{"id":7726,"date":"2016-01-28T11:41:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T10:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=7726"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:47:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:47:58","slug":"engineers-and-a-belief-in-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2016\/01\/28\/engineers-and-a-belief-in-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineers and a belief in magic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/blog\/2015\/11\/05\/magic-and-the-art-of-business-travel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote about<\/a> my need to understand things in the world around me. I have been considering this some more and have come to the conclusion that there are 2 kinds of people in the world:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>engineers<\/li>\n<li>people who believe in magic<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is not a value judgement &#8211; just an observation &#8230;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I was discussing this with my hairdresser, Jane. Although it says \u201chair stylist\u201d outside her shop, I regard her as a therapist who happens to cut hair [and does not charge $100+ per hour]. She wondered how I would go about categorizing an individual. That is easy. Here is our conversation:<br \/>\nMe: Do you have a TV?<br \/>\nJane: Yes, of course.<br \/>\nMe: Do you know how it works.<br \/>\nJane: I just press the On switch and choose a channel &#8211; easy.<br \/>\nMe: But do you know how the picture and sound gets from the TV studio to your living room?<br \/>\nJane: No idea. Not a clue. And I don\u2019t care, so long as it works.<br \/>\nMe: You believe in magic.<br \/>\nJane: (nods)<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\">\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/568530201\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>This is the crux of the situation. She does not care how the TV works. She can just enjoy it. [How people get enjoyment from most of the material that is broadcast is another mystery that I have yet to solve.] I, on the other hand, <strong>have to know<\/strong>. This does not mean that I am smarter than someone who just uses stuff, without being concerned about how it works &#8211; someone who believes in magic. Possibly the reverse. I am actually burdened by this obsession. The old saying \u201cignorance is bliss\u201d seems to make sense. I would love to believe in magic.<\/p>\n<p>But I have realized that there is room for hope. My level of understanding of how things work is bounded. In a TV I know basically how the signals encode the video and audio and how they are broadcast etc. However, if you quizzed me on the fundamentals of how a chip works, down at the transistor level, I would be stumped. The mathematics of quantum mechanics is beyond me, so, when I hear about what happens on this sub-microscopic scale, I can only conclude that it is actually magic.<\/p>\n<p>So, what I now believe is that all of us have a certain percentage of \u201cengineer\u201d programming in our brains and a certain amount of \u201cmagic belief\u201d. The proportions differ from one person to another. So maybe there is a way that I can train my brain to adjust the proportions and let me just accept stuff &#8211; to believe in magic. As the world gets more and more complex and I get older and more stupid, my need for a new mindset increases. I guess I will have to go for some more therapy &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/colinwalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6579\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_walls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6583\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/colinwalls.author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6591\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/facebook.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/116301748426290440139\/posts?hl=en%3Fhl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6587\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/google.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/ColinWalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6595\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/slideshare.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"41\" height=\"41\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6599\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/wordpress.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I wrote about my need to understand things in the world around me. I have been considering this some&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10438,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726\/revisions\/10438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}