I generally think this is a good article and I agree that measured confidence is important when working on any engineering project. However, I've often seen engineers who are a little too confident and can't admit when they're wrong. I worry articles like this could be misread by those folks and used to justify that behavior.
I've also noticed a pattern in Sean's writing where he redefines common English words to mean something different than the usual definition, potentially for a punchy title (I've seen "taste" and now "ego"). As engineers we often have to find analogous words for ideas that don't have them yet, but in this instance I think the article would be a lot less muddy if he just used "confidence." I appreciate he acknowledges this discrepancy in the comments, but maybe too much ego gets in the way to fix it during editing :)
I generally think this is a good article and I agree that measured confidence is important when working on any engineering project. However, I've often seen engineers who are a little too confident and can't admit when they're wrong. I worry articles like this could be misread by those folks and used to justify that behavior.
I've also noticed a pattern in Sean's writing where he redefines common English words to mean something different than the usual definition, potentially for a punchy title (I've seen "taste" and now "ego"). As engineers we often have to find analogous words for ideas that don't have them yet, but in this instance I think the article would be a lot less muddy if he just used "confidence." I appreciate he acknowledges this discrepancy in the comments, but maybe too much ego gets in the way to fix it during editing :)