Comment by 8note

i dont see where a random seed would have any bearing on "a specific approach, based on rigour and repeatability"

the approach uses random seeds, and the rigours make it repeatable.

if im thinking about mechanical engineering, something like the strength of a particular beam or the cycle life of a bearing is a random number. An engineer's job includes making random things predictable, by apply design tools like safety factors, and observability tools. thats why we prefer ductile materials; over brittle ones. both have a random strength around the spec, but one visibly changes before it fails, where the other doesnt. we can design in inspection processes that accounts for the randomness.

all kinds of tuning operations also start with somewhat random numbers and bring them to a spot. for the very contemporary example: training an ML model. start with random weights, and predictably change them until you get an effective function.

i dont think the randomness excludes "prompt engineering" from being engineering. instead, it's the rigour of the process in turning the random inputs into predictable outputs