Facts Don’t Change the World.

Stories do.

Engineering is a design profession. Thus, engineers have the job of making the world conform to their imagination. Like all designers, engineers begin with a problem or condition in the world with which they are not satisfied, and they set out to change to something that they imagine will be better.

This means that design is a process with powerful moral dimensions. What gives the engineer the right to decide what version of the world would constitute an improvement? Mere technical expertise?

To be an engineer requires an empathetic understanding of a diverse system of human values, such that the engineering design will serve the needs of the populations it seeks to improve.

Empathy only exists in relation to others. It is the condition of being able to take another’s perspective — i.e., think they way another thinks, feel the way another feels, or behave in the way that another behaves.

While the famous Golden Rule states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” this rule fails when “others” hold fundamentally different values than you do. A new Platinum Rule suggest that we should do unto others as they would have us do to them. That is, to treat people on their…