Page 14: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2023)

Back to the Drawing Board

Prying Gas Stoves from Dead Fingers

Copyright alexanderuhrin/AdobeStock

By Rik van Hemmen hen Greg Trauthwein offered me a column in Mar- as life is not actually a dream. But allow me to proceed within itime Reporter & Engineering News, I received my dream in a rational fashion. The best truths are the truths

Wlittle direction with regard to subjects. I have not that are personally veri? able and repeatable. As such, if I poke yet tested his boundaries of my subjects, and maybe, some myself in the eye it will hurt and will hurt again if I do it again. day, I will try to slip in a column on the role of nautical ? ction Then we can proceed with baby steps and assume that if one in the development of modern literature. gets tackled by an NFL linebacker it will probably hurt. Not

So far, I have tried to stick with engineering subjects, al- too far from there, we have schools and text books, which though recently I may have pushed the boundaries with dis- can be quite unreliable. Fortunately, today, we have Wikipedia cussions on decision making, esthetics and OODA loops. which is actually more veri? ably reliable.

It occurred to me that in writing on those subjects I had We all know that not everything on the internet is true, but skipped past an important engineering subject that also is not even that is becoming more interesting since at some stage commonly discussed in engineering curriculums. ChatGPT may be able to ? lter out ungrounded opinions.

That subject is data. Data is essential, any discussion on a And there are so many ungrounded opinions, and they all problem without a solid grasp of data is pointless. rely on broken facts.

The late Senator Patrick Moynahan is said to have ex- Take gas stoves. pressed this as: Yes, gas stoves obviously produce combustion products and ³

As an engineer I am not sure I agree with the statement. I think more readily than people that use electric stoves. Let’s face it, we it would be more accurate to say: have survived leaded gas, lead paint, loss of ozone, PCP’s, DDT, ³

Undoubtedly there are complex problems with limited facts whole context of things it is not COVID. Meanwhile too many where there may be varying solutions and thereby different people love their gas stoves and would never switch to electric. opinions, but in real life there are even more simple problems Imagine switching to an electric stove! Their lives will be that lead to simple factual solutions and therefore clearly ? awed over! Maybe gas stoves will be outlawed! We’d better form a solutions should be strongly denounced. That is an exhausting “You Can Pry My Gas Stove Out Of My Dead Hands” PAC! prospect and the real solution actually relates to training people And we are off to the races. I have even heard committed to actually look at data and facts and to draw proper conclusions. environmentalist complain about the prospect of having to

The concept of facts is not uniform in the human condition. switch to electric stoves.

To an attorney a fact may be an utterance. This results in cross The bizarre thing is that everything in that discussion is examination questions like: “Mr. van Hemmen isn’t it a fact based on bad data. that Mr. Soandso told you on such and such date that he had Let’s step through this: seen pigs ? y? Yes, or no?” To an attorney the fact is the noise, 1. Conventional electric cooktops don’t work as well as but to an engineer the message in the noise is the fact, and ? y- gas cooktops. ing pigs is far from a fact. 2. Induction cooktops work as well as gas cooktops

So, let’s stick with the term data and de? ne it as a veri? able and have many additional advantages truth. On a philosophical level one can argue that nothing is 3. Gas cooktops and gas ovens are energy hogs compared truly veri? able. One can never know that what one perceives to electric ovens and induction cook tops 14 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • April 2023

MR #4 (1-17).indd 14 4/5/2023 8:37:45 AM