Well you have to make your decisions based on something right? I'm not sure what you're advocating here, unless it's that we shouldn't think about life decisions too hard. The fact that math is involved doesn't automatically mean the reasoning is shallow.

It's referring to the engineer's disease:

https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee...

You see it in popular commentary sometimes- the ideas of engineers, often specifically software engineers, claiming unique knowledge by deriving from first principles, in fields they are but laymen in.

I rather trust an engineer in random subjects than anyone else that is not a professional in the field.

Why? Why not doctors? Physicists? Geologists? Scientists of other disciplines? Mathematicians? Statisticians? Why give engineers- and I presume, software engineers, specifically- that extra credit?

Clearly because software engineers are the only people gifted with the true ability to reason. All other lowly professions just memorize facts in books. /s

People really seem to hate software engineers here.

People dislike arrogance, and are embarrassed by peers giving their field a bad name through arrogance.

>Well you have to make your decisions based on something right? I'm not sure what you're advocating here

Um, don't make-up stupid reasons to do things and justify it with math while ignoring the advice coming from experts in human biology.

The GP's same line of reasoning could be used to justify doing cocaine every night. Think of all the extra time you are getting!

It's the same kind of thing we get with politics, where people decide what they believe, and then work backwards to acquire evidence for it.

It's not just politics. We're so hard wired with everything.

I'm pretty confident the tendency to think you have it all figured out is not scoped to nerd-dom.

It's cargo cult intellectualism. It's extremely prevalent in tech communities.