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Authoritarian Pseudo-Rationalism

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Table of Contents Evidential Naïveté Masquerading as Rigor Bastardizing Objectivity Confusing "An Explanation" with "Best Explanation" The Nature of Neutrality Its not quite Pseudo-Intellectualism Generalizing the Concept Applying this to Risk Assessment Final Thoughts References I was rewatching clone wars, specifically s5 ep19; the episode where Ahsoka is accused of bombing the Jedi temple. While watching this sequence, something really struck me. When it’s informed to the Jedi council that Ahsoka allegedly killed clones and is on the run, some jedi masters respond with “I can’t believe she has fallen so far?”. Grand admiral Tarkin responds by saying “it’s not our place to operate on beliefs, we deal in facts and evidence and the evidence points to Ahsoka”. I find this fascinating because it reminds me of Schums “Evidential Foundations of Probabilistic Reasoning”, and other scholars concerned with evidence...
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Thoughtless Engineering: When Technical Activity Becomes Detached from Engineering Judgment

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Table of Contents The First Symptom: Ambiguous Metrics and Unsupported Claims The Deeper Problem: No Defensible Stopping Rule Tests as Executable Specifications, Not Clutter Correctness Is Semantic, Not Merely Executable Design Quality Determines Testing Burden External Dependencies: “We Test It Later” Is Not Enough From Edge Cases to Tail Risk Systems Risk, Convexity, and Nonlinear Failure Scalability Is Not a Language Choice Heuristics, Slogans, and the Anti-Python Reflex Naming the Pattern: Thoughtless Engineering Microservices, Macro Services, and the Misuse of “Service Boundary” Abstraction, Interfaces, Contracts, and Protocols Systems of Systems: Synchronization, Emergence, and Netflix Observability Is Not “Just Looking at Logs” The Positive Standard: What Thoughtful Engineering Looks Like Conclusion: Engineering With the Thinking Put Back In I ...
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