Why You Should Trust Engineers
So why should you trust engineers? This might seem a bit of an arrogant thing to say, to others an honest statement. Whichever side you sit on, or neither, of course, engineers have traditionally played vital roles in society. Generally speaking, members of the public tend to hold engineers in high esteem and they are usually well liked across the board. As nobody, not even engineers, are never wrong it might be more accurate to amend it slightly. You should “tend to trust” but not “absolutely trust” engineers.
Given the nature of this subject, we’d welcome your comments and opinions.
What is trust?
The dictionary definition of trust is as follows:-
“Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”
Or
“Acceptance of the truth of a statement without evidence or investigation.”
Or
“The state of being responsible for someone or something.”
The act of trust in humans is both an emotional and logical act. Emotionally, yeah I know we are getting soppy here, trust actually means exposing your vulnerabilities to others. In the case of engineers, you are using their devices with a potential real risk of injury. Logically, trust is an act of assessing the pros and cons of your relationship with another. Logical trust is in effect an attempt to ascertain if that person will behave in a predictable, usually beneficial, manner.
In practice, of course, the act of trust is a bit of both. Past experience with the person or their work will directly influence your desire to “trust” them.
So, when considering engineers, all of the above can reasonably be attributed to engineers and their work. On the whole, their work, either directly or indirectly, needs to work before it can be released for general use. Long periods of research and development, trial and error, years of experience, quality control and a whole myriad of other tests have to be completed before approval for general release or construction.
Trust is earned not given
Engineers, on the whole, are practitioners of making the theoretical practical. They turn scientific theory or ideas into things that actually work in reality. They tend to be very studious and diligent and are generally down to earth. We are generalizing a lot here, but they also tend to avoid things like sales and PR, wherever possible.
Ego, as much as it exists in engineers, tends to be kept in check by gaining appreciation from their accomplishments rather than demanding respect from others. Their work tends to involve the need to think visually. Since their work is mostly practical, engineers are pretty well pre-adapted to help others understand complex concepts. The layperson can usually rely on an engineer to break down complex subjects into more every day, bite size, easy to understand pieces. Scientists or more theoretical professions and can often “blind with science”, usually unintentionally.
On the whole, the work of engineers is usually the thing that the general public will use. For this reason, the tangible object or thing is more reassuring for people when compared to a string of equations provided by scientists, say. This helps people trust engineers.
