Engineering well-being

Try to think about one of the simplest engineering problems there can be: how does one replace an empty toilet paper roll. Normally, when we think of engineering, we think of examples like building bridges: things that are complex projects requiring quite a bit of study, rigorous planning, and a requirements list that includes financial considerations, available building materials, measurements and traffic studies, and any number of other factors that the engineer or engineers need to take account of. In the end, though, for all it's complexity building a bridge is really just installing toilet paper writ large.

Personally, I like to think that I am a qualified toilet paper roll engineer. You may be interested to know that when I place a toilet paper roll, I put the paper hanging "over" and not "under". Just like an engineer constructing a bridge, I arrived at my conclusion by examining the mechanics of the problem and choosing the method with I could see had the most benefit. For your convenience, a fellow toilet paper roll engineer has written up a nice summary of his own analysis which I totally agree with.

...and then there's this guy.

Of course, I settled in my mind that "over" was the right way to place the toilet paper a long time ago. I have proceeded to share this information with a few people since then. Most people can't argue with me since, after all, I had studied the mechanics of the problem and they had not. That is until I finally found one person who informed me that "over" did not work for them: they needed to place the toilet paper with the paper facing the wall. Curious as to how this could be, I asked them why. They replied that if they did not, their cat would unwind the entire roll onto the floor. (Another solution would be to eliminate the cat, since cats are evil - unfortunately not everyone understands the danger they present. But I digress.)

This just goes to show that, in engineering, there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to perform any one task. There are only solutions to problems, some of which are more fitting than others. For example, it may be a valid solution to set the roll on the window ledge and eliminate the dispenser altogether. Such a technique is not ideal in my world, but in a certain scenario (e.g. no tools available to mount dispenser) it may actually be the only viable plan. Despite these exceptions,  I believe the world would be a better place if most people placed the toilet roll in the "over" position as I suggest. This is how we create rules and normal practices.

Building a bridge is a much more complicated endeavor, and has many more variables that an engineer must account for; but it is essentially the same as changing the toilet paper. An engineer assesses the mechanics of the problem using the well-known laws of physics. An engineer also has the benefit of standard patterns and research into how good bridges are designed. Science has given us a lot of information that we can use to solve these problems: there are a set of laws that govern how the world works (like gravity will always pull down), and experience shows us what works and what doesn't. There have been a lot of bridges built: some held up well and other did not. We learn from our failures and our successes.

"Let's make a few changes next time, mmmkay?"

Note that it is not the scientist who designs the bridge, even if the scientific discoveries are essential to proper bridge building. What this all comes down to is our proper application of scientific knowledge. As we understand how our world works, we can apply what we have learned to confront challenges we face. Engineering is this action.

However, some areas of science are further behind others, though. Newton explained our basic laws of motion  and gravity in 1687. This allowed our engineers to be able to calculate forces on an object for the first time. In the 1860s, Maxwell published the equations that led us to harness electricity. Just before this, Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", which would lead us to our modern understanding of biology, especially after Watson and Crick discovered DNA in 1953.

"Did somebody mention science? You can trust me, I'm an engineer!"

The science is well defined when it comes to building bridges and hanging toilet paper rolls. But there are many things that we need to manage in our lives that can also be informed by science where the science is not as developed.

Can we compare a healthy person to a well-built bridge? I don't see why not. The more we understand about the science of biology, the better equipped we are to engineer health care solutions. Essentially, the science of the biology following Darwin and Pasteur created the practice of modern medicine. What our doctors are doing can be described as an engineering process : using the information that our medical researchers have come up with to solve problems with our physical well-being. Once again, there may not always be one answer to a question since there are many variables to the equation. That doesn't mean that a doctor cannot know the best course of action. Just like with the toilet paper roll problem, there may be an action that is generally good. Any conscientious doctor with good scientific information will know to follow the consensus of other medical experts, but will still be attentive to any additional variables that are specific to their patient.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

What this means to you is that stuff like vaccination is a no-brainer: all the scientific data shows that we should vaccinate our children, and almost every doctor agrees. There is no anomalous data, despite what Jenny McCarthy might tell you. It also means that chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are better treatments for cancer than whatever mixture of water your naturopath would like to give you, or some dosage of hemp oil, or whatever. Scientist continue to study treatments that show promise, and will update our doctors accordingly. Some practices have been studied scientifically and are shown to have a degree of effectiveness - and some practices have not. The ones who know which ones are the doctors.

This idea of engineering well-being also extends to emotional well-being (i.e. mental health). And what about societal well-being? Adam Lee writes a great piece in more detail than I have using health science as an analogy for how science-base evidence can be applied to morality. The canonical reference for this thinking, though would be "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris. In it Harris argues that we can clearly determine that some moral actions lead to well-being and some do not based on measurable consequences. Sometimes multiple possible actions could be beneficial, and we must choose between them. He compares the consequences of these actions to hills and valleys in a landscape, and we can choose moral laws that yield the highest benefits.

Picard detects a moral low-spot.

Often we get these moral laws wrong because not all the data is in when they are written. We used to think that homosexuality was immoral. As it turns out, there is no reason to think this, and we even see that it naturally occurs in many mammalian species. After studying our world, we can see that we were mislead because of a paucity of scientific data. We are in the process of re-engineering our morality to compensate.

On the other hand, we used to believe that it was beneficial to punish children corporally. "Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them." We know now from our studies of psychology and neuroscience that this is simply not true. Maybe that doesn't stop all the people like Adrian Peterson from continuing to administer the same abuse to his children that he received from his parents. But the outrage the erupted when he did shows that we have changed our minds on that subject. Our understanding of the consequences of our actions is continually making us re-calculate how we are to act.

Or maybe you'd rather the thing just give up on you?

Morality is so problematic because the science that allows us to measure our responses to moral actions is very new and immature. fMRI allows us a new view into our minds. Communication technology allows us to exchange ideas instantaneously, and see the effect of people's actions all over the world. Psychological studies accumulate and show us the effects of our actions. Even ten years ago, we couldn't do these things or have much of this data, yet some of our moral laws were written thousands of years ago.


The other problem we have is choosing who gets to interpret this data. Who gets to engineer our morality? We don't all design our own bridges, so should be let someone else tells us how to act? Traditionally, we have let our religious leaders do that, but this solution doesn't work well. Most of those leaders are trying to interpret morality based on centuries- or millenniums-old texts that do not apply to us. We could turn to moral philosophers, but they are usually too enamored of philosophy itself to examine the scientific data itself. And our lawmakers are even worse, usually pandering to whoever can pay them in the end.

Quimby says you're doing it right. You paid the bribe, right?

No, in the case of morality we must follow the lawmakers out of necessity, we must tolerate the religious leaders out of tradition, but ultimately it is each of us who must learn whatever we need to know to design our morality.

Sciences only makes observations, and submits theories. It cannot determine correct actions: this is applied science, or engineering. In applying this to morality, we can paraphrase Hume, "you can't get an ought from an is". We all have a responsibility to make decisions that affect the well-being of ourselves and other. Hopefully, we all can find the correct data and surround ourselves with others who are rational and can do what we must for the benefit of ourselves and others.

I have hope that we shall. To understand how we have changed over the lifetime of our civilization, I would recommend Stephen Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature". It's a very thorough analysis of the historical decline in violence. If Pinker is right, then we are learning these lessons as we go, and as frustrating as it is that we see some people who continue to live using outdated information, the trend is going in the right direction as a whole.