development & marketing atm), udemy.com — Agustino

I found courses in Tarot reading and Reiki!! I love it. $10.99 each. Also, more practical things. No irony intended.

Have a browse of Our World in Data. (Read about this in a great editorial piece by Nicholas Krystal, ‘Why 2017 was the Best Year in Human History’, also worth a read.)

Someone sent me this on email and I was listening to it in bed last night - and I realised that it is absolutely true. There is no teacher, no guru, no book, no leader, no master, no saviour - it all depends on you. You alone can figure things out, nobody else can tell you what you ought to do. — Agustino

Reading Krishnamurti and Emerson I get the same feeling - a call to the most radically individualistic approach to life I can imagine. I am very drawn to it.

I found courses in Tarot reading and Reiki!! I love it. $10.99 each. Also, more practical things. No irony intended. — T Clark

You like Tarot and Reiki? :rofl:

You like Tarot and Reiki? — Agustino

I like that there are places to learn about everything. To me, the essence of reason is to put myself imaginatively in the intellectual life of people who see the world differently than I do. There's nothing I enjoy more.

I have varied and sometimes odd interests.

I have been interested in word meanings, word origins, word frequency lists, and reading difficulty levels for a fairly long time. I used to get this information from printed dictionaries and library books; now those books, and more, are available on line.

Google Ngram, Google Translate, and just plain Google.

Of course Amazon is a wonderful thing and I go there regularly. It is the Home Shopping Network for people who wouldn't get caught dead watching the Home Shopping Network cable channels.

I like the way Consumer Reports goes about testing and rating various products. Inquiring minds want to know whether there are any frozen dessert product brands that approach Ben and Jerry's in quality, aside from Hagen Daz. (Some haute cuisine local brands meet or exceed B & J's achievements.) The curious but impecunious still want to know whether you can get a good cashmere sweater for $125, even though they will never buy one. I like their sensory panel reports on various food products: "stale flavor notes and cardboard overtones".

The Minnesota Historical Society's Visual Data Base has been wonderful. It's a large (>60% on line) photo collection which one can search and view.

The Army Corp of Engineers provided me with critical information for a project I was pursuing. I wanted to know how long a large sandbar along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis could have been a gay cruising area. While the ACE didn't happen to know anything about the cruising, they gave me a topo map and some historical information from which I determined the answer: Definitively not before 1907 when the Meeker Island dam was built on the Mississippi in Minneapolis and probably not before 1940, when heavy barge traffic would have required regular dredging to main the channel. The "sand bar" is actually just sand from dredging operations piled up on a rocky shore area.

So... sometime between 1940 and 1960.

Google Street view is an amazing piece of technology.

Ordinary people can turn out to be fonts of esoteric knowledge. When I was working on AIDS transmission interventions in the 1980s, i needed to find out about where the busy glory holes were (technically, glory holes are the openings in glass refractories through which blobs of glass are removed to be blown into shapes and given fancy treatments). The kind of glory holes I needed facts about involved blowing something other than molten glass.

After pursuing a short list of leads, I found a guy who worked at the University of Minnesota in a professional capacity who was a regular at GH locations and was a very enthusiastic (and accurate, it turned out) informant. Who knew that a University hospital employee possessed systematized information about cock sucking in various university buildings?

Over the last 30+ years, the New York Times has been a steady source of science information. I feel like I completed a general science course or two just by reading their Science Section for all these years. NOVA and NATURE on PBS, along with a scattering of several-hour specials, has also contributed a college course worth of general science knowledge. One of the great things about science on print and television media, is that it's usually quite serendipitous.

Despite the wonders of the on-line digital world, paper is still the best medium to present and store information over the long run. I love books, libraries, and bookstores. Short of fire and flood, paper resists many threats. Magnetic pulses don't affect them; ordinary cold and heat are nothing to books. Humidity can be a problem, but that's true for just about everything. Even so, manuscripts published before printing was invented have held up well.

Despite the wonders of the on-line digital world, paper is still the best medium to present and store information over the long run. I love books, libraries, and bookstores. Short of fire and flood, paper resists many threats. Magnetic pulses don't affect them; ordinary cold and heat are nothing to books. Humidity can be a problem, but that's true for just about everything. Even so, manuscripts published before printing was invented have held up well. — Bitter Crank

You made me think of something I'd forgotten. Actually, I wrote about this on Shoutbox perviously. Do you remember the Whole Earth Catalog? It came out between 1968 and 1994. I remember the first time I looked at it. So much information about everything to do with human life. Kind of like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" except instead of "Don't Panic" it's motto was "Access to Tools." I gave used copies to my three children. A big, heavy book. You can buy used copies from Ebay or Amazon. Copies are also available in PDF for $5 at this link:

http://www.wholeearth.com/index.php

It's still as exciting as it was 30 years ago.

I'll add this one, although it is political rather than strictly informative. I call myself a committed liberal, but this website makes me think that may not be completely true. The writers at American Conservative are a diverse bunch of thoughtful social, economic, and/or political conservatives who's ideas I find either close to or at least not incompatible with my own. Some really good ideas for government, criticisms of American foreign policy, and reviews of books and arts.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/