World Military Questions

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Isn't that just a factor of the whole Shoulders-of-Giants phenomenon?

I mean, what electricians do today as part of their routine was cutting edge, visionary work at one point.

First and foremost, there's a difference between physicists and electricians in that physicists have to understand whereas electricians simply have to know. And electricians knowing how to handle modern equipment can't be compared to physicists' fundamental understanding of things.

Physicists are required to understand what Einstein understood—even better than Einstein himself did—just to keep up with the times. We're hence conditioned to be better thinkers by being exposed to complex problems, to with a critical yet open mind examine the nature of various models and statements.

Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein weren't giants, they were simply early birds, and if they didn't discover what they did someone else would.

Originally posted by Astner
First and foremost, there's a difference between physicists and electricians in that physicists have to understand whereas electricians simply have to know. And electricians knowing how to handle modern equipment can't be compared to physicists' fundamental understanding of things.

Its simply understanding in a different domain. Electrical have to understand the technology they work with, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to solve novel electrical problems.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Its simply understanding in a different domain. Electrical have to understand the technology they work with, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to solve novel electrical problems.

To find that the conclusion of a shortcut to be a dry joint doesn't require understanding. All it requires is the knowledge, this isn't how it's supposed to look because then it doesn't work, this is how you fix it...

Heck, electricians even use the j-omega method. Which explicitly reflects the ignorance of the Laplace transform of which the method is deduced.