Re: OT? Rant: Professional pride

Rune Allnor wrote: 
Hi all.

Many years ago, I attended some conference where some guy who did
not have English as his "natural 2nd language" gave a presentation.
This guy was the only one I saw during a full week to actually keep
the time schedule. He wrapped up his talk at exactly 15:00 minutes,
leaving five full minutes for questions and discussions. No questions
were asked from the audience, possibly because of the presenter's
not quite perfect English diction. Not that I blame him for that, he
did a better job than I would have managed if I was told to give a
presentation in Russian, Chinese of Japanese in six months time.

anyway, the chairman, a slick elegant English academic of Oxbridge
grooming, who was very aware he was a slick English academic of
Oxbridge grooming, found the silence soewhat awkward, and asked,
in a way only a slick English academic of Oxbridge grooming can,

"Excuse me sir, but what is new about this work?"

The reaction of the presenter was as if the chairman had pretended to
shake his hand but hit him to the stomach instead. And we got a speedy
almost verbatim re-run of the 15 minutes talk, this time in two
minutes.

After the session I went up to the chairman and asked if he hadn't been

a bit rough with the poor guy. "Oh no," he said, "that is the *one*
question
everybody who gives a talk at a scientific conference should always
be prepared for. If you can't answer it, you should not give the
presentation in the first place."

It did make sense to me.

So I adapted it to my own version as "Excuse me sir, why do you think
this
method will work?" applied to engineering. True, the question is a bit
tough
if asked out loud, but I find it useful as a philosophical basis. If I
can not
formulate an answer to explain the intention of using some method or
algorithm, I don't know why I use it and should probably not be doing
the
job in the first place.

That's the philosophical basis I have used for a decade. Whenever I
have
had a saying in a project, I have used the philosophy to suggest
solutions
when I can, and explain why I could not find any solution when that was

the case. Lots of people don't like to hear that something can *not* be

done. So I have more than once pointed out that Niels Henrik Abel,
the only Norwegian mathematician of international fame, is most widely
known in the general public, for having proved that it is *im*possible
to
solve fifth degree equations by means of the "standard" algebraic
methods.
I found some of the reactions to be all out disturbing.

It follows as a trivial corrolary that one should stay away from
projects
where no path towards a solution exists, unless the objective of the
project is to find such a path. Basically, it is a matter of getting a
pre-project
feasibility study, which is part of basic project managment
craftmanship.

Imagine my surprise, even digust, when I discussed some projects with
som guy a few days ago. This guy said he was not the least interested
in
feasability studies. "They always conclude with that whatever can not
be done." Which is just about true, what underwater acoustics is
concerned.
So no one write feasability studies. And no one validate the methods
they come up with. Neither is good for business.

And this seems to be intentional. I cited one particular project, that
was
based on the following argument:

Use an active sonar to insonify the water. If target A is present, the
recieved echo will show property X, or

A => X     [implication]

in logical formalism. I do not contest the implication.

The project was based on analyzing the recieved signal for property X,
using this as an indicator for the target A. In doing this, one
implicitly
puts a constraint one can not defend:

A <=> X   [equivalence]

The equivalence means that only target A, and no others, induces
property X in the recieved data. Which is a very strong claim.
What needs to be done is to make sure there exist no other targets
in the sea that show property X. Since "property X" in this particular
case
is formulated as "the target reflects frequencies f1,f2,...,fN" there
is no
way of establishing the equivalence. It is a ridiculous claim to say
that
one and only one type of object reflects a set of specified
frequencies.

So I pointed this out. There are most probably several targets that
show property X,

A => X
B => X
C => X

and so on ad infinitum. So making an observation X can not be
linked to target A in any definite way, basically kicking the feet
away beneath the project in question. "Yep, that's logical" was
the answer. Sure, it is. Students are required to take a basic course
of elementary logic before being allowed to take any degree in
a university. But the connection to the real-world project in question
was not grasped.

I just don't get it. Somebody proposes and sells a project where
there is absolutely no chance of success, whatsoever. When asked,
they see the argument why, and agree with it, but still go on. Why?
Do they have no professional pride at all? Is it worth the carreer
and reputation of the junior engineers that are assigned to do the
grunt work? There is a peculiar pattern in these types of projects,
that the basic ideas behind the projects are never criticized when
they blow up. It is always the assigned engineer who is not up to
the task.

Oh well.

There must be material for at least a couple of doctoral theses in
psychology, somewhere inside here.

Rune

I read a book a number of years called "Conceptual Block Busting" which is supposed to help you learn how to be "creative". I actually liked the book. One thing it suggests is to not throw away ideas too fast.

A lot of organizations have more of less institutionalized the concept. There is no doubt in my mind that some people cynically exploit it, but that doesn't mean that the process is totally dysfunctional.
.

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