JREFer Arrogance vs. Truther Martyr Complex

[tfk]

I loved that thread you linked to tfk.
I remember femr2 from youtube with his laughable wtc model.
Nice to see the mauling he just got from a real engineer.

Hey Ed,

Do we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis? If so, I'm "Tom". Pleased to meet you.

I appreciate your sentiment & comment.

But I don't consider it any sort of victory. Any time the lines of communication are cut, that's a loss.

Any time the communication degenerates into simple name calling, that's a loss.

It was OWE's failure to be so thin-skinned that he couldn't abide (or simply ignore) my comments. And, like any drama queen, to create in my comments insults that I never put there.

I think some of the comments above are accurate: that it is insecurity that makes truthers so, uh, insecure. (Duh!) I think that there is a creeping fear in them that, "heck, why has there been zero progress in all this time?" And a wide eyed look into the black abyss of 8 wasted years.

It was my failure to not gage properly the level of intolerance & sensitivity. And to poke a little too hard to remain there.

I do not believe that any of the people that I engaged over there are insincere trolls (although my jury was still out on their Major_Tom).

I don't think that they are dumb or technically incompetent. In a narrowly circumscribed sense. They know how to solve differential equations, perform statistical analyses, etc.

What they seem to lack are two things: depth and respect.

Depth is the developed judgment to see the big picture, and not get wrapped up in "analysis paralysis". And immobilized by a few trivial unknowns or even inconsistencies. You see people who do get into this sort of paralysis in the workplace. They are virtually useless. They never get anything done. (Sound familiar?)

Respect is a reference to the incredible career achievements of the people who contributed to the NIST report. Check it out sometime in the NIST reports. Just go thru the list of their job titles & years experience. It's really impressive. And remember that, in that report, for ever person that is listed, there are probably 10 or more people that didn't make the cut who also contributed.

Respect is not adulation or sycophancy. It is not accepting anything blindly or uncritically. But it demands that you at least acknowledge the time & effort that those people put into their studies & careers. And that a truly thoughtful person not weigh their opinions as equal (or less than) the imaginings of someone who has never spent a day in an engineering class.

This is one of the reasons that I've asked them their experience. I'm curious to see what their background is. Simply to understand whether they have the background to really understand the arguments that they are arguing against. And being able to quote something is not the same as understanding it. I think that they seem to uniformly refuse to answer that question for PRECISELY the same reason that I ask it.

Finally, I lose all patience for the folks who express a knee-jerk, undisguised contempt for a boat-load of engineers who have more demonstrated accomplishment annually than those keyboard kommandos will in their entire lifetimes.

Now, I gotta run. We have a football game on, over here. "Football". An interesting sport. You guys wouldn't BELIEVE the way we play it...!

Tom

 

[Hokulele]

Hokulele,
Could you please advise soonest of your whereabouts between 1/1/71 & 12/31/71.

Wasn't me. I am far too efficient to require eight tries, even at age 4.

Hey guys,

Don't forget the video mentioned in the OP.

It really is worth a watch.

Tom

I have either seen that one, or one very similar some time ago. Fun stuff, regardless.

 

[Minadin]

Now, you tell me. In your vast experience with FEA, what are the chances that I'll be able to produce something equivalent to, much less superior to, the work of 100+ world class experts in FEA with my Dell laptop & a $15K program. With no fire simulation. With no CFD. All by my lonesome. In my conspicuously absent "spare time".

I AM a pretty arrogant, experienced, old school engineer. But I ain't THAT arrogant.

(From the thread you linked in the OP.)

I thought that this was one of your finer points, but it may have been too subtle to sink in for those folks. I've been in architecture professionally for about 5 years now, and I can tell you that it's a principal crime in the industry to do anything outside of your area of expertise. At the very least, you never assume that you can improve upon the work of people who are experts in a specific area.

I don't tell a mechanical engineer how to do his job, for instance. When I'm trying to get them to change something, it's not because I disagree with their engineering analysis, but because their solution doesn't work the way we'd like it to from an architecture / coordination perspective. But, I digress.

Knowing your own limitations is probably as important as knowing the limitations of the models that you are producing.

Anecdotally, I just spent the better part of a week crafting a response letter to a local code official doing my best to describe why his interpretation of the IBC is incorrect. Most of that time was spent doing in-depth research of the applicable codes. It's a 'dangerous' thing to do, telling a code official that he's wrong about the code, because they are inevitably more knowledgeable about the various intricacies contained within it - that's what they do.

And, that was just a case of the fellow mis-interpreting something on our drawings as new construction (which needs to be ANSI A117 / ADA compliant) when it was actually an existing condition (which is exempt from needing accessibility compliance upgrades in specific cases such as ours).