large risk of harming one versus an engineer with a smaller risk (if nobody catches their mistake) of killing thousands, possibly tens of or hundreds of. especially if you're a nuclear engineer
Speculation. Any person in any of those categories could kill large numbers of people, or single people with bad practices. Doctors
with degrees kill patients and make surgical mistakes all the time. Lawyers fail to get innocent people off of murder charges all the time. What good did the degree do them if they have failed? Maybe a self taught lawyer would have fared better, after all you claim self-taught people are just as good.
By the way, engineers have killed more people than either doctors or lawyers, albeit by design. Even hear of the fission atomic bomb? By design it killed a whole lot of people. Yay engineers!
Tell you what, how about this.
Call yourself a
self-taught engineer (if your have no degree), likewise call yourself a
self-taught lawyer and a
self-taught doctor if they have no degrees. That way you can distinguish your awesome mental abilities for all to see, and it sets you apart from the degreed people.
If you agree to adding "self-taught" in from of all three of these terms (if indeed any are self-taught), we'll call it a day.