(This is a light-hearted and ill-researched post. When the infinite amount of free time I ordered on Amazon finally arrives, I might dig into it deeply and be serious.)

Everyone who tries to read widely about systemsy stuff will inevitably feel puzzled by the large-scale flow of ideas. In particular, there is a—sometimes crystal clear, sometimes invisible—border between the lands of engineering and science on the high-dimensional map of human knowledge. In my own random walk in this space of ideas, I often realize too late that I am on the other side of the border than I think I am. So this blog post contains some notes about features of the landscape that can tell you where you are.

Before I stop being vague, I have to point out that none of these traditions is better than the other. Epistemologically speaking, there is probably little reason to separate them…