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Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset?
An anonymous reader writes "Do engineers have a way of looking at the world not all that different from terrorists? According to an article in the EE Times, they do. The story cites 'Engineers of Jihad,' a paper (pdf download) by two Oxford University sociologists, who found that graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements. The paper also found that engineers are 'over-represented' among graduates who gravitate to violent groups. Authors Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog chalk this all up to what they call the 'engineering mindset,' which they define as 'a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.' Is this just pop psychology masquerading as science?"
First and foremost, to answer the question put forth in the summary:
To parse:
this first would have to lend credence that the thesis warrants comparison to psychology in any way, let alone "pop" psychology which tends to be a few rungs down from the imprimatur of truly researched psychology. It isn't. It's not even close.
You bet! No matter what this is trying to be in any genuine sense other than phooey, it's masquerading.
Not a chance. Anecdotally I would expect to be able to be able to think of a number of fellow engineers who match the description and thesis. I'm not sure I can even think of a single example. I can think of some peers from the past who I may describe as of a similar mindset, but those I would hardly describe as real engineers.
I'm guessing this article was supposed to be released April 1, but someone jumped the gun. That said, it's not even a very funny joke.
You could probably draw parallels to Engineer's Syndrome here.
Many of the engineers I've known in college were absolutely convinced of tehir superiority and absolute rightness in all things. Certainly not all, but a fair chunk. Same with Fundamentalism. To a certain extent its still trying to change the world instead of yourself.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Wow, lots of people in a demographic are interested in engineering. Some of them might be terrorists (but probably not the vast majority).
In other news, water is wet, etc., etc.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Engineer's mindset: "What makes this thing tick"
Terrorist's mindset: "I know why this thing is ticking"
All I can say is, thank god I'm an atheist!
Kevin Smith on Prince
We engineers aren't the most proactive types, we tend to sit next to the flag, banging away on our defenses and designing new weapons in our heads. Oh, and watching out for those dog-gone spies.
Demented But Determined.
It's all becoming clear now. A lot of Islamic terrorists are engineers. That explains why they have no infrastructure over there... The engineers are too busy killing themselves to build a society. Boy I'm glad my engineering degree will be put to better use than suicide.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
After all, who wants a sociologist in their terror cell?
More to the point, people studying proper subjects are more likely to encounter Islamists from other countries on their courses and to be influenced by them - since nobody is going to travel all the way from Iraq/Iran/Saudi/<insert hotbed of radicalism here> to study complete bollocks like sociology or any of the other pap degrees offered, it's no wonder that there aren't too many Islamist sociology and psychology students.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
I'm from Pakistan and would be willing to guess that this is true. The issue primarily why these results would exist is the concept of fine arts etc aren't as common in most 3rd world countries. In pakistan for example the revered professions are Medicine and Engineering. The best and brightest always gravitate towards those (top 500 out of 50K candidates get into the main tech university in Karachi).
In any case, I'm willing to bet these are also the minds that go hmm there are problems with our society that need to be solved. One could probably divvy up these people into those that leave the country, those that stick behind and those that turn to religion for answers and eventually rise among the ranks of extremists etc.
Terrorism vs extremism isn't as finely delineated as Bush et. al would like to make it out to be. If one could fix the issue of social injustice and lack of opportunities / education I'm willing to bet most of these problems will go away as well.
Is that these groups often have R&D schedules adjusted by marketing majors. Hell, going through that a few times would radicalize my pet hamster.
One of the foremost terrorists in the history of the middle east was Yahaya Ayyash, an electrical engineer (educated at Beir Ziet University) who built bombs for Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. His bombs ended up killing over 100 civilians (mostly Israeli, but also Americans and other Westerners in Israel) and dozens of soldiers, ambulance workers, and other first responders.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
http://xkcd.com/319/
http://xkcd.com/253/
Anyone have a link to the one that is done in a "vertical" layout?
Living With a Nerd
Yes, it's absolutely a bunch of pop-psy junk.
...
And I will summon Allah's hand to strike down any infidels that disagree!
Now back to coding
This is what another authority on scientific minds thinks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WynH9nJuSuk (Pat Robertson)
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
because they are sociologists. To quote an old telco advert, "Its an 'ology'. You're a scientist!" Its incredible what some of "ologists" churns out, and downright sad that they are given any credibility at all.
Ahh yes, they must be alumni of Transylvania Polytechnic University (or Trans Poly U). Everyone wants to rule the world. So... Scroll down to pick up an MP3 of their fight song curdosy of Tom Smith and sing along! (lyrics) Cheer cheer for Trans Poly U...
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
It should be noted that due to US immigration restrictions, 80% of muslims migrating to the US are highly educated. Engineers. This should somehow skew the results.
Were I live, in the Netherlands, only 30% of the muslim immigrants are highly educated (the rest is practically completely uneducated...); if you'd do the same test in the Nederlands, you might find morons have a terrorist mindset;-)
0x or or snor perron?!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Sure sounds that way.
http://catb.org/~esr/guns/
I guess I'm an idiot for this
Solution: Arrest them damn scientists. They only make our lives complicated anyway. All modern technology distracts people and keeps them away from what's important in life: Hard work and the fear of God. You know the joke: Computers solve problems which we wouldn't have without computers. It's funny because it's true!
So what?
If the criminals and terrorists are either "uneducated hoards" or someone with some education, I'd expect someone in science to do a "better job" as a criminal than the "uneducated hoards" or someone with a fine arts degree. One of the tasks you learn in *real* science (what the pseudo-scientists here don't seem to grasp) is the ability to plan ahead. Yes, plan ahead. Therefore maybe criminals and terrorists with some science background will get further in their game than square 1.
Furthermore, maybe people that want to get "ahead" in their criminal organizations enter college to gain education in the material that they will find useful. You know, an engineer or a chemist may be a more useful profession for them than a poet.
But then what will these pseudo-scientists find next in their statistics? That some of the non-science terrorists/criminals like to play chess or other strategy games? Or that they are fanatics *before* starting their university education?
75% of people know these statistics are bogus 19 times out of 20.
It can't be that a large proportion of islamic jihadists come from fairly well off families and engineering is a highly culturally respected profession.. no.. engineering itself must cause terrorism!
Just another sad ivory tower attempt to call it everything but what it is.
I'm gonna f***ing kill you for these lies!
Oh wait... nevermind.
Is this supposed to be funny? You thanking god for being an atheist?
I sort of was under the impression that engineers would think critically and not accept faith based on the limited evidence to support it. Then I went to Georgia Tech and found out differently. Maybe I should have become a scientist and not the engineer that I am. But in all honesty, who could pull off, or make a terrorist plot better than an engineer. I know whenever I fly, I am constantly looking at holes in security, not that it is hard to find them, I just don't think most people really look. Plus how else are they going to build those bombs?
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
I always thought that those with degrees in science, medicine and engineering were overrepresented within the realm of atheist or agnostic belief frameworks. I guess we cant go without forming a very strong opinion about the universe around us.
I'm an engineer, just about everyone I know is an engineer of one form or another.
in my experience, engineers, if anything, tend to be anti-religious, socially liberal types who constantly look for rational, provable solutions to the world's problems.
not blow up abortion clinics, embassies, airplanes, shopping malls etc all while claiming the evil they do is god's will.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Actually the most represented group are lawyers, but I hear they are only useful for the first weeks of training (once the more aggresive groups start taking decapitation 101 they tend to dissapear).
Lookup for terrorist in monster if you don't believe me...
OK, lets back up the truck for a second and try to view this as something other than "those jerks in IT are such elitist pigs" mindset for a second. I have an organization that going to inflict terror on a given population. Am I going to recruit a wet nurses or an engineer?
Has anybody considered the fact that if you start with the mindset of wanting to build a bomb, destro a building, etc; that maybe getting a background in engineering might help you achieve those goals?
Engineering doesn't create more terrorists but terrorists might create more engineers.
I don't think engineers are terrorists, but rather terrorists are engineers. Some rudimentary knowledge of bomb making, architectural structures, and other engineering fields are usually ideal if you're going to blow up a building.
A marketing or business major would not be suitable for the young terrorist. This would lead to things such as radical groups forcing us to buy that blue jacket which we don't really like and think is overpriced anyway, but now we have to buy it or concede that they are right.
The "Salem Hypothesis" (named after Bruce Salem) is a name for a correlation that has been observed amongst scientists, between subscribing to creationism and working in an engineering discipline. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis)
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Or maybe it's that Engineers are recruited more aggressively than liberal arts majors because likely to bring useful skills and a concrete, analytical mindset to the mission.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
do terrorists have an ENGINEER mindset?
Terrorism requires the knowledge to bypass security and/or blow stuff up.
To do that, you need engineers. Otherwise all you get is a bunch of talkers, not doers, or at least doers who blow themselves up more often, and who fail to even reach their targets.
What this means is, your average engineer does not have a terrorist mindset, but terrorist groups must recruit engineers in order to Get Stuff Circumvented/Done[tm]. So they recruit engineers as often as they can, because otherwise they cannot Get Stuff Circumvented/Done[tm].
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Yasser_Arafat: After returning to the University, Arafat studied civil engineering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat Osama_Bin Laden: Some reports suggest bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_laden
This is simply the "guns kill people" mindset taken to it's next logical step. Obviously an engineer can be used as a weapon. In fact if you want your weapon to have any effect you best hire a few engineers. Especially if you're improvising, or if you want to be the best at it.
... all muslims, I'm sorry to say, search "sixth pillar of islam") will obviously infiltrate everything, and attempt to use that to their advantage, killing others in the process. Is this supposed to be a surprise ? Unless I'm seriously misreading my history books, 50 years ago, nobody doubted this, today, it's "hate speech" to even suggest this.
My answer to this would be simple : "guns don't kill people, people kill people", in other word, it's the conviction of the guys that matters, not the knowledge. What mindset ? Well it's called "islamic" terrorism for a reason. Yes people who do not believe in separation of conviction and state (that would be all non-christians), and on top of that believe in using violence to advance their cause (like
A well-equipped viral geneticist or even just a capable chemist (fortunately "capable" is a bit of a problem for that region of our little planet) would be many times more dangerous than any engineer can seriously hope to be. So will we preventively outlaw them too ? Perhaps all of science ?
I don't know if engineers are philosophically predesposed to be terrorists. They are, however, the best trained individuals to plan and execute a terrorist act.
Many of us are intimately familar with society's infrastructure, are able to obtain items normally not available to the general public, and are comfortable and knowledgeable enough to social-engineer our way into areas normally off-limits to the public.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
What's funny is that he dares to use a lower case G.
Think global, act loco
...an engineer is capable of making more than one bomb.
rj
Not only that, but did you see that it wasn't even submitted by a registered user??
"An anonymous reader writes"
Damn... that's gotta sting.
--
Screw it, I got karma to burn...
Ramen
Great, a pissed of /.er. How long till he blows something up now?
Or it may be with them as with other kids - It's funny to blow things up!
And there may be some truth to the fact that those who can - they do, those who can't become leaders. (This can be applied to any grouping...)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
God bless those pagans.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...except that nearly all of the most extreme, strident, unforgiving and tediously sanctimonious people I have been running across lately seem to be atheists. What's the world coming to when the religious right have a better sense of humor about themselves than the lefty atheists? I'd call it one of the "signs of the apocalypse," but that'd be a religious reference and some atheist would start preaching at me, so let's just leave it that I'm amused and amazed...
Clearly, in the middle east, religion is major factor, but the conservative part is plain wrong. Extremism comes in conservative AND liberal forms. That area has plenty of problems with tribalism and forms of collectivism. And plenty of illiberal (in the classic sense) totalitarian, non-responsive governments have been propped up by us, and that crap didn't just start with Dubya. Plenty of US liberals are part of that mess.
Liberals seem too willing to fail to see extremism on their side, just the proper way of thinking. And it is the same crap of seeing the world through an American lens. Not everything can fit into our Republican-Democrat model. Seeing the problem of the middle east as a conservative problem is as wrong as the "they hate us for our freedom" crowd.
I can see it now. The Western world is going to take a hint from Mao, and start the wholesale slaughter of scientists and engineers of all sorts. Then they'll remember than many of the Palestinian terrorists were doctors, and add medical professionals to the list.
I think we should all just realize that educated people are dangerous, and must be killed or "re-educated". Then, we will attain the perfectly secure society we all crave.
Submitted as Brain-Chow:
I once was told in a Stats class that;
" Among Lazy, Illiterate American Auto workers,
that 40% of all sick time was taken on a Monday
or a Friday". The class ( mostly) was dumbstruck.
- Never stopping to think that 40% of every
American work week is a Monday or a Friday.
The well had been poisoned, tho, and despite
the clarity of the punchline-like analysis, many
insisted on various faults, like unions, wage status,
etc.
I feel pretty certain of two things -
1. That we've been so conditioned by Big Media to
the insidious Eevil of 'Terrorism' that it invokes
a knee-jerk response of denial in any other view.
2. Smart people make very good Engineers and very formidable
enemies. You won't hear of Inept Terrorists in the news.
Only the Smart Ones.
- Just my $0.02
I hear your pain, friend. Time to strap on some C-4 and head for the Slashdot headquarters!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
People that choose an engineering profession have an interest in how things work and want to know how they can make or change those things. All of our infrastructure is designed and created by engineers whether it be civil engineers that design city layouts (which a terrorist needs to understand to be effective), mechanical engineers that determine the structural integrity necessary for various structures (bridges, buildings, roads, etc.) (which a terrorist needs to understand to effectively blow up), or software engineers which create the infrastructure necessary to run virtually all of our businesses today (particularly financial).
I think the article's point is retarded. It basically says, "People that want to change the world are often engineers." Obvious.
Mucho Appopriate for slashdot: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/freestuff/oddio/Final-IFoughtTheTroll.mp3
That is because you linked to the original paper. We here at Slashdot prefer that all stories be removed by a few degrees so that we can argue without RTFA, and even if we do RTFA, it is still just one persons impression of what the original source said. Welcome to the (dis)information super highway. It may sound like I am trolling with an ant-Slashdot sentiment. Actually, I'm trolling against the internet in general. Blogs, forums, etc are a great thing in many ways, but they are terrible for finding news. It is like a world wide version of the telephone game with none of the stories actually representing what is said. For example, take this story about the McDonalds CEO blaming video games for obesity. http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/01/11/1543201.shtml. The actual quote (at http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205920319) lays things out quite differently than what the linked article "quotes" Easterbrooke as saying. The problem is that people won't bother to find the original source because we trust that the summary is correct. The problem is that it often isn't.
This clearly underlines why math, science and engineering must be eradicated from the US educational system.
While the paper is silly, there is a point there. Would an engineer more likely act with irrational anger than an artist or a musician? Probably not so much in the western world, but I think lack of humanities has a crippling effect on middle eastern thinking.
If you aren't taught about the rights of man, or to find something beautiful in mankind, it may be easier to see death and violence as a viable solution. I'm sure that goes for any profession, but perhaps some engineers ignore that part of education since it is not always required.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
These people have it backwards. The real reason that people who graduate in science, engineering and medicine are over-represented in terrorist organizations is because those are the degrees that it is useful to have in a terrorist organzation. Do you really think a terrorist is going to get a Political Science degree. They don't want to learn about the greatness of democracy. Do you really think a terrorist is going to get a music degree? They could care less about music! No, if you are a terrorist you either learn about science or engineering so you can build bombs and weapons or you learn about Medicine because either you want to be a medic for the Jihadists or because you want to be a doctor for the so called charitable arm of most terrorist organizations. Most people forget that terrorist organizations in the muslim community most often masquarade as charaties.
I come to Michigan and blow up the /. World HQ! All your mod-bombs are belong to us!
Best Slashdot Co
I Kill You!
-- Achmed, the Dead Engineer
Engineers tend to be trained to think. This is a problem for people in charge.
I think the correlation is more that terrorists find themselves most effective when they unravel the things we engineers labor to create. We are responsible for every facet of infrastructure, from water and roads to cars, planes, and cell phones and the Internet.
How can one person make the largest impact against a superpower? Hit their infrastructure. It's the only way. We don't have the same mindset, we do vastly different work on the same mechanisms.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
It is cheap, universally understood, and yields immediate results. Unlike diplomacy.
who did 9/11 were from mostly upper middle class middle eastern backgrounds. meaning the whole argument about poverty creating terrorism is bs
also bs is the idea that engineering interested is also islamofascist interested. it is more accurate to say that everyone in the middle east is engineering interested, as this is viewed as prestige in the middle east
therefore, those who are islamofascist interested are also usually engineering interested... but only because everyone is. causation vs. correlation, etc...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the United Gulags of America.
GWB
You've noticed that many engineers are conservative.
Was it the cut of slacks that gave it away?
Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, they pointed out that a disproportionate share of engineers seem to have a mindset that makes them open to the quintessential right-wing features of "monism" (why argue where there is one best solution) and by "simplism" (if only people were rational, remedies would be simple)
I've also noticed these traits among some engineers. I thought it was because they were assholes.
Ok let's see Engineers are suspect to Terrorism because they view things as right and wrong.
Assuming that this is the truth, that then puts ANYBODY WITH ANY IQ in the sciences and math as potential terrorists! So let's not stop at engineers, but head on over to physicists, and math folks.
Oh wait, maybe this is a bigger and badder idea... What if this is a way to eradicate the "intelligent."
Think hard about this. Who does any dictator knock off first? Oh yeah the intelligent and who can think for themselves.... Gee let's make engineers the scape goats and suspects here...
Come on people do we see the boggieman at every corner...
Think about why maybe many immigrants are engineers. Could it be because engineers can get visa's and jobs here? Maybe its because visa's are not given out to basketweavers!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Is this supposed to be funny? You thanking god for being an atheist?
[_] You must be one of those "extreme" people the article is warning about. Please stay online while the DHS traces your post to determine if it came from Iran ("we launch in 5 minutes") or the White House ("we're immune from prosecution"), or AIPIC (in which case, "where's my check?")
[_] Hey everybody - George W. Bush posts on slashdot!
[_] Imagine a boewulf cluster of extreme conservative and religious ... oh, right - that's how we got into this mess in the first place.
Kevin Smith on Prince
scientiststendtobeliberals
regarding this tag- i think its incomplete. scientists tend to be social liberals (dont legislate behavior or morality), but i dont think they tend to be fiscal liberals (big govt with large budget). scientists tend to be more libertarian.
... it has been found that violent, drug-crazed criminals are strongly represented by people who drank milk as babies! zomgwtfbbq!
Slight clarification about that last point. We do in fact seem to hear a lot about "Inept Terrorists" in the news, although the news never reports them as inept, rather they spin it as the brave efforts of the police narrowly avoiding massive catastrophe. Never mind the fact that the plan the morons had concocted was so bad they would at most hurt (or kill) themselves, and if they got really lucky a few bystanders. Good example was a recent case where some "terrorists" had loaded their cars up with cans of gasoline and then planned on lighting them on fire believing this would lead to massive explosions (this happened over in England btw). Anyone who knows about these types of things knows all you're going to get is a big hot fireball as the car burns down, and that's about it (might work if you had a proper fuel air mixture, but just dumping containers of gas in a car isn't going to cut it). So yeah, plenty of inept to go around.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
that engineers just like to blow shit up? Seriously?
Many of the terrorists which have been part of the popular news media the last few years have had the eventual goal of creating a very structured and ordered society. While this may seem to fit the barest idea of what an engineer might approve of, it is a far stretch from matching the what I know of engineering types.
1. Engineers are just as interested in knowing how things work as they are in making sure they work orderly. This would lend itself to a desire for more openness in working systems. To easier be able to lift the hood and see what's going on. Most terrorists seem interested in extremely closed societies with no openness.
2. Terrorists main method of operation is to create fear and chaos in order to eventually gain control. Chaos is not an engineer's friend. While an engineer would be glad to have created order from chaos, he would not create disorder in an attempt to create a working system.
3. Engineering is generally a respected, fairly good paying career choice. What is the incentive to give up a promising future for a life of uncertainty and danger.
I just don't see it.
What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
this article is such bullshit, i'm going to ddos it into the ground
I think what they have in common is both rigidity (eg, A+B=C is a "rule", just as "obey god" is as well) as well as a willingness to follow everything to its logical conclusion (eg, C=B-A and "obey god, god says infidels should die, therefore kill them").
In my highly selective personal experience, engineer/science types are almost always the most inflexible people and often tend towards totalitarian behaviors. This doesn't mean they are all nutjobs and there are degrees of which they are like this (ie, its not an on or off tendency).
I think it has nothing to do with Islam per se.
"a disproportionate share of engineers seem to have a mindset that makes them open to the quintessential right-wing features of "monism" (why argue where there is one best solution)..."
Frederick W. Taylor, advocate of "scientific management," and who literally articulated as a principle that everything could and should be done in "the one best way." In my experience, it is managers, not engineers, who tend to have the "one best way" mindset. Recently, things that used to be called "recommendations" are now called "best practices," and as nearly as I can tell nobody ever has or thinks they need any data to back up the idea that the "best practices" are actually best.
Engineers, in my experience, are the very last people to claim there is "one best way." On the contrary... the more conservative engineers are constantly articulating tradeoffs (different ways presenting different combinations of good and bad features), while the bolder ones are constantly coming up with wild new ideas. Sometimes it is difficult for a group of engineers ever to stop brainstorming, because they are so intrigued by the challenge of finding new ways to do things... and, if nothing else, because they like the competitive one-upping of thinking of ways to do something that their colleagues didn't think of.
I find this paper very disturbing. I lived through the McCarthy years... There was no definition of the word "Communist." A communist meant anyone the government didn't like. If you pointed out that some reputed "Communist" was, simply, factually, not a Communist, not only did it not matter but it made you suspect yourself. (During the McCarthy era, for example, all homosexuals were automatically "Communists.")
These days, the word "terrist" seems to have the same sort of elusive meaning. It's only a matter of time before it becomes meaningless to point out that someone is, simply and factually, not a terrist. So what, if they were friends with terrists and didn't turn them in... or if they had a "terrist mind-set..." or if they were an engineer, because, just as all homosexuals were automatically Communists, all engineers automatically have "terrist mind-sets."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As a an IT engineer, I decided long ago to join the Tooting Popular Front! Come the glorious day citizens, which I don't think you'll find too glorious. Up against the wall. Blindfold. Last Fag. Bop! Bop! Cheers Harry, bop!
POWER To THE PEOPLE!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
Engineers are can-do people. They want to "make it happen". So what do they do when the very core of their religion is Jihad, and not only that - it is a requirement. There are countless references, here's just a couple:
9:38 "O, believers, what possessed you that when it was said, "March forth in Allah's cause [Jihad]," you clung heavily to the earth? Do you prefer the life of this world to the next? Little is the comfort of this life compared to the one that is to come. Unless you march forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and He will put another in your place. You will not harm Him at all, for Allah has power over everything."
9:44 "Those who believe in Allah and in the Last Day do not ask for exemption from fighting with their wealth and their lives. Allah knows those who fear him."
So what do engineers do... they "make it happen" by participating.
I always thought engineers were more prone to being atheists then extreme religious types. I guess I now have to hide my degree when applying for an American VISA.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
I am speaking as an engineer and Englishman here:
The recent failed bomb attempts in London apparently had some engineers on the design team. People with a PhD in engineering as it happens.
The fact that they failed to make a bunch of petrol and compressed propane cylinders explode, or even catch fire, is frankly quite pathetic. I think any self respecting engineer souldn't fail that badly (though I'm very glad they did fail). This certainly raises questions about the quality of the engineering department from which they got their PhDs. I have trouble believing that such incompetent engineers could really have performed any worthwhile, independent research.
If the recruits only come from third rate institutions who don't have the candidates or the ability to churn out even half-way decent engineers, then we're no worse off having engineer-terrorists than normal terrorists.
If you want an idea how bad if life would be if terrorists could get good engineers, then consider what would happen if this guy was recruited to the other side. Fortunatley the best engineers out there are far more interested in engineering stuff than they are in people. Since terrorism is about people, this does not incline them towards terrorism.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you take "mindset" to mean "educated and informed" and subsequently "more aware than others about just how screwed over they actually are" then perhaps it makes sense.
If you also take "terrorist" to mean "freedom fighter that isn't on our side" then it takes on a slightly different meaning.
No mention or even apparent consideration of the fact that in the third world, technical educations are widely available that completely lack any sort of foundations in the basic humanities such as literature, history, and philosophy.
Therefore, while these people are technically educated, they're still ignorant of the entire body of humanities that might lead them to have their own opinions, rather than the ones they learned in the madrasas before they were sent to technical school.
I can see the fnords!
Oppression and impossible situations do. And the first ones to rebel against the status quo are usually the ones who are paying attention.
In revolutionary America, those folks were the wealthy landowners who followed the news; but in reality fewer than 5% of the colonists actually took up arms.
In China the ones who start trouble are usually university students of all disciplines.
Perhaps in the countries in question the ones paying attention are the engineers for some reason.
But that's not the same thing as saying that thinking like an engineer leads to terrorism.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
....my seventy-two virgins?
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
In the UK sociology is quite the joke A-Level/Degree, basically anyone can get an A* in it, it's right there along with media studies and crap like that. I'd argue that they're simply envious towards people getting degrees in medicine, engineering and science who are currently seen as the stars because of the serious shortages of people studying those subjects we have. What better way to defame than to jump on the current terror scare bandwagon.
:p) in making and planning a terrorist attack really?
The fact is they're suggesting that having an engineering mindset makes you a terrorist, can we instead looking at the vastly more obvious explanation here? That terrorist groups need people with technical abilities, an understand of various areas of science and engineering to perform successful attacks. What use is say an artist or a writer (or a sociologist
It's hardly rocket science. Oh wait sorry I forgot these are sociologists, the people who weren't capable of being able to do proper subjects so even "not rocket science" is probably a bit much for them to handle.
It's that mandatory Circuits course that the mechanical engineers and others outside EE are required to take is what is breeding terrorists, I tell you. Requiring MEs to learn op amps is what is giving them that sour outlook on life.
Terrorists don't have to be smart they just can't be bumbling idiots. There is a range between stupid and smart called normal :P Terrorism isn't really intuitive or smart in any way it just relies on being able to pull off something without getting caught. If the terrorists are reminiscent of the thieves in Home Alone, then it probably won't work but being above that comic level of idiocy isn't "smart". Heck, no one is actually that incompetent anyway.
Anyway this article is idiotic. Maybe bomb makers are like engineers because they are engineers. But not all engineers are bomb makers. And finally not all terrorists are bomb makers. Logic wins again.
I think the study missed a huge point.
Terrorists typically come from developing nations. Colleges in developing nations typically only teach engineering/science because that is what they need. People that goto college in developing nations typically have been tapped to be the leaders of their communities. It is a rare honor and they are going to study a major that has a clear and direct benefit to their communities. They are not going to study political science... because it is completely useless to them. (as opposed to somewhat useless to us) Liberal arts will not give their community food or water.
Colleges in nations outside of Europe and North America do not have the same liberal arts program. In fact, it is same to say that they have NO liberal arts program. When the dictator of your country kills everyone critical of his tyrannical rule, there are no professors left to teach critical thinking. When the only majors offered in a college are engineering or science people are going to major in those topics.
Also, engineering and science students in accredited western schools have to take humanities and social science course as part of their curriculum. You cannot make a comparison between the education received in a western college and one of a college in a developing nation.
This study reads like some poli-sci adjunct professor is lobbying for more federal funding.
To make this study creditable at all there has to be an in depth analysis of the options provided to the students, not just "violent people commonly study engineering" ergo "engineers are violent".
Computer nerds seem to have a hacker mindset too *gasp* since so many hackers turn out to be nerds.
Aside from that i believe engineers like to take things apart and like challenging themselves. They like defeating systems. In waterloo last week there was a tech fair and 2 of them were robot controlled guns (paintball). The point wasnt that they wanted to kill people, its just they are engineers. They want to do things other people could never figure out. This drive is a good thing. As well they view everything from an engineer POV. Yesterday sitting on the bus i remember thinking how poorly the flip up seats were designed and drew up plans for a better one in my head. Looking at security systems the same thing happens. I can see how this could be related to terrorism (defeating security systems).
Terrorists however approach it from a totally different angle. They want to do damage and try to find a way to do so.
So what it really comes down to is engineer/nerd brains are overactive.
Also, engineers != religious. The idea is laughable
If true, this would bring a new meaning to the "Engineers Rule The World" slogan used by many Engineering societies.
"What's the world coming to when the religious right have a better sense of humor about themselves than the lefty atheists"
You can have my mouse when you pry it from my cold dead left hand!
Kevin Smith on Prince
re: a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions
If I may offer an alternate explanation: the mind of an engineer cannot tolerate things that are broken. He (or she) is driven by the notion of improvement, efficiency, and Things Working Correctly.
Terrorists come from badly damaged societies, which have constraints which make "normal" solutions (usually political) impossible -- thus they resort to extreme and usually reprehensible solutions. Nothing, to this sort of person, is worse than living with a broken system.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
You know what us mechanical/aerospace engineering types say about the civil engineering types.
:)
Mechanical engineers build a wide range of things.
But all Civil engineers build are targets.
Vive la Revolucione!!
This makes sense; engineers have to understand how systems work. A successful terrorist operation depends on understanding systems and how to bypass them.
What's controversial about that? It's like saying "hackers really understand computers"
My experience is that the engineering/science mindset makes people less inclined to extreme conservative or religious positions. More likely explanation: the terrorists realize that the things one learns in science, engineering and medical curriculums are useful for their operations, so they concentrate in those fields for the benefits they'll gain. Another more likely explanation: the countries terrorists tend to mostly come from have good reasons, because of their economies, to encourage large portions of their population to go into science, engineering and medical fields, and when the base population the terrorists are recruiting from have high percentages of graduates in those fields it only stands to reason that the terrorist groups will have similar percentages.
I cannot comment directly to the article as I haven't read it. From the summary I does seem like pop-psychology. However, I can see it taken another way.
As a nerdy electrical engineer, I spend a great deal of time performing thought experiments. The subject of a thought experiment could be work, school or hobby related or it could be based on an experience of mine. I absolutely abhor the behavior of terrorists and violent criminals. My personal philosophy is to cause no harm to others except in direct cases of self-defense. Thus I will never work on weapons systems (as an aside I have one exception to this rule; I'd work on the LightSaber if I could keep one). But a thought experiment hurts no one and can be a fun mental challenge. Thought experiments can be making new designs, refining old ones, finding clever hacks, or circumventing some standard.
When I see or experience security theater (pick your favorite example), I try to deconstruct the faulty reasoning behind that particular practice. I then play a game to figure out easy ways to circumvent the faux security or perhaps make it actually safer. Obviously it is just a mental game, but it both saddens and angers me when there is no difficulty in finding the flaws that keep people in constant fear and willing to play the security theater game. It further frustrates me that if I were to point out the flaws, it would cause me great harm as I would be immediately suspect, despite my intentions. I'm certainly not the smartest person, so if I can play these games, so can people who are willing to be violent. Thus security theater is also a failed attempt at security through obscurity.
It is likely, someone will troll this post and accuse me of being a 'turrist'.
A previous poster pointed at Engineer's Syndrome, and I see some similar tendencies.
Engineers -- and I'm speaking as someone who is doing an engineering job, surrounded by engineers, and from a family of engineers -- tend to favor experience more than empathy. They tend to think that if they're convinced something is right, it's for good reason, and once they're convinced, it takes some work to change their minds. More particularly, if they're convinced, they're unlikely to use someone else's experience as a guideline: they're less likely to put themselves in someone else's shoes to regard a problem from that standpoint.
My own definition of Engineer Syndrome is encapsulated in the phrase, that I actually heard from one of my dad's coworkers once, "If you would've thought about this problem as much as I have, you'd agree with me." The level of premise and and patronization enclosed in that one sentence is staggering, but when it comes right down to it, I think many people drawn to engineering feel that way at some point or another. The consequence of this is that if someone else *doesn't* agree, the person suffering from ES thinks the other person is either stupid or stubbornly wrong, and either way, is a fool whose opinion is not to be regarded.
Likewise, engineers come from a background where things are provably correct (mathematics) or experimentally verifiable (most of the rest of science and engineering) and take that sense of certainty and apply it in areas where it isn't applicable -- sociology, politics, art, places where it really does come down to opinion, where there isn't actually a right and wrong, just preference.
The fundamental difference is that engineers do tend to rely on things that are provably correct or experimentally verifiable, whereas religious extremists are predicating invisible omnipotent entities. But the point is: if you have people who have this engineering set of mechanisms and filters for dealing with the world, and who believe in invisible omnipotent entities, they're going to have similar behavior to people who are drawn to engineering.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Maybe it is the terrorists who are recruiting people who have an engineer's mindset. All the better to blow things up, if one knows how things are put together and where to do the most damage.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Well, I'm a scientist and I don't seem to have any burning desire to do any harm to people,... unless, of course, you steal my prized Red Swingline Stapler. Then, I might just have set the building on fire,... [walks away, mumbling more obscenities about Mr. Lumberg],. . . ;-)
This is is a mix of personal observation and repeated anecdote. When people ask the question "Does profession x make people crazy or just attract the crazies?" the answer is usually "it attracts them." I'm going to be talking in broad, sweeping stereotypes and generalizations here, there will be plenty of exceptions.
Psych students are noted for being some troublesome people to deal with because they develop an interest in the field due to their own issues, figuring an understanding of psychology might help them sort things out. Much like a gay man going into the clergy to cure his sexual orientation, it only makes things worse. So the general rule of thumb for college dating is "psych student=head case, stay away!" Not always, but it happens.
Amongst the hard science majors I know, the general agreement is that math majors tend to be the crazier ones. When The Unabomer was revealed to be a math major, many knowledgeable people nodded their heads and said it was quite understandable.
I know for myself, I've always found computers easier to deal with than people. If you can learn the rules the computer operates under, you can achieve predictable results. This is seldom ever the case with people. If you ask your stereotypical computer guy about social skills, he'll say "I went into computers so I wouldn't have to bother with that sort of crap." Now of course that isn't a reasonable solution but that doesn't mean it isn't the rationale a lot of people are operating under.
In general, I find that engineers can get very upset with political realities. "Yes, I know you're saying it's politically difficult. What I'm telling you is that it's a bunch of crap. I don't care whose panties are in a wad, this is demonstrably the best solution, I have the calculations that prove it. The boss doesn't like the color? Fuck him and the Porsche he road in on. You want the best solution? I'm telling you what it is. If you want some sort of half-assed, spanked together compromise, I swear to God I'm getting my dynamite vest."
So I think for a certain subset of engineers, skepticism for unfounded assertions in religion can be replaced by an admiration for black and white clarity. Just as there are scientific constants, religion provides moral constants. You don't have to understand the constants to make use of them. Likewise, you don't have to understand why a religion says what it does to get that sense of justice and purpose from things all made simple and clear. Why is the middle east so fucked up? Well, we could have a huge discussion going back for a few thousand years of history and be here all day, or we could just agree that it's the jews and be done with it. Yeah, that's simpler. Global warming? The jews. The coming economic downturn? Jews. Sunspots? Zionist conspiracy. Windows Vista? Jews.
Bear in mind that when we talk about jihadi engineers, that's something like a fraction of a percent of all Muslim degree-holders, much in the same way that clinic bombers represent a small subset of the people running around with crosses around their necks. The only thing that's surprising here is one would imagine that educated Muslims would be the least likely to fall for all the religious bunk. Just remember that people are capable of a surprising amount of double-think. If you need proof, just look for Christian creationist scientists. If I remember my story correctly, Dawkins knew one who had a thorough scientific understanding of geology, knew that it conflicted with the bible, and ended up willfully unlearning everything he knew because it threatened his faith. This goes beyond the simple pig ignorance of never bothering to learn the facts, this is gaining a thorough understanding of the facts and rejecting them utterly. I can comprehend an unschooled housewife rejecting evolution and modern geology sooner than I can a scientist. That's a sort of willful delusion on par with the O'Brien character from 1984, an intellectual glorying in the destruction of knowledge.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
When I studied engineeering (Mechanical Engineering at Birmingham University in Edgbaston, 1986 - 1989) the Iraqi students I knew all took final-year projects related to projectiles. To me this implied deliberate attempts by Iraq to bolster their supergun project. Failing that the only theory I have is that it was a spooky coincidence. If we assume the Oxford article has any merit (big assumption) then perhaps the engineers are targetted because of their abilities.
I'm not sure it's a superiority complex, but the end result is awfully similar. Engineers are one of the few subsets of people that are in active control of changing the world around them. It's what they do for a living. They think about a problem, come up with a way to implement a solution, and then build it.
I don't think they believe they're superior-- but when an engineer decides one way or the other about an issue, he sets out to do something about it. A lot of people are content to hold a viewpoint but go on about their business, but it has always seemed to me that an engineer with a viewpoint on an issue that he won't back down from is simply doing what engineers do. He's thought about a problem, looked at his limited options, and is pursuing the solution his believes is correct.
This mindset, however, is not common. Most people, when confronted with an issue (even one they strongly feel needs to change) that is outside their ability to control, will simply go about their lives. The engineer, although similarly powerless to enact change in, say, global politics, will do the only things he can, like annoy everybody around him trying to convince them to see his viewpoint. They try to think rationally, and they believe when they've reached a conclusion that other people could be convinced rationally to see their viewpoint. Again, this is what they do day-in and day-out at work, convincing co-workers to choose a particular design path on purely rational merits. It just doesn't map to the messy grey-area that makes up normal life with irrational people.
(none of this is peer-reviewed, and was made up on the spot, and may or may not match your experiences.)
I think this says a lot more about a psychology mindset (if one exists) than about an engineering mindset (which I will concede exists).
The "engineering mindset" is one that is fiercely analytical and follows the analysis wherever it leads. After taking a graduate level course in game theory I and many other people in the class became staunch economic conservatives. We'd seen the math, we'd proven the math worked, and we believed it to be irresponsible for anyone to advocate inefficient allocation schemes. (Keep in mind that inefficient allocation schemes means malnutrition and/or starvation for millions, as happened in India a few decades ago. People were starving to death even while there was plenty of grain in government warehouses. The problem wasn't a lack of food--only a lack of an efficient way to allocate it.)
The "psychology mindset" is more touchy-feely and far less analytical. A psychologist would look at my economic conservativism and say "so, you believe in free markets because they're mathematically optimal, efficient, and rational. But you don't seriously believe people are mathematically optimal, efficient, or rational, do you?" It's an intellectually honest criticism: I'm not setting them up as straw men, but instead only showing that the psychology mindset is at odds with an engineering mindset. Just as the "engineering mindset" has led me and many others to economic conservativism, the "psychology mindset" has led many others to embracing Big Government, price controls, and market interventions.
If the psychology community wants to accuse the engineering community of being correlated with terrorism, I figure we should accuse the psychology community of being correlated with famine, poverty and pestilence. But it would be much, much more productive if such inflammatory rhetoric could be scaled back.
Engineer: Here, strap this on.
non-engineer: What is it?
Engineer: It's a transportation device.
non-engineer: Transportation?
Engineer: Yeah, it will take you to Heaven.
non-engineer: Great! How does it work?
Engineer: It's powered by unbelievers. Walk into a crowd of them and push this button. Their destruction sends you to Heaven.
non-engineer: Thank you, but why aren't you using it?
Engineer: Because I must stay behind to help others get to Heaven.
After a few iterations, the population proportions gets a bit skewed.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
It is noteworthy that the 'conservative extremists' involved directly in the terrorist attacks are rarely the high level planners (the 'engineers'). They are more likely to be less educated, younger individuals, more easily swayed by appeals to religious or patriotic arguments. But then that's true of our side as well. The real planners don't go anywhere near the front lines. They remain back in the Pentagon, or CIA headquarters.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think the more likely explanation is that this is an attempt by sociologists to get revenge for all the times they were told in college that sociology isn't a real major, sociology isn't a true or hard science, etc. Being an engineer myself, I happen to agree with that assessment, but perhaps the sociologists are getting the last laugh. :p
...... Unless of course we all really do have a terrorist mindset. In that case, publishing such an offensive article was a gross miscalculation on their part! :D <sarcastic news flash> Everywhere across the nation, engineers begin to dust off their bomb building kits, preparing to take on the evil forces of sociology</sarcasm> :D
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Engineers tend to have a drill-down type of intelligence which allows them to be good at figuring out how things work. This is the same type of intelligence as any type of hacker or terrorist (or in the natural world: root systems which know how to bond and navigate to crack through cement building foundations). The basic m.o. for all of these is that their power comes from below, in contrast to the politician, CEO, or alphadog.
In other words, "Terrorism" is just a dysphemism used by those wanting to maintain power and control from above. Engineering becomes a terrorist act as soon as the engineers learn how to build a better society than the one current imposed by the those power holders above. And it's only these engineering types from below (in their various guises) who have the knowledge to do that.
Happy hacking!
...He comes from the future.
Engineers tend to be systematizers: they are idealists. Scientists are not necessarily idealists since, as empiricists, they tend to be more realist. Even though they often try to explain systems, they don't create systems as engineers do, unless they are in an applied science like engineering. It is interesting that the theory/practice dichotomy is turned on its head: it seems that it is actually possible that some who develop theory can actually be more down to Earth than some who use theory to create. Both aspects have connections with reality, but perhaps this study is indicating that one has more of a potential to lose that connection to a greater degree. Just as what happens to many artists, it is easy to lose touch with reality when you are making your own reality, even if it is not a reification. The idealist thought processes remain the same.
...the most interesting thing about accusing all the engineers in the US of being potential terrorists is that there are a great many engineers who hold DOE and DOD security clearances in order to access the information they require to maintain the very structures that terrorists may wish to destroy.
Is this peculiar attribute that they share, perchance, a strange sense of loyalty to the people paying them to play with fancy toys? Or to the toys themselves?
Take a frog, and yell JUMP!
The frog jumps.
Now, cut off one of its legs and yell JUMP!
The frog jumps, but not as far.
Now, cut off the other leg and yell JUMP!
The frog does not jump.
Conclusion: The amputee frog is deaf.
Abstract: For centuries, science has been mystified by how frogs hear without ears. Our recent work has at last resolved this long standing mystery by showing that in frogs, the ability to hear is closely correlated to the number of legs present on the frog. The hearing organ's location in the frog's legs explains the absence of any ears at their expected location. In future studies, we will determine if the frog's hearing apparatus is in fact located on the frog's feet, as is suspected from their ear-like morphology.
This doesn't surprise me. If you start from a place of religious conviction based on shaky reason, but are talented with reason and problem solving, where do you end up? Many branches of engineering utilize these skills without bringing one face to face with the difficult questions and contradictions.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
Please don't lump all psychology together. There is a very large difference between the psychodynamic approach to psychology and the more modern approaches such as cognitive neuroscience. New tools in brain imaging are finally giving us the tools needed to start unraveling the human mind. We've started to progress beyond the psuedo-philosophical past because we now have data to support our arguments. Considering we all have a brain (well, I doubt it with some people sometimes...) it's probably a good thing to have a better understanding of it. Sure we don't have neat equations to describe our field, but hey, even basic engineering started somewhere. The brain is a hell of a lot more complex than a bridge so it's going to take a while.
Corrolation and causation.
All the time I was in databases, algorithms, and theory of computation, all the professors kept showing Islamic Jihad videos and I kept thinking, "WTF? This isn't on the test is it?" So, now one of the two blurry parts of my college career have been made clear. Now, as soon as they make a drug to help you remember what you did when you were really drunk .. I'll be all set!
Thanks Slashdot!
This may sound dumb, given that there are people who strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up in crowded places. Despite the false flag maneuvers, (Israeli rockets bombing Israeli targets), one of the best ways to advance your agenda, assuming that you are a villainous leader of a 'victim' nation, is to convince ignorant fools to shoot at the targets which will most effectively keep the general population fearful and willing to support your leadership.
Terrorists are simply goons who have been subject to cultist, (religious) brainwashing. They come from all religions. --Terrorism is just another stupid label which simply means, "People who have been conned into acting out the wishes of their controllers through violence." Ignorant, flag waving or religious killers whose hearts swell with feelings of patriotic duty or religious fervor have been around forever. They are chumps, every last one of them. "Terrorism" is just the latest way to sell a very old product. The last time, the villains in charge packaged it in a brightly colored box labeled, "Communism".
Sure, there were communists who were aiming guns at the West, just as there are dumb grunts strapping bombs to their vests. But it's all the same old story; the powers that be have just rearranged the chess board so that they can keep people locked into easily controlled patterns of fear. It's all about control and greed, which is why I say that this latest 'Threat' is a falsehood. It's really our leaders using dumb tricks to keep us under thumb. I know I am repeating what may sound to many an old and oft heard song, but that's the problem; people who think in reasonable terms tend to believe that stating the obvious once should be enough, whereas the Dark Side cleaves to the knowledge that repeating a lie often enough causes even smart people believe it.
And they do! People fall for it, over and over again. Two dolts actually felt the need to pen, edit and publish a paper saying, essentially, that engineers are terrorists. These two people, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, both hail from Oxford University for goodness sake! A respected hall of learning which, one would think, might weed out ignorance rather than cultivate it. Some days when I thumb through the news, I just want to yell at the sky. "HOW CAN ANYBODY BE SO BLIND?!?!?"
I think I'll go do that now. Excuse me.
-FL
Let's see, you called a bunch of people you don't know extreme, strident, unforgiving, tediously sanctimonious, lacking humor, and prone to preaching.
Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder to be so extreme, strident, unforgiving, tediously sanctimonious, and lacking humor to preach like that.
You must be fun at parties.
Would you lighten up if they just said you were going to burn in hell for eternity?
New Meme, instead of "Going Postal", it will be the new version of "SLASHDotted"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So now all engineers must be watched because they might be terrarists? This sounds like a bunch of anti-intellectual bullshit. I'm not surprised since anti-intellectual backlashes are highly correlated with authoritarian societal movements and the west (led by the US & UK) has been marching this way since 9-11.
... in other words, in poor, conflict-ridden countries where extremism is likely to be more popular, people who have the opportunity to get a university education are less likely to piss it away on a degree in sociology.
But we don't want to say that, so we'll just blame the "engineers' mindset". Yeah, those evil engineers!
http://outcampaign.org/
Pedantic correction but that was Glasgow Airport in Scotland. Not that everyone in the countries involved would see it as pedantic...
...but yes, a good example of very inept terrorists where the reporting made it seem as if the end of the world were nigh.
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
Except that atheism is kind of an extreme position in itself. It takes a person with a big head to look at the 95% of the earth's population that believes in a supreme being and declare them all delusional.
I guess I have a pretty big head.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
two Oxford University sociologists, who found that graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements.
Whats the terrorist to engineer ratio for cultures that don't worship Islam? I understand that the Buddha, Baptist and Quaker engineer warriors can be quite violent.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
If it's a common story lots of people are submitting, naturally only one of the hundred submissions will actually get posted, the rest rejected. What really gets me is when good, unique submissions are rejected and slashvertisements or Dvorak trolls get posted. Show some fucking taste, editors!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
echo $STEREOTYPE1 has $STEREOTYPE2 mindset
Let the witch hunts begin! Woot!
I studied arts at University. Just maybe there's a greater proportion of arab terrorists who are doctors/engineers because there's a greater proportion of arabs who are doctors/engineers? In many of my courses, there simply weren't any arabs at all. Not a one. And I don't think I saw a single class in my major fields of studies (Philosophy, Linguistics, and Japanese language) with more than 5% of the class composed of people who could remotely pass for arab. Usually, it was closer to 1%.
Whereas, when I took math and science electives, usually half the class was arab.
I'm not saying all arabs are terrorists. And I'm not saying all arabs are muslim, nor am I saying all muslims are arabs. And I'm certainly not saying all muslims are terrorists. But I am saying that maybe, just maybe, the reason that a greater proportion of arab muslim terrorists are doctors and engineers could be because there just aren't that many arabs studying disciplines other than those.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Strange that most of the engineers I know are relatively liberal. And I work at a chip design center full of EEs. But, if you think about it, terrorist leaders probably find knowledge making one able to design and build timed or remote triggers more useful to their cause than they find the knowledge making one able to write a haiku. This, reqruitment will limit how many haiku writers are brought in to the plan. Unless it's Vogon haiku, which I understand would be pretty freakin scary to the victim. But really, how many experts are there on Vogon poetry anyway?
As simply a "fact," a properly compiled statistic is usually accurate, however it is impossible to establish relationships with merely one fact.
One of my favorite statistics is: "If you own a gun, you are more likely to die of gun violence."
This, without any real research on my part, is probably true, but it means nothing in and of itself. It needs to be viewed within the proper context to mean something.
It could well be that it isn't "gun ownership" here, but the environment in which gun ownership is seen as necessary. For instance, in a violent neighborhood, more people own guns, and a higher percentage of the people are killed by guns. However, within that context, you may be less likely to die of gun violence if you can protect yourself with a gun. The real relationship is bad neighborhoods and violent crime driving gun ownership, not the gun ownership itself.
The point? The fact may be accurate, but one fact is almost meaningless without other facts and theory supporting it. If it is a fact that there are a disproportionately large number of engineers and science geeks in terrorism circles, I don't see any supporting frame work of theory and other facts to suggest it is any more than that the other idiots blew themselves up somewhere, but the intellectuals sort of didn't want to do that for obvious reasons.
Let me guess, you're an atheist who took offense at his post. But you're just proving his point that many atheists don't have a sense of humor about themselves.
I'm an atheist too, but I knew he wasn't talking about me. There is a significant contingent of atheists who do fit his description, and they deserve to be called out on it. I don't care what you do or don't believe, just don't be a dick about it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I remember watching a news program that was talking about the college graduates that were turning violent in the middle east.
It all came down to jobs and unemployment. The youth went and got college degrees...returned home to find no jobs...
what are you going to do when you have no future and were expecting one? Some turn to violence...not a surprise.
I wonder what will happen to the US when we have a recession....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I'm a Mechanical Engineer. My sister once asked me what the difference was between a Civil Engineer and a Mechanical Engineer was... I said, "That's easy! Mechanical Engineers make weapons. Civil Engineers make targets." Does that make me a terrorist? Or just a good Military-Industrial Complexist?
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I suspect that figure's a little high. That would put it at no more than 300,000,000 who don't believe in a supreme being. Yet Buddhists alone probably exceed that figure, before we even begin to count the explicitly secular population.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Your argument makes sense. Here is a comment from a discussion elsewhere:
is it pop psychology(?)
this first would have to lend credence that the thesis warrants comparison to psychology in any way, let alone "pop" psychology which tends to be a few rungs down from the imprimatur of truly researched psychology. It isn't. It's not even close. masquerading(?)
You bet! No matter what this is trying to be in any genuine sense other than phooey, it's masquerading.
And a personal anecdote (under the category of science no less.)
science(?)
Not a chance. Anecdotally I would expect to be able to be able to think of a number of fellow engineers who match the description and thesis. I'm not sure I can even think of a single example. I can think of some peers from the past who I may describe as of a similar mindset, but those I would hardly describe as real engineers.
While the parent is certainly entitled to have and express his opinions, the parent has made no real insightful contribution to the discussion because the parent neglected to include any evidence to support his statements. Therefore, the parent should be modded down, at least until such time that he more fully supports his assertions.
I'm entirely unsure as to whether your trying to be ironic or not.
My keyboads not woking popely.
Why is there an engineer bashing article every couple months? What the fuck have we done to deserve this?
And why, in 25 years of engineering, I never meet anyone that matches the results of these "studies"?
You can argue all you want about anecdotalness of *my* evidence, but if these suggested attributes of engineers had any validity, I'd have seen more real examples in 25 goddamned years of working with at least as many engineers as some of these studies interviewed.
As a TA, they [the Asians] cheat too.
I was stunned how many lab reports I would get where pages (page 1 versus page 2) just wouldn't match. I mean the fonts were different, one page would end mid-sentence the next would start in the middle of a different sentence, results were from labs that had been done a year before and the assignment altered in the meantime.
I assume it is because they just really don't speak/write English. As such, written reports get passed around and they have no clue how they are mixing and matching them. They may be smart but they are unqualified to go to an English speaking school.
As many of you now know, I was recently detained and questioned by the FBI regarding several posts on this blog. Two of the posts in question were first altered, then removed all together, by what appeared to be the Dept. of Homeland Security. I've been thinking about how to describe this experience. Last night, I talked briefly about what happened and why in an e-mail to Rich over at The New Freedom. He's got a great site over there, by the way. I've decided that that e-mail is probably about as thorough as I care to be regarding my little adventure, at least for now. Here's the copy that I sent him - I invite all of you to read it for yourselves: Hey Rich, just wanted to follow up on your comment on my blog and the post on yours. My name's Rob, by the way, hi, nice to meet you. Apparently, I actually did upset a few people with some of the information I posted. This resulted in an involuntary trip to the local FBI offices. Didn't even know they were in town - guess they're everywhere these days.
So from what I gathered in our conversation (if you can call it that - it was a bit one-sided), a couple of things set them off. They've got some tracking software sorting through everything out there, looking for certain keywords. If it picks up a keyword, you get put on a list and monitored. I got flagged the first time as a result of my post on Canada placing the US on its terror watch list. Among other things, mention of Guantanamo, Afghanistan, torture, and terrorism set the software off.
A couple of posts later, I did a parody of an interview with al-Quaeda representative Ayman al-Zawahri. This seemed to set them off, too. They wanted to know what my connections were to the group - I guess they were obligated to ask. The thing that really got them in that article was an offhand remark about the weaponization of smallpox based on some work an Australian research group did with mousepox. Here's a link to the research:
sciencedirect article
You may need a subscription to view it, I'm not sure. Anyway, I assumed that this was pretty common knowledge. Of course, I also work in biomedical chemistry, so I guess I hear some things the general public doesn't. They were really freaked out about this. Don't blame them - if you've got some time, pick up Ken Alibeck's (sp?) book on the supposedly now-defunct Russian bioterrorism program. But that's a story for another day.
The stuff about homegrown terrorism was the last straw, they said. I guess posting instructions for some lame explosives along with criticism of HR1955 pissed them off. They decided to teach me a lesson by first censoring, then removing the offending blog post. They figured that if I was posting stuff like this, it was only a matter of time before I moved on to more complex agents, based on my education and employment background. It took me about six and a half hours to convince these assholes that I'm not a terrorist. I am certain I'm on every watch list they've got now. Not looking forward to my next trip to the airport, that's for damn sure.
I guess that's about it. I appreciate your concern, and the fact that you're spreading the word - people definitely need to know about this. But standing up for your rights on paper is one thing; it's a different story when they come knocking on your door and give you the opportunity to do it in person. A word of caution: this shit is real. Do what you can to stay off of that list, man. I'm sure that it was just an odd series of coincidences that sent them my way, but better to be safe. Anyhow, I'm probably going to post briefly in the next day or two, once I have time to organize my thoughts, and then stick to the fiction from here on out. Well, let me know if you have any more questions, and keep doing what you're doing.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Engineers are well-known (by researchers, theorists, and others) as "get it done" types. They want to know as much theory as they need to make practical applications, and to make things that do something useful. As long as they're making progress, rough guidelines that take margins of error into account are as often as good as pure theory.
Terrorists are people who've decided to make people take notice of their views. They're not idealists who talk about people converting because they've come to accept what the terrorists see as truth. They want to get noticed and to get their message out to people. The media is an effective way to do that, if you can get the attention of the media. Blowing people up is a quick way to get in the news. Notice that the message spread by terrorists and the means of spreading it are often condemned by others wanting to spread a similar but more peaceful message, yet it's hard to deny who gets their message to a wider audience. It's much more common to hear "join Islam or die", "join the Communist Party or rot in jail", or "love America or leave it" than to hear "if you'll pray with us, you might see Mohammed was right", "it's better for us all if we're all communists, please take this pamphlet and consider it", or "this is the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the place where it should be safe to dissent", even though there are peaceful and considerate Mulsims, Commmunists, and Americans. (I'm an American and I love my country, but I think we have not only a right but a duty to be heard when we have a grievance against our leaders -- that's what the country was founded on!)
Much of what terrorists do requires skills most people don't have. Making a reliable suicide vest takes skill. Aiming an aircraft at a skyscraper was not something left to chance, but something the hijackers trained for in actual flight schools. Terrorist paramilitary camps exist to train people in how to fight with tactics developed over generations. Those who want to be effective terrorists appreciate that an engineering degree in chemical engineering is probably a good way to learn about explosives and poisons. Those who want to write software for their cause need to know how just as those who write software for other reasons do. They need to know how buildings are supported to bring them down more effectively, just as professional and peaceful demolitions crews do. These people take engineering degrees or go to flight school or training camp because they have made the pragmatic decision that it suits their ends.
So really, yeah, I can see it. Engineers do what they need to do to build buildings, bridges, computer processors, new plastics with better impact resistance, or cars with better safety ratings. Terrorists do what they need to do if their goal is killing, maiming, and getting noticed. Both are very goal-oriented, and very pragmatic. Being effective at terror often takes some engineering skills, which reinforces some of the correlations.
All of does mean that someone who's a terrorist might be lead to study engineering. It doesn't mean that people studying engineering are any more likely to become terrorists than they otherwise would be.
I'm sure most of the Muslim people studying engineering are studying it for professional reasons, too. We have wackos in the West who were good at destruction because of their education and training (for example Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Michael Swango, Josef Mengele, Richard Angelo, Charles Cullen, Kristen Gilbert, Stephan Letter, Christine Malevre, Norbert Poehlke, Beverly Allitt) many of whom have been nurses or physicians. That doesn't mean someone who's studied electronics, pyrotechnics, or medicine in the US or Europe is going to be a serial killer or mass murderer. The same is true of the Middle East.
Actually, another reason is applicability. People don't study American business law to take back to Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia, because the laws aren't the same. Engineering is largely transfe
Prevalence of particular fields among terrorists isn't necessarily indicative of a mindset present in those fields. I would instead point toward the sorts of people who can afford to leave their home country and travel to where the terrorist opportunities are. Dirt farmers can't afford to do this; engineers can. Moreover, in a lot of cases, people in developing and recently-developed countries who get the chance to study engineering, medicine, etc., come from well-to-do families already and have the resources at their disposal to travel.
Monism and simplism sound to me like the MBTI characteristics of J and NT types respectively. And, big surprise, lots of scientists/engineers are, or identify as xNTJs.
Of course, the article didn't suggest, much less say, that "all engineers are bomb makers", or that "all terrorists are bomb makers", so your statements are of the same order of relevance to the article as "the sky is blue".
What it said was that engineers are overrepresented - there are more of them (engineers) than are statistically likely in the sample (terrorists). Which I don't find surprising, though it has little to do with religion or conservatism. Engineers are more likely than most to think that there is a (relatively) simple answer to a problem. They do not accept that notion of the unsolvable problem gracefully. And they're more inclined to be realistic - a few (thousand) students of Islam aren't going to defeat the Israeli Army (or the US Army), so let's fight asymmetrically. Which leads into "terrorisism". After all, "terrorism" is just a label applied by the bigger guy to describe the bad (successful) behaviour of the little guy.
That was logic?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
People with degrees may be able to do more damage to infrastructure if they wanted, but they also have a lot more to lose by doing so. You'd have to pretty damn dedicated to take 4 years of engineering courses, turn down living in the upper middle class, and do something stupid like cutting down key electrical towers with a cutting torch (I'm ignoring dynamite fearmongering, a torch is much cheaper and easier to get).
I have the knowlege to kill the power to NYC and the knowhow to carry it out. But why would I do something like that when on my salary I can have my 60+ (near)virgins NOW?
I see nothing special about engineers and the alleged connection to extremism. I will illustrate a use of terror tactics that requires no engineering at all.
I have no degree. Yet I have worked in IT for 20+ years, the last 10 in management. I have had only 3 employers during that time. One of my jobs required a master's degree -- and this was in an organization that vigorously checked academic credentials to the point where 5% of all finalist candidates were rejected for lying. I never claimed to have a degree, so there was never any need to check transcripts.
My strategy has worked well. I spent a grand total of 6 weeks unemployed over 20+ years -- lost my job when my employer was bought out. I am a millionaire thanks to their stock. It's ok to be treated like crap if you get paid.
I could have pursued academic credentials, but I opted out when I saw the opportunities that I would have to leave on the table.
If I apply for a job, I know (based on a lack of credentials) that I will get summarily rejected 90% of the time. I get reasonable consideration only 10% of the time. I am a serious candidate and perhaps a finalist even less often than that. Is this a problem? Not really.
How many jobs do I need?
One.
How many do I have now?
One.
Is my non-degree status costing me money?
I doubt it. I am already in the 99th percentile for salary. How much higher can I possibly go?
If I need a new job, won't it be difficult to find one?
Here is where the terror strategy fits in: It costs me nothing to TRY. I can apply for as many jobs as I want. The cost is trivial. Granted, I need to offer SOMETHING that will ultimately persuade someone to hire me. However, the number of failed attempts means nothing if I can get what I want ONCE. I am a failure ONLY if the industry is 100% successful in locking me out for an extended period of time. Like a terrorist, I can thrive on a 1% success rate.
We do in fact seem to hear a lot about "Inept Terrorists" in the news, although the news never reports them as inept, rather they spin it as the brave efforts of the police narrowly avoiding massive catastrophe.
As well as reports of terrorists who are actually far more competent. But the mainstream media more or less refuses to call anyone who isn't somehow Arab or Islamic a "terrorist" regardless of their actions.
Never mind the fact that the plan the morons had concocted was so bad they would at most hurt (or kill) themselves, and if they got really lucky a few bystanders. Good example was a recent case where some "terrorists" had loaded their cars up with cans of gasoline and then planned on lighting them on fire believing this would lead to massive explosions (this happened over in England btw).
They also put a few propane tanks in the car for decoration. Whilst failing to make much use of the weapon they actually had. That being the car.
Anyone who knows about these types of things knows all you're going to get is a big hot fireball as the car burns down, and that's about it (might work if you had a proper fuel air mixture, but just dumping containers of gas in a car isn't going to cut it). So yeah, plenty of inept to go around.
So inept they couldn't even manage to watch Mythbusters!
Now that we are looking for reasons to stereotype people by professions, I think another correlation study is warranted. Do sociologies tend to be more nihilistic? After all, it is common for them to spend their lives among primitive societies and to describe those societies with a sense of awe and admiration. Does that not warrant an investigation into whether or not sociologists are more prone to undervalue the technology that makes modern life possible and the creative process that stems from selfish pursuit of one's dreams? Since people who chose to study sociology specifically emphesize social interraction rather than personal uniqueness of each individual as the more important part of human condition, are they not more prone to be lacklaster students? I am not saying that they are. I am just saying it merits a correlation study. It should also focus on whether or not people who chose to become sociologists by profession (or at least by education) are prone to be hypocritical and manipulative and corrupt (all skills required for successful social self-promotion and social success on a grander scale). I am not saying that the are, I am just asking, what's the correlation?
Of course, the results of the study itself should not be all that surpricing. Successful inventors are part of the creative-destructive class of the society. So those who view their goals for where a society needs to be as being different from where goals towards which the society is progressing might chose more destructive measures.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Well sure engineers are useful for blowing up stuff and all so obviously the terror recruiters would go after them. Who would need smarty arts geeks for terror?
Engineers tend to be idealists and perfectionists. These traits are useful for tracking intricate details of engineering projects and making them reliable. However, the politics of the world are messy and chaotic. This tends to encourage the engineer to seek a "pure" solution, which may be some kind of religious utopia in their mind.
Table-ized A.I.
You might be more correct about atheism if the 95% of the worlds population (where did that number come from) all believed in _THE_SAME_ supreme being. Of course they don't. Not only are there many different religions with mostly mutually exclusive beliefs, but most all of the religions are themselves split by different beliefs into branches and sects and denominations and other subdivisions.
Also, I would also suggest that most of the folks who get labeled "atheists" are in fact agnostics. Do I believe in God? - No. Do I believe God doesn't exist? - No. You CAN'T prove God exists or doesn't exist, so the answer to the question - "Is there a supernatural supreme being?" is "I don't know"
OK enough ranting. OK one more. My Philosophy prof liked to provoke discussion by asking stuff like - What is the difference between religion and superstition? Is religious belief a form of mental illness? Be prepared to defend your answer.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
After all, libertarianism is its own brand of fundie--there's a set of ideas defined as being right; if the ideas turn out not to work, the blame lies with the believers, not with the beliefs. The ideology cannot fail, it can only be failed. It provides a simple way of looking at the world, which provides easy answers to every question. And it's quite popular among engineers, especially in this country. It sounds like the same impulse which leads people to become bomb-throwing religious nutbars in other places leads them to become silly libertarians here.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
No. Read the paper. First: they don't "chalk this all up to what they call they 'engineering mindset'." Considering four possible explanations for the overrepresentation of engineers in light of the evidence, they conclude that the most likely two explanations involve (1) social conditions experienced by engineers and other elite-degree holders in the Middle East and North Africa region, and (2) the engineering mindset. The first explains why elite degree holders in general (including engineers) are overrepresented in Islamist groups originating in the Middle East and North Africa, whereas elite degree holders in general are not overepresented in Islamist groups in the West and elsewhere. The second, they argue, explains why engineers are over-represented in Islamist groups everywhere, and in violent Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa, even though elite degree holders in general are not overrepresented in the former, and non-engineering elite degree holders are not overrepresented in the latter (but engineering degree holders are so overrepresented as to constitute overrepresentation of elite degree holders in general without overrepresentation of other elite degree holders.)
They present independent evidence of the (politically) conservative tendency of engineers and engineering students, and of their religious tendencies. Really, read the paper. Its fine to disagree with it, its fine to criticize it. But do it based on what's in it, not based on knee-jerk reaction to an oversimplified presentation of its conclusions.
They should be slaughtered like animals for even suggesting such a correlation!
If I didn't have a code freeze today I'd do it myself.
n/t
Despite the article's infuriatingly vague generalizations and the thesis' utter lameness, it still managed to get me drowsy. I can't believe someone could wring 80+ pages of tripe out of this thesis, never mind get the Oxford imprimatur pasted on the front.
Anthropologists do it with culture, sociologists do it with class. Zoologists do it with animals, and botanists do it with grass.
What do engineers do it with? Themselves!
From the article:
Leave it to a sociologist to claim there is no such thing as one solution being better than others. Let's take their claims one at a time...
Monism. I could hardly believe my eyes when they looked down their nose at believing one solution is better than others. Let me throw out a counter-example that I actually SAW in college:
My partner wrote this code:
i = 0;
if (i < 26) {
code;
i++; }
if (i < 26) {
code;
i++; }
if (i < 26) {
code;
i++; }
... 26 times total...
if (i < 26) {
code;
i++; }
I replaced his code with this code that I wrote:
i = 0;
while (i < 26) {
code;
i++; }
Did both solution work? Yes. Can we not say that one (mine) was better than others? Yes. Can this be quantified? Yes. Clearly their rejection of Monism is retarded.
Simplism. I'm not going to waste a lot of time with this. Would the world not be a better place if, instead of doing the sort of stupid stuff we see every day on the TV show "Cops", people acted rationally and led normal lives rather than acting like rednecks? I rest my case.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
After the Roman Empire fell most of it's brain power migrated east to the Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphates. This is where scientific progress was kept alive during the European "dark ages". Eventually due to Mongol invasions, the rise of orthodox Islam, and the evolution into the Ottoman Empire; the brain power migrated back West and triggered the Renaissance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science
For all those dissing the humanities in this thread:
Discuss.
All the terrorists are inept, that does not stop them from being dangerous. The second generation of the Baader-Meinhof gang was litteraly recruited from a lunatic asylum. Catching inept criminals is still very difficult.
The problem with the recent scare-ware announcements in the US is that they have tended to be of wannabees and never-was types. Such folk can become dangerous, but not as dangerous as the posturing and grandstanding that the likes of Freeh, Ridge, Ashcroft, Giuliani and the rest have engaged in.
But comming back to the original question, yes having observed terrorists professionally for a number of years I would say that very few of them have what you would call a scientific mindset. They are not interested in enquiry, they have a complete ideological system that answers every question. They are certainly not interested in testing their precious little ideas.
The other point of reference is that a scientist is not much use to a terrorist group, they want practical skills like how to blow stuff up. Bin Laden is a civil engineer, so hw knows the weak spots in building design. But most terrorists have no real engineering skill either.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I it's not so much thinking like a terrorist, as thinking analytically. I look at a current even, and see the logic (or lack thereof), patterns, and history. This will lead many of us to be more pessimistic about society. And then with the logic thinking inspired by Spock, we feel that we know exactly what to do about it. I don't think that it's so much that engineers are thinking like terrorists, as the general population is more disconnected from reality. Britney shaves her hair, and the media is all over it for months. Some new scandal that could have far-reaching consequences happens with an elected official, and it gets 30 seconds on the 10 o'clock news. It's not that we engineers think like terrorists, as they DON'T think like the average American.
Access to guns is always bad.
I vaguely remember reading about this on Foreign Policy magazine's blog site. One possible explanation tha they proposed is that scientists and engineers who operate in that constricted cultural context tend to be angrier and, therefore, more likely to project that anger in violent jihad.
Both engineers and terrorists are adept at studying processes and architectures to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
The difference between a terrorist and en engineer is, the engineer wants to know how processes and architectures function to make them better.
The terrorist wants to know how how processes and architectures function to spread terror.
Well, IANAT but it seems to me that an alternative explanation can also be offered. Schools have historically been hotbeds of radical thought and social experimentation. Might it not be that these terrorist engineers learned their radicalism in school? Since the two fields that people actually go to school for in the Middle East are medicine and engineering, this seems to me to be as reasonable an explanation as "those engineers' brains is just wired that way."
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
When I went to Iraq I was given a very clear explanation for why more Islamic terrorists are college-educated than not:
Arabs as a culture do not teach their children about the relationship between cause and effect, so the typical Arab is not suitable as a terrorist operative.
For example, the typical Arab could not draw you a map of how he gets to work if you held a gun to his head. The same is true for reconstructing timelines - for some reason Arabs just don't think in those terms. Anyone who can't understand that event B must come before event C and both must occur after event A just can't pull off effective covert operations.
This is why Al Qaeda wrote in their manual (see the Manchester document (pdf warning)) that "The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates..., Platonic ideals..., nor Aristotelian diplomacy." The Arab culture simply is not equipped to discuss their goals with us in terms of the Logic we embrace because they don't teach it or learn it among themselves.
Classical (ie. "western") university educations teach things like cause-and-effect, ordered sequencing of events, and Logic in the Greek traditions. To succeed in college you need to learn to think that way, so as a terrorist you would have a strong incentive to recruit people who have succeeded in the college environment.
In summary, there are more engineers and scientists among terrorist operatives because they are better prepared intellectually than the uneducated Arabs, and therefore they get preferentially recruited over uneducated Arabs. It has nothing to do with engineers being predisposed towards extremism, and everything to do with them already having the mental skills necessary.
Travel the Galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms...
God bless those pagans.
Pagans have god(s) too. "Pagan" was the Roman term for country yokel. Bible-thumpers and Americans think it means "satanist."
dog bless lysdexics.
Stick Men
The paper at issue discusses this possibility on pp. 40-41. While you have modded "insightful" by others who have, presumably, also not bothered to even glance at the paper (the four hypotheses considered are listed in the abstract, after all), you've simply pointed to one of the hypotheses considered, analyzed in light of the evidence, and rejected as not likely significant in explaining the overrepresentation in the paper being discussed. Now, if you had taken the step of challenging their reasoning in rejecting it and presenting a counterargument to it, that might present something "insightful", or at least "interesting".
Last time I checked, engineers were building bridges. Terrorists were blowing them up.
Seriously though, I can't say any of the engineers I knew in college would fit the description (disclaimer: I am biased as I was one of them). It is true that many had the feeling their field was a superior field of study, but:
a. I could say that about friends in many other fields
b. This claim was somewhat "accepted" as engineering was also considered among the more difficult majors at my school
In any case, the engineers I knew were far too pragmatic and rationalist to believe in doctrine. I'm quite sure there were quite a few atheists among them too.
Then again, if you're going to be building bombs and blowing things up, having an engineer around is probably a good idea.
This space up for sale.
I suspect the article's religion emphasis is wrong and a red herring. Rather consider that where evidence is presented of a population being abused, an engineer will tend to know how to fight the abuse, and be able to construct and/or invent tools to do it. This can be seen as a duty where the person realizes most of his contemporaries do not have this ability: if not the engineer, then who? Yes, a humanities grad might be able to steal guns or bombs, but won't know much about how to use them or how to deliver them where it matters. Engineers and scientists are used to thinking through problems of that sort, and once convinced they owe a duty to their people to do it, may follow through, where a humanities person might not see the duty or might be able more easily to excuse his inaction as "I don't know how". Whether one is helping his people due to religious belief or a purely humanist ethic, such a feeling of duty and ability to respond to it will select people whose skills leave them no excuses of inability.
"The authors have found that graduates in subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world."
Not to mention, those are the three graduate subjects that are most useful. I honestly can't say I've seen a whole lot of international students studying liberal arts degrees. So the mindset might simply be that people from developing countries want get a more practical degree. They are often times depending on the support of their families, who will provide strong financial pressure to get a "respectable" degree.
Also, I think it's not too surprising the most useless unscientific science(psychology) is pointing a finger at the useful degrees and saying, "Terrorists!" Without further consideration of the factors involved.
I noticed the exact opposite in "real life".
All engineers and scientists I know are reasonable and logical people, much less likely to give in to religion and extremism than the less educated people I've met.
This sounds like someone is trying to start an urban legend.
Those students from Islamic countries who can afford these expensive degrees, especially if they study abroad to get their degree, are already financially well-to-do and have the spare time to get involved in the pet issue of the day, rather than dealing with the day-by-day struggle to support themselves in a country whose social programs make the US look like France.
An expensive degree on the road to a well-paying career... there's only so many fast cars and loose women you can buy. In Los Angeles, the rich relieve their boredom with L. Ron Hubbard; in Riyadh, Osama bin Laden is the enlightenment du jour.
The next question is "What fraction do these technical degrees make up out of all the degrees earned by students from Islamic countries?" And after that, "Are the libby arts majors blowing themselves up too?"
"I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with "experts." While driving, I sometimes turn on radio talk shows on sports, and am always struck by this. People calling in have no hesitation in criticizing the coaches, the judgments of the people running the shows, etc. In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives -- their own and others -- people tend to defer to "experts," though for the most part the expert knowledge is no more beyond them than how the local professional sports team should play their next game. That's where the indoctrination comes in: in the intensive training that brings people to feel that they must defer to alleged "experts" on matters of very direct concern to them, far more so than sports. I do, however, agree that there can be negative aspects to the heavily promoted frenzy on spectator sports, loyalty to the home team, etc. Depends very much on how it is carried out."
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
This "research" is obviously part of the corporate plan to demonize the educated. The non-educated people are easier to manipulate; can be made to purchase more and work for less. Profitability would be much higher if the US could become a third world nation; able to produce products at China's prices, but without the overhead shipping costs.
Thanks for the correction. It's been a little while since I saw the article (and I skimmed it at the time) and all I remembered was I read about it on the BBC site, so I rather stupidly assumed it had happened on England.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
are a lot of engineers terrorists? A terrorist is lost in ideology, which might lead you to believe he is not very intelligent, however one needs to be smart to create complex constructs justifying taking life. Most terrorists are smart, educated and have a middle class background.
Couldn't resist the Simpsons quote, though.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Everything with terrorism in its title attracts grant money from clueless administrators these days. Add to the mix the classic everything but harmonious relationship between sociology and engineering, and professionally-looking academic flaming between warring disciplines and academics who don't understand each other* is what you get.
* sociologists have no idea what an engineer is, but in a similar way engineers also don't understand sociologists. I have studied both (but if I had to keep just one discipline, that would be engineering/science!) and I can see this misunderstanding from both sides every day.
I opened the paper intending to read it, but the moment I saw that they quote an evil terrorist and FBI most wanted listee in such a way as to make a negative comment on the engineering mindset, I decided it isn't worth spending my time reading their paper. Quoting a terrorist adds no academic value, and papers are not supposed to create an atmosphere like cinema movies do. It really looks very irresponsible to me to see a terrorist being quoted in a paper which could very well be archived in journals for many years to come. We don't want future archaeologists to think that the terrorists were considered important or respectful figures in our society. We don't want the names of terrorists to remain for years in print, except for court records and criminal proceedings. Nevertheless, I skimmed the paper's figures and section titles and it sounds interesting, but the way they seem to present their study and the subconscious connotations that seem to propagate through the paper (through the terrorist quote and other choices of words etc) make me not wanting to read it.
I think we need a way to respond to papers just like we can post video replies on YouTube. My response to them would be a paper analysing the general intelligence of graduates correlated with their degree. Anyone wanting to bet who (engineers or sociologists) would score higher? Tip: The paper itself contains a table suggesting that Arts graduates are more likely to be deeply religious, while natural sciences graduates are more likely to oppose religion.
According to Martin Luther King Jr, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government." (ref: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html) It is as true today as it was when he spoke those words in 1967.
So, let's get our definitions straight. Because one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter." The US government itself (including most members of the White House and Congress) have inflicted more terror and violence on the world than any tiny group of religious extremists (one might even argue that the White House itself is a group of violent religious extremists). Now, how many engineers are there in Congress? A handful?
The article that forms the basis for this thread is nothing more than junk psychology based on faulty premises and bad data.
I think these guys are totally confused. The Engineer is entirely a defensive unit. He's got immovable turrets, ammo / health dispensers and teleporters. Sure he's got a shotgun, but that's really for personal protection and the occasional pheasant hunt. No bombs or scare tactics of any kind. If you come looking for the secret plans then it's totally your fault if you get mowed down in a hail of automated gunfire. Now that Demoman, he's another story altogether. He's got that dastardly looking eye-patch and an unhealthy penchant for TNT if I ever saw one.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
"Algebraical symbols are used when you don't know what you are talking about" - BCS
Guess what, they've just 'proven' engineers have a different mindset from sociologists. Just how statistically significant is their sample when they include a group of (admittedly dangerous) Dutch terrorists consisting of exactly one (1) member.
That was funny, but atheists do kill people for having different beliefs too: Anarchists, Nazis, Soviets, Maoists...
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I happen to be an atheist.
My view? Well there are a hell of a lot of people out there who read the newspaper astrological horoscopes every day. It's extremely silly, but if that's how they like to entertain themselves, heay no business of mine what odd hobbies other people have. Like newspaper horoscopes, religion is totally silly and Mostly Harmless.
However on the other hand there are some people who are seriously dangerous, not just to themselves but to others, and they NEED to be forcibly ejected from positions of authority.
Now I'm sure that last line raised a few hackles. If someone wants to have at me for it, fine. But FIRST they have to consider the following item and tell me that they still find fault with my above comment:
July, 1998. A juror in Judge Esmond Faulks' court in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, eagerly asked the judge for the defendant's date of birth so he could draw up a star chart to help him decide the case. He was removed.
If it's lunchtime in a jury room and most of the people want to pass around the horoscope page for their own amusement or maybe even to plan their own social life schedule, it's totally silly but whatever. They can entertain themselves or run their own lives how they like. But if someone is so deluded as to expect to take their silly irrational mumbojumbo and use the force of government and gun toting enforcers to imprison other people and to pass fiction-based laws pointing guns at people telling other people how they can and cannot run their own lives... yeah I have a serious problem with that. That person is dangerous. That person DOES need to be ejected from a jury room, all reasonable steps should be taken to prevent, restrain, or eject that person from abusing force of government powers in such a manner.
The School Prayer issue is a perfect case in point. Freedom of Religion - people have the freedom to believe whatever silly religion they like and the freedom to engage in silly pointless personal prayers. Students have the Constitutionally protected right to engage in (non-disruptive) personal prayer in school. Government officials wielding government powers have absolutely no business and have no authority to use those government powers for the purpose of meddling in other people's religious lives and beliefs. They are constitutionally denied the authority to abuse those government powers to impose, promote, or suppress any particular pray by students, or any prayer in general by students.
Which is why the ACLU wins virtually every school prayer court case. There are a lot of lies and misinformation spread about such cases by the Taliban-wannabe theocrats. They claim the court cases are about banning prayer in schools or in public or whatever, but that is just plain a lie or they are stupid or they are seriosuly misinformed. If you actually look at the court cases, each and ever single one was explicitly targeting a school official wielding government powers for the purpose of controlling or manipulating official government established prayer by the students. Yes, I have explicitly looked at the actual court cases, and yes in each and every case the claims abotu "banning prayer" are baloney.
People are free to believe in and pray to Zeus and Thor or to schedule their lives according to astrological charts, but no, they do not get to use government powers and gun-toting enforcers to imprison people based on their birthdate starchart, does not get to use the force of government and gun-toting enforcers to favor and promote Zeus over Thor, and does not get to use the force of government and gun-toting enforcers to live their lives in the way that makes Zeus or Thor happy. They do not get to imprison people for making Zeus or Thor mad. If Zeus wants to punish people for wearing the wrong color hat, He is perfectly free to do so himself and presumably capable of doing so himself. If Zeus wants to punish people for believing in the wrong God, He is perfectly free to do so himself and presumably c
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Perhaps the terrorist mindset recognizes a need for engineering skills? Do we have the wrong cause and effect correlation? Are terrorists becoming engineers, not the other way 'round?
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
You have
Strange Indentation
And even
Stranger capitalization Patterns
Atheists are religious: They hold to a belief about the world that cannot be proven nor disproven. You can neither prove nor disprove the non-existence of a nebulous, "out there" God: Any religion whose God can be proved would take over the world, and any whose God can be disproved would die quickly.
Agnostics are the closest thing there is to a-religious people.
Even agnostics blow it when they discount very unlikely creation theories as Not True. For example, if I tell a self-described agnostic "the world was created 5 minutes ago en medias res and it just seems 10-20 billion years old" and the agnostic tells me I'm definitely wrong, he's just proven that he's not a complete agnostic.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
whats wrong with that? I like it when a girl takes a healthy interest in frequent shaving.
oh, wait,
her head you say?
never mind
What was really frightening about that lot of inept terrorist was that most were (medical) doctors and (if I remember right) at least one was an engineer. The thought of being treated by someone stupid enough to think that would work makes me shudder.
So engineers tend to the right of the political spectrum, eh? Don't tell that to the folks here at Slashdot...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Just give them TV's that run reality shows 24/7.
Worked well enough for the US.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
They're on to us!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I can't be sure about this article, but I can say one thing terrorists and engineers share is their hatred of spies. Other than that can the thinking be that much different between them? I mean guarding intel vs guarding hostages..
Yes, while the extreme conservative and religious views of scienctists, engineers, and the like make them more prone to violence such as terrorists.
The minds of psychologists and artists are more prone toward being dictators, a desire to tell others how they should see the world and live. And while less prone to minor acts of violence and terrorism have a tendency toward genocide and thought police.
Yes, please...rank this troll. As I am no longer sure that's a bad thing. If I am a troll to an entry that is CLEARLY a troll. What does that make me? a troll's troll...
Maybe merely an ogre...*shrug*
Who says any one person is "powerless" to enact change in global politics?
Hey, look everybody! An engineer!
But seriously, you're right. I oversimplified by saying that people are "powerless." There are always more productive avenues to pursue, and it's possible that you could actually succeed with one. That said, the average engineer is MUCH more likely to find and fix that issue with the GFI outlet that keeps tripping in your basement than he is to convince even a single other person to change political viewpoints. But (in my personal experience) many of us are likely to apply the same sort of "keep working on it until it's fixed" approach to both cases.
The engineer, like Chomsky's interested parties, sees a need for grassroots change to fix something. He found a problem, thought his way to what he sees as a solution, and is taking the actions he sees as available. He's just not very good at it. Dogged, blunt persistence works well for engineering, but not for talking to non-engineers about gray-area issues.
This might tie back into the article, too. The sort of person who works hard to solve problems is probably also much more easily frustrated by a lack of results than somebody who is content to "roll with the punches." I would suggest that maybe this is why the "engineering mindset" is more represented in violent groups-- failing to nonviolently implement something they believe very strongly is correct, they just bull on ahead with the next available method?
And those capable of wielding information, such as engineers, are the terror masters.
Honestly, who doesn't see this bogus association of engineers and terror as the first step in establishing totalitarian controls over engineers, scientists, etc. ??
These are two of the "terror masters" that will have to be neutralized first:
"Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (Dr. James H. Fetzer, founder) http://911scholars.org/
and
"Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice" (Dr. Steven E. Jones, member) http://stj911.org/
If those information-wielding terror masters did not have a mindset for terror, they would stop trying to determine the facts of 9/11, just stop immediately.
But, no, these terror masters want to present facts that are not available on television. They must be stopped at any cost.
All information must be eradicated if we are to truly win the war against terror.
Remember, the only reality that you can trust is what is on right now on your television. Everything else is terror.
So do your part and burn your books, especially those from George Orwell.
Information is Terrorism! Ignorance is Strength!
Television is Salvation!
What you're doing is called begging the question. The fact that you're using a book which is filled with contradictions ad nauseam doesn't change that.
(Not the original poster just so that's clear.)
well, IANAC, but maybe it's just that engineer criminals are smart enough to actually learn how to make crime WORK, while the idiot criminals steal cars in front of cops.
It's too late to Listen Again to it, but earlier in the year there was a BBC Radio 4 documentary called "Where's The Femur?" (http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/where_s_the_femur_.html) which was about how new doctors in the UK are getting less training and experience, the title coming from something actually said to a patient.
The quotes around "terrorist mindset" suggesting that the article uses that description, it does not, and nowhere does it suggest that Engineers are more inclined than others to be terrorists or violent extremists.
It does find them more likely to be Islamists, more likely to be violent Islamists, and more likely to be right-wing extremists, but also notes that this stands in contrast to their under-representation among left-wing extremist groups (violent or otherwise).
While Islamic terrorism certainly gets a lot of attention these days, neither "terrorism" nor "violent extremism" are exclusively associated with Islamism or other right-wing ideologies.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
(George Bernard Shaw)
'nuff said.
"Good news, everyone!"
This is how this was written up in The Atlantic. It struck me that some of this could be said of Ron Paul supporters as well, who also advocate a messianic "destroy all legacy systems and start fresh" revolution:
... engineers. The authors gathered data on 404 militants from 31 countries, and among the 178 whose principal academic focus could be determined, engineering was by far the most popular subject. Seventy-eight had pursued an engineering degree, compared with 34 in Islamic studies, 14 in medicine, and 12 in economics or business studies. The authors couldn't find evidence to support the idea that radical groups seek out engineers for their skills. Instead, they speculate that something in the engineer's mind-set--the emphasis on structure and rules, and on finding singular solutions to complicated problems--may fit neatly with Islamist notions of the ideal society. (In support of this hypothesis, the authors cite surveys from America, the Middle East, and Canada indicating that engineers are more likely than other professionals to be religious and right-wing.) They also note that engineers tend to be high-achievers who rise by merit, which may make them more likely to be frustrated by their interactions with corrupt bureaucracies in the Middle East and North Africa and thus receptive to radical messages.
Now that the stereotype of the poverty-stricken terrorist has been dispelled by studies showing that militancy and high levels of education go hand in hand, a new Oxford study tries to explain why so many violent Islamic radicals are
I'm the queer the atheists sent here to take away your gun!
So you agree most atheists are extreme, strident, unforgiving and tediously sanctimonious?
So atheists are killing anarchists, nazis, soviets, and maoists??? ;-)
Wasn't one of the goals of many of the soldiers in WW2 to "kill a whole bunch of nazis"? I don't think it was primarily athiests who were in on the hunt.
Also, nazis were just as guilty of holding extreme conservative/religious positions - they believed that they were the chosen race, and that it was their destiny to rule the world. There are a lot of parallels with some of the fundies' readings of the end-times of the bible ...
Maoists? Aren't all those "dirty red ChiComs" now holding trillions of dollars of US currency? Let me check my little red book ... Chairman Mao say "Sell western paper tiger useless cheap junk and he will love you good time long time."
"In Soviet Russia, you F*CK the people BEFORE you kill them. Otherwise you're just a f*cking necrophiliac."
Anarchists? This is slashdot ... this is the web ... this isn't anarchy - if you want REAL anarchy, check out usenet!
Kevin Smith on Prince
Glasgow... wasn't that the incident with the one Scottish cabbie who kicked one of the would-be terrorists, on fire at the time, so hard in the bollocks that he actually hurt his own foot?
Engineers and philosophers fix problems, and only secondarily do they care whose feelings are hurt.
Whiny media types care first about whose feelings are hurt, not taking into account that most people can't fix any problems, and so they never fix any problems.
Sometimes extreme action must be taken.
Right now, in fat and lazy industrialized nations, we don't think so... but we didn't see global warming, urban crime, pollution, corrupt governments or nuclear proliferation coming either, so "we" in the whole aren't engineers.
I would suggest you're wrong about agnostics and atheists. There are people who are agnostic and call themselves atheists, but that's not the majority. Most atheists are well aware of the distinction between those belief "states", and have chosen their camp in light of this (possibly excepting atheists who are so because they don't believe a loving god can allow the horrors of life to happen). The answer to the question "Is there a supernatural supreme being?" is the same as the answers to "Is evolution a fact?" and "Does gravity exist?". We have no direct proof of evolution or gravity or their mechanisms, but all the evidence points to "no". So the working theory, as a scientist, is that evolution is the mechanism in which life changes, gravity keeps us on the ground as the un-resolved 4th fundamental force, and no, there is no god.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Terrorism isn't really intuitive or smart in any way it just relies on being able to pull off something without getting caught.
That makes no sense. Terrorism doesn't always rely on not being caught, just being audacious and actually doing the thing. If you are able to go blow up something important and not get caught, then you're probably smart, because it isn't intuitive.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This isn't surprising at all, especially when you start reading Slashdot and their Jihadi hate speech against Windows and all things Microsoft. They lie and spin just like seasoned Republican Mujaheddin, emulating Fox Noise Channel in the worst way possible.
Richard Stallman and Osama Bin Laden... separated at birth?
How about retaliation? We (the guys with the terrorist mindset) should dress up as sociologists in sandals and self knit clothes and start picketing our universities for more math lectures and a stronger focus on statistics. Also tougher exams would help.
I mean that would teach them to poke fun of us engineers.
Je me souviens.
I like those odds!
Anyone who honestly believes there is no contradiction between science (the application of critical thinking, the challenging of assumptions, and the use of an ever-expanding body of evidence to understand the universe) and religion (the demonization of critical thinking, the elevation of dogma and preservation of ignorance, and the use of iron-age superstition and irrationality to 'understand' the universe) is either ignorant, stupid, fucntionally schizophrenic (as I said in my first post) or all of the above.
Anyone who thinks that critical thinking happens in the absence of unprovable postulates has never done any critical thinking. Everything from "I exist" to "Time flows" to "Cause and effect exists" to "The information my senses provide me is accurate and true" is just as much an unprovable (and impossible to disprove) assumption as "The universe has a first cause" or "We persist after death" or "All of this has meaning."
Furthermore, you have an extremely one-sided view of the history of religion. A dogmatically one-sided view. You ignore the influence of religion on Renaissance to Industrial Age science -- how it led people to ask, "How did God wrought the universe." You ignore the influence of even Islam on preserving the maths and sciences of the ancient Greeks after the fall of Rome. Instead, religion is nothing more than superstition, irrationality, and the elevation of positions born from ignorance in your eyes. Ignore Newton. Ignore Mendel. Ignore Ibn al-Haytham. It's all just suicide bombers and Inquisitions, isn't it?
But that's okay. You're a "critical thinker." You're wisdom is inherently superior to the ignorant skeptics of your positions. Why, you're so righteous and wise in your beliefs that you presume to lecture a Muslim on the Qu'ran, a book with which is almost certainly more familiar than you. But don't let logic get in the way of the bitter, bile-filed diatribe that is born from your enlightened "critical thinking." After all, the guy who studies the book every week at his mosque is obviously the one arguing from a position of dogmatic ignorance here.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hence the widespread cult of Ayn Rand on the campuses of a lot of engineering schools.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
China is still communist.
I bet that the student are simply affraid that, if they show the slightest signs of mixing with the "depraved occidental morale", or aren't openly enough supporting the "best democratic politic of their own motherland's perfect government" (at least not "openly enough" to the taste of the bureau in charge of controlling it), maybe they'll have a big (not fun) surprise waiting for them once they finish their studies and go back to China.
My parents come from a former communist state. The government *did use to* check if the people the allowed in the west were behaving appropriately (= showing no signs of risks for defection).
In fact, it's actually strange that they only refrain mixing with US students and have Mao posters...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If you think about it, Milton was committing a terrorist act when he set the building on fire.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
"I'm sure if you were studying in China you'd be speaking English to your American friends and you'd have big posters of Bush in the Student office with lists of his famous quotes... .... right? right?"
Hey, our Student Office has lots of big posters with bush...
oh wait.
I'm sure he knew when he posted that people would flock to give examples of people taking themselves too seriously and getting stuffy about it. Welcome to the party! Hats and noisemakers are in the rear.
And on a more serious note, he didn't say that *all* atheists were like this. Just that some of the most strident people he's seen online are atheists. Set S is mostly swallowed by Set A, not Set A is all within Set S. I'm sure you can find a few in this thread that are tossing about language that (but for the values expressed) seems almost identical to fire and brimstone language condemning the wicked and slothful.
Frankly, finding people of faith in on Slashdot that advocate the destruction of everything that other people believe in and the castigation of the fools who persist in getting with the program is far harder than finding atheists who do the same for religious people here. (And when you do find it, it's generally trolling instead of passionately held beliefs.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...demonizing those you disagree with. Are you making a religion of it?
If you are with the Marketing, all engineers are terrorists. If you are with sales, they are child abusers.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
According to the Myers-Briggs personality theory, people can very roughly be defined on four points. Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging. This means you can very roughly rate someone with a four letter code, such as ESTJ or INFP, with the letters corresponding to where the person leans.
The middle two parts, Sensing/Intuitive and Thinking/Feeling are the core component of how people process information. NTs are called Rationalists, NFs are called Idealists, STs are called Guardians, and SFs are called Artisans.
NT's tend to become scientists, engineers, researchers, mathmaticians, and programmers. Sounds like the group we are talking about doesn't it? The thing is that NT's are only about 5% of the population, NFs tend to be religious leaders, teachers, and social worker types. NFs are only 10% of the population. The other 85% are STs and SFs. That means that the vast majority of humanity falls into the 'S' vs. the 'N' camp.
The NT and NF combinations are rare. Focusing on NTs however, since that is the group that tends to be what the article references (engineers, scientists, medical professionals, and programmers for that matter), they are very heavily represented among generals, CEO's of corporations, and revolutionary leaders. Steve Jobs is typically labeled as an ENTJ while Bill Gates is an INTJ.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were NTs, as were all of our generals turned president. Abe Lincoln and Reagon were NFs. Do you see a pattern? Most of our more controversial or revolutionary presidents were almost all Intuitives. I think that might be where the correlation is really taking place.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Well it *would* have led to pretty big explosions! Thankfully they evacuated the area and managed to put the fire out anyway.
Around here, the word we use for that kind of person is "politician."
Terrorism is warfare; warfare is politics by force. "Terrorist" leaders are using religion as a basis to provide meaning to young, foolish men with a desperate outlook on life. Terrorist goals are often political in nature -- such as preservation of self-serving power structures, or modifying power structures to be more favorable to the terrorist leader -- wrapped in the divine guise of a religious crusade. Perhaps we are coming to understand the irrationality of religion sufficiently to recognize that people will do insane (suicidal) acts in its name. It is (sadly) more likely that religious war is simply scarier to the masses, and thus a more powerful motivational tool to politicians with something to gain from it.
Point 1. I was trying to say, in my inept fashion, is that true believers often label agnostics as atheists, and that even agnostics sometimes call thenselves atheists.This is only my opinion. Yours may differ.
Point 2. As a working hypothesis "there is no god" is fine by me. I guess my point is more philosophical - that God (by definition supernatural) doesn't fit into the scientific method by which we gain knowledge. The existence or non-existence of a supernatural being can't be determined by science. After all, if we had a "theory of God" and built a "God-detector", He could simply reach out His Noodley Appendage and change the test results.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Everyone is a terrorist.
Now, please turn yourself in and check your rights at the door. You will be much easier to control as an ex-felon then a plain citizen.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset", from the people who eagerly broadcasted the 9/11 false flag operation but forgot to tell us that little detail.
I come here for the love
This might get modded down as "troll," but it's the god's honest truth:
They're calling you a "foreigner" while they're abroad in your country. Seriously. I've found Chinese doing that here in Europe and in the US many, many times.
There is a common logical error being made here; even if it is true that violent groups have an over-representation of engineers, it doesn't follow that engineers are more likely to support violence.
Incidentally, since one of the prime drivers behind terrorism is the (flawed) principle that 'the end justifies the means', is it any surprise that those with expertise in the means (the engineers) would have a role to play?
After sitting through my 2nd calculus class of the day, and a 4 hours of a CAD lab, I understand the feeling of wanting to be violent.
Hey! Look a Distraction!
recursive pedantry: There were also a couple of cars in London with petrol as part of the same overall incident.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6260626.stm Scroll to the bottom, the car outside Tiger Tiger nightclub.
By your lights, critical thinking is in principle impossible given the existence of 'unprovable postulates'.
No, sorry. That's your bias right there. Critical thinking is possible given the existence of unprovable postulates. All logic has to start from somewhere. Critical thinking in the absence of unprovable postulates and assumptions simply doesn't exist.
To the extent that they cannot 'really' be proven or known, which is to say the extent to which reality itself may be an illusion - a Matrix-style simulation, a dream, etc - is irrelevant because reality itself is the only context within which anything is meaningful.
A good argument, but one that postulates that reality itself is real -- which can't be proven or disproven. You have to start from *somewhere*. Objective reality cannot be proven to exist, but we must assume that it does because the results of assuming otherwise lead to absurdity. Nevertheless, the house of reason cannot be built with no foundation.
Science attempts to find the truths that *can* theoretically be proven within certain fundamental assumptions (such as the casting aside of existential questions). Religion tries to answer the questions that really can't be proven. There is intellectual curiosity in both. (How did we get here?) There is reason that can be applied to the assumptions of both. (Can God be good, all knowing, and all powerful if evil exists?) There is, to a degree, faith in the words of others involved in both. (You can only claim true knowledge of the things you have yourself tested and reasoned out; everything else is based on faith in human sources.)
The problem with all faiths is dogma -- the willing blindness to the possibility that you can be wrong and that the world has not revealed all or enough of its truths to you. You have it in anti-evolution Christian fundamentalists. You have it in religious / nationalist / ethnic conflicts in Israel & Palestine, Kosovo, Sudan, and more.
You, personally, seem to have in your blanket assertion that accepting a belief in something beyond what the senses can prove requires schizophrenia and irrationality. In your diatribes, you evince the exact same judgmental condemnation and treatment of others different from you as worthless and evil as a Fred Phelps follower running around with a "God Hates Fags" sign. All because you have taken upon yourself the dogma that nothing beyond what the eyes can see can possibly exist -- that those who seek and question are dangerous and deluded. You have your answers. Why should anyone else see differently, and why should society tolerate them?
Yes, I do. The problem with dogma is that it is blinding. The nonsensical rant from the Devout Believer I was responding to was a perfect testament to the power of dogma, and the need to dispel the blindness it causes with clear and critical thinking.
Please. You have about as much understanding of the Qu'ran that a Fox news pundit does -- one largely based on soundbites and damaging, out-of-context quotes. Have you actually *read* the Qu'ran in any sort of detail? I'm no Muslim scholar, but I actually *have* read many parts of it, and it can be quite beautiful and humane in places.
Like most central religious texts, the Qu'ran has a lot of good and bad in it. On the one hand, it exhorts peace, kind treatment of your neighbors, devotion to your family, charity to the poor, and life freed from the frantic search for the next empty pleasure. On the other hand, it recognizes a system of slavery, it exhorts the occasional conversion by the sword, and it relegates women to unequal footing with men. Yeah, I'll admit it -- kind of like the Old Testament that way.
What one takes from their faith is intensely personal. Not everybody who follows the teachings of the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Torah, the Sutras, etc. feels that everything in it must be 100% literally true or that values must never change over time. I don't think there's hardly a
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm certain that according to news accounts, engineers and other technical people are over-represented in every terrorist group. The question is: Why?
... they get a good lawyer once, have some funding from mom, have a few connections in the embassy, etc. Osama bin Laden is a perfect example of this. When the future radical is sent to an American University, he studies a technical subject. Walk around an engineering department some time. 90% of the students are not native English speakers.
Technical people tend to find that answers are right or wrong based on empirical evidence, not based on public opinion, so they are more likely to gravitate towards extreme positions that are supported by facts. Q: How many of the violent opponents of Hitler's Final Solution were math geeks? A: Most.
Technical people are likely to be cited by the (liberal-arts biased) media as members of terrorist groups. These same pseudo-reporters don't' mention a former history major who shoots people - that's too close to them. They feel embarrassed to report on the former history major.
Many rich families in 3rd world countries wants to send their kids to a US University. When they get here, a technical major is easier, given their limited English proficiency. It's also seen as more useful. You don't spend $100,000.00 to teach your son east African dance, when he could be learning civil engineering to build dams, run electrical grids, and build roads. Kids with rich families will do better as terrorists
A technical background will be useful to any militant. Can you say "sappers"? Now, can you say "demolitions?" Frankly, a degree in east African dance or in pre-colonial-South-American-history is less useful than one in chemistry when you are trying to build a bomb.
I'm fairly certain the former liberal arts majors would be over represented in organizations where they can use their degrees - look into political parties, for example. Try looking at a state department party, where 90% of the invitees have committed genocide, and I expect you'll find more than your share of former liberal arts majors.
I've got to get back to archiving explosives formulas from Archive.org Bye!
Andy Out!
I was expecting a different comparison to terrorists. I have never in my life thought of engineers as a "extreme conservative and religious" group. Quite the opposite. While reading the post I was anticipating something along the lines of a rationale perhaps regarding a higher disposition to be malcontent among the educated. Think about where you see the most protesting going on, the most anti-* rallies,.. colleges and universities. If anything engineers would seem to me to more likely to have more revolutionary, change-oriented mindset that a conservative one. I think the best engineers are probably gonna the ones who can look beyond traditional methodologies and envision new ways of doing things. Thats far from conservative. As for religion, idk, i would just have to disagree their as well but I have no really good reason for that.
I think most people get the impression that terrorists (i.e. Al Qaeda) are just a bunch of nuts who want to blow up anything American. While it may be true in some cases, I think the majority of them are just as smart and educated as the average American. The technical knowledge and precision of building bombs, or coordinating attacks would require it, otherwise 9/11 would've never happened
Technology Forum
I wrote an article on this here: Education, social status and terror leadership.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
If "terrorists" could think like engineers, cities in Israel, Sri Lanka, India, and of course the U.S. would be smoking rubble right now. All you have to do is look for the largest energy gradients and/or the most powerful toxins in the existing industrial environment, with an eye to wreaking havoc.
:o)
Back around November of 2001, when the propaganda machine was really getting into gear for the War On Terror, I sat down and thought about the town I lived in at the time. I found one way to kill a capacity sports arena crowd, and one way to start a firestorm across 20 square miles, within an hour. Both would actually work, on a low budget, with minimal manpower requirements, no purchasing of controlled substances or technologies, and a decent chance of getting away uncaught.
I take this as proof that a "vast terrorist conspiracy" is NOT targeting America: No heaped dead burnt bodies in six years, just one "New Pearl Harbor" with highly suspicious physical events at its center. Last night, the best Mr. Bush could mention in the way of successes in defending the Fatherland, were a "plot" authored by an FBI sting, and the infamous Airline Toilet Bomber. For this we have to shred the Constitution?
People who need to believe that Bin Ladin is alive, that Al Qaida still exists (or was ever anything but a U.S. sponsored "anticommunist" arms dealing network), and that the U.S. military is performing some kind of "defense" function, will continue to believe. Facts don't change religion.
Then there are those of us who think like engineers.
Fortunately, that includes looking at secondary impacts including fact that "terrorism" does not work unless you objective is Fascism. That applies equally whether the terrorist is a self-described freedom fighter with an AK and a grudge, or a State with massive military assets.
Just like the TV series "Criminal Minds", law enforcement officers understand criminals without being criminals. Good law enforcement officers have understanding of a criminals but doesn't go over the line because his/her consciences will stop him from doing that.
Engineers are the same way which good engineers will understand the engineering of something without crossing the line of criminal activity (ie destroying a building).
It is not the profession, device, or knowledge but the character of the person who uses it makes it a good thing or a terrorist dream.
Obviously they're not talking about all engineers. As everyone knows:
- Electrical, chemical and mechanical engineers build bombs
- Civil engineers build targets
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
In the UK we hear about inept (wannabe/wrongly accused) terrorists all the time. For example the binary bombers who were accused of trying to blow up transatlantic flights but who didn't have tickets, or passports. Or the guys who filled a car with petrol and gas cylinders in hope they'd violently explode, forgetting that fire needs oxygen...
Written by a man with serious psychological issues.
His cornerstone thesis was that in a high tech world you have NO control (as opposed to a more reasonable position: 'All people at all times have had limited control of their own lives')...illlogical leap from false supposition...Technical people assert false control by inventing technical things.
He, like most mathamaticans, has Engineering envy. It bothers them that some people actually do real things after saying 'close enough'.
Kaczynski has control issues, big time. Like he had any better control sitting in his unheated cabin. He did have a better sense of control seen though his paranoid eyes.
It was obvious he was a nut based on his logic and lack thereof. You could see his assumptions (they were his conclusions) in the white spaces.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
IMHO the most likely reason for the correlation is this:
- The non-engineer and non-ruling-class part of the population is socialized to believe that tampering with something will make it worse. (Keeps the sheep in the herd and passive.)
- Engineers are socialized to believe that, in the absence of human effort entropy will take over, and it is their job to redesign things to be better than they were. (Risky to the entrenched authority, but necessary. Somebody has to make the machinery work.)
(You see this in a lot of places - but especially in mainstream fiction ("Trying to improve things makes them worse, so suffer in silence.") versus science fiction ("Redesigning things well makes them better, so get cracking."), where the central messages of the two forms reflect exactly this pair of paradigms. Science fiction also contains the cautionary tale ("If you break it THIS way it will get so bad you CAN'T fix it again, so don't screw it up!") And science fiction deals with social as well as technical issues. (The social cautionary tales usually take the form of dystopias.)
So non-engineers, faced with a major system problem, are inclined to complain to authorities or demonstrate - petitioning rulers to change things in their favor. Meanwhile, engineers are inclined to take direct action to rehack the system and "solve the problem". When the system with a refractory problem is political, it is hardly surprising to find engineers over-represented in the direct-action organizations.
Thus the "do it yourself" mindset, alone, is enough to explain the effect, without postulating a higher-than-average susceptibility to "extremeist" ideologies.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I never said I agreed with his premises or his conclusions, but the reasoning in between is sound and compelling.
Technical people assert false control by inventing technical things.Indeed, that was a fundamental part of Kaczynski's argument.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Most engineering people and CS people I know are not religious and are not conservative unless by 'religious positions' they mean 'atheist'.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
I took science courses in order to better undermine the government (despite greater natural skill and love of arts), does that count?
This so-called research is flawed on so many levels already discussed here. One thing that stood out was their tables and charts which describe Singapore as an Islamic country. I wonder if the Singapore government has been informed of this change? They should announce it to their people, you know.
When I read this, I laughed hard. Really hard.
Please show this to anyone from the Middle East, Pakistan, India, and North African countries. They'll likely do the same.
In those countries engineering and medicine are highly over-represented. Whereas here one may be confined to McDonalds if one gets a social science/liberal art degree, over there most of them will remove themselves from the gene pool by starving.
So no - this does not at all come as a surprise to me. I'd be surprised if it were otherwise.
Now I'll admit I read only the abstract. But they did not address this point there.
Don't know if this had been pointed out already. Over 300 comments that I don't want to read.
Beetle B.
I think the question posed by the top post, "Do Engineers have a Terrorist Mindset?" might be asking the wrong question, or asking it backwards. My thought is that effective terrorists (as distinct from the shmoes who get caught) are ones with an Engineer mindset.
Never mind that one man's terrorist is another's "freedom fighter". Engineers make stuff happen.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
As someone who has trained as an engineer it is always nice to know that there is an alternative career that, particularly one that may not require reskilling.
(for the humour impaired in FBI, NSA, CIA and ASIO (particularly ASIO), this is not intended seriously).
meh
*ducks*
I spent a semester in japan in college, I made sure not to hang out with the other americans, thats the whole reason why I wanted to go study with another culture.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
LOL!
From what I can remember, these guys were doctors. MDs.
Not sure what that has to say about the British Health care system or perhaps just MDs in general...
.
- aqk
F U
Scientists observe existing systems and couch all decisions in terms of how uncertain they are. If there's one thing a scientist is sure of, it is that they will be wrong quite a bit. They develop tools by hard trial and error, and induction.
Engineers use existing, proven tools to construct new systems to predetermined levels of correctness. In professional engineering there are licenses, certifications, and safety factors. An engineer is trained to start with known facts and deductively prove the correctness of their solution. In this way many mathematicians are more like engineers than scientists.
Engineers tend to skew libertarian because their basis for understanding the world is that problems are knowable and solvable. Personal responsibility and knowledge can lead to affirmative choices that result in a desirable society.
Scientists tend to skew liberal because their basis for understanding the world is that all knowledge is provisional and much is unknown. The best knowledge and hardest work may still produce negative results, and the state should balance and mitigate that risk if possible.
Just my $0.02.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I and a fairly high percentage of the people in engineering I know would be describable as either Athiest, Agnostic, or unattached. In fact, I don't remember the last time I had any zealous religious conversation with any of my technical compatriots.
Then again, I live in the Bay Area, which is a little more diverse and likely also has a higher concentration of non-religious folk than most of the rest of the US at least.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Crap like this study is why "sociology" has been downgraded to about the level of astrology in the views of the scientific community. They find some correlation somewhere, and figure out a Marxist theory that somehow could explain the correlation, and then spew this sort of passive aggressive crap. Every time I see a report by a socialogist I want to take and beat them with a stats text book until they realize that A) CORRELATION DOES NOT FUCKING IMPLY CAUSATION. That goes double and triple when look at social factors then tend to correlate on all sorts of utterly unrelated and independent things. B) Act like a science and put the copy of Marx down. I got to know known the entire 2006 Master of Social Science class at the University of Chicago (this is the top 1 or 2 school for social science). There were a lot of good and fun people among them, but they ALL shared one thing in common. They were all raging over the top socialist. Never in my entire life have I seen such a complete lack of diversity in thought. As an evil terrorist engineer, I met people with all types of beliefs and value systems. Sociologist the other hand are almost entirely and uniformly extreme leftist. The only diversity they have among them is if they are super leftist or ultra-radical leftist. I am left of center, and I still found it utterly nauseating.
I don't know what the hell it is they are doing to the kids that enter social science. I am not sure if it is just that somehow all the teachers are radical leftists and all the kids who don't carry around a copy of Marx throw up their hands in disgust, or if they really are so crafty at brain washing, but it is sad, pathetic, and the lack of critical thought in social science has made it a field of junk science. The insular, circular, masturbatory thought that goes on inside American's social science academic institutions is pathetic. With not a single critical voice in the entire field, the result is ideas (good and bad) receive no real criticism from anything that isn't in deep left field.
The result? You get this sort of crap publish where a social "scientist" finds two correlations and instantly links them together. This same sort of logic would leave you to believe that skin pigmentation causes you to be a criminal. Here, lets use social "science" methods on something else. Blacks are more likely to be criminals than whites in the US. Blacks have higher levels of skin pigment. Therefor, skin pigment must give you a "criminal mindset". That is the sort of junk science that social science methods will lead you to believe. God forbid they take a deeper look at anything and find any other potential relationships that don't fit with their narrow world view. Just say no to social "science".
The real problem I have with articles like these is that its so hard to find a scientific way to measure "terrorism". The article suggests that the sample group was composed of Islamic fundamentalists, but I've heard the word "terrorist" used to describe almost anyone who questions authority. Shortly after 9/11, being "skeptical of the Bush administration" was sufficient to label someone a "terrorist". How much of the population would that definition include now?
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
I haven't heard a more blatant stupidity in my life. I'm just curious: will I be on the terror gray list from now on because of this study?
Software is Knowledge
Absolutely. Very few sports fans would want everyone to support their team, half the fun is ribbing the opposition supporters after a victory. No sports fan would want there only to be one team, so that it would win the league year after year without opposition.
Compare this to the FSF and many religious fundamentalists, they don't want to say "my idea/religion is better than yours", they wnat to say "nobody should entertain any ideas other than mine".
This "study" made me recall a saying about benchmarks (there are lies, damned lies, and then there are benchmarks). Same thing could be applied to studies like this. Stats can be bent to fit the pre-conceived conclusions of the alleged researchers.
I know a number of engineers, none of whom are overly religious. Most lean away from religion. Engineers seem to be more centrist than conservative. Conservatives are generally ignorant and closed-minded, qualities which would doom an engineer's career.
them newfangled smart people sure are mighty suspicious-like what with their blinking lights and pocket calculators. we'd all be better off makin' sure that they'all are designing weapons for a good wholesome american arms distributor instead of for osama over in iraq there. if we ever catch billy building something other than a cluster munition, we spank his hide, let me tell you what.
I'm afraid I can't be bothered to find the link, but there's an XKCD comic about how geeks are always ready for sudden explosions, shootings and sword fights when waiting in line at the post office.
" Among Lazy, Illiterate American Auto workers,
that 40% of all sick time was taken on a Monday
or a Friday". The class (mostly) was dumbstruck.
I'd be dumbstruck too - aren't they shift workers? 9 to 5ers might not have heard of such a schedule, but it usually involves working four days for 10 hours each, with 4 days off, and including Saturday and Sunday. So I'd expect there to be a little less than 29% of sick time on a Monday or a Friday.
Found somewhere online ages ago:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he is out. When they are all out, the side that's been out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out, he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who are all out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
While he probably used something more potent than warfarin, the anticoagulant effect of these drugs occur via inhibiting the synthesis of vitamin K dependent clotting factors. This would take days to have any effect on the ability of the blood to clot. Even a "lethal" dose could be cured with sufficient vitamin K. And while they do damage capillaries and increase their permeability, this effect also takes days and is minor without inhibition of clotting factors.
He should've gotten together with one of those medicine terrorists. Actually, no, it's a good thing he didn't.
When you think about it, perhaps it isn't so strange. Intellectuals have historically always been critical of society, even from the time of Socrates. I think the reason is that when you are intelligent and well educated, it is all too easy to see the hypocrisy and injustice all around you, and if you care at all, you will want to change it. Unfortunately high intelligence and education in themselves doesn't guarantee maturity - this has to come with experience, so while we are young, we can easily adopt extreme viewpoints, not least if we don't have a good relationship to older, more mature persons that we can discuss our thoughts with.
That is all there is to it, really - it is all too popular in the more clueless end of the press to speculate about some groups of people being fundamentally different. I suppose reporters just aren't like the rest of us.
Yes you're right about that. I'd been hoping no one would spot that!
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
No worries. As has been pointed out by an AC below, there were similar (though much less visible) attempted attacks in London the day before the Glasgow incident. So we were equally right/wrong!
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
The technical issue they disagree over is private property rights; European libertarians (and anarcho-socialists) generally disavow that any such things exist, saying people have rights only in themselves, and everything else is public property, with no one having any right (or any legitimate basis of obtaining such a right) to exclude others from the use of anything but their own body. They hold that the notion of property rights is the very foundation of government, with landowners becoming little tyrants of their own little kingdoms. Contrarily, American libertarians (and anarcho-capitalists) argue that private property is fundamental and intrinsic to the very notion of personal liberty; that without receiving control of the product of your labor, your labor is being stolen by society, and you are effectively enslaved by them, as you become dependant on society leaving you the fruits of your labor to enjoy, since you have no legitimate claim to take them for your own. Thus, they argue that the abrogation of private property rights is the very foundation of government, with the people at large supporting or at least condoning the violation of individuals' rights by the state.
Technically, most American libertarians aren't anarchists, but minarchists: they hold that government is good precisely to the extent that it is safeguarding people's rights to life, liberty, and property; less government than that is a failure to serve the public good, and more government than that is a violation of those same rights that government is supposed to protect. Though I'm not European and so can't personally vouch on its usage, I get the impression that "libertarian" in Europe means basically "anarchist" (in a sense of that term that excludes anarcho-capitalists), rather than a parallel minarchist socialist position.
The American libertarian philosophy could be nicely summed up with the motto "mind your own business".
Disclaimer: not all people in America who call themselves libertarians are of this persuasion, but the U.S.'s Libertarian Party holds roughly to the description I've given here, and a lot of people here on Slashdot, and a lot of former Republicans who got tired of the theocratic bullshit in that party, call themselves libertarians and hold roughly this same position too. But from my personal experience both online and in the streets, there are a good number of self-proclaimed "libertarians" who are just as suspicious and disliking of big business and unrestrained capitalism as European-style anarcho-socialist "libertarians", even while agreeing with the private-property-is-essential-to-freedom argument; people who look for interesting ways of reconciling the apparent logic of said argument with the harsh reality of the harm that lassie-faire capitalism can allow. I think I've got a rather interesting solution myself, if anybody would care to hear it...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
While I've not read the report and I suspect it's based on a number of either inadequately grounded or misapplied conclusions, I think that the whole idea is incorrect because it "places the cart before the horse," in that it looks at men who come from the Middle East, see that many of them have tended to go into technological occupations, and presume from that a terrorist mindset.
It's like a discussion I got into once by some nutjob who thought the answer to the problem of terrorists from that region attacking the U.S. was to nuke the whole Middle East, even countries that had nothing to do with what happened in New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. I pointed out that if you make an unprovoked attack against millions of people for something that 99.9995% of them had nothing to do with and no control over, the survivors will respond with a viciousness and anger that will make the events of 9/11 look like a love tap. And not all of the people who are supportive of their causes are in the Middle East, unless you plan to nuke parts of Europe too. As those attacks changed a few thousand military and relatives of those killed in minor events prior to this (like the U.S.S. Cole or military barracks bombings), to millions of Americans outraged over these events, doing something stupid like that will create, instead of perhaps 10,000 or 50,000 committted terrorists willing to die for their cause, 1,000,000 or 5,000,000 really angry people willing to commit murder of people in the U.S. or die in response attacks to avenge the unprovoked and unwarranted killing of millions of innocent people. And we will have deserved it.
I'd like to simply point out that Middle East societies had - possibly before they got too badly infected by their military campaign known as the Islamic religion - a long history of scientific and engineering progress, much going back to before the existence of the Roman Empire. We are constantly digging up relics showing really advanced technological development of devices and artifacts that ran with either water or wind power or used complicated counterweight and various simple machines to do very complicated tasks.
Let's not forget that they built huge pyramids using nothing more than engineering knowhow (in addition to lots of grunt labor) in ways that today, we would find extremely difficult to duplicate without powered tools. And very hard to do even with them.
Paul Robinson My BlogThe lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
America: we've had it with your terror-this, terrorist-that. No one's listening to you anymore. You have zero credibility and your actions have given you no position to point fingers. Turn your gaze inward, solve the appalling and numerous problems within your own borders.
>the 'engineering mindset,' which they define as 'a mindset that inclines
...
>them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.'
yea sure... i never knowed an EE that didnt have an apropiate philosofy course that leaded them to think "out" of box and all the EE i know are atheist while still accept the "chance" of some supreme being/entity that is beyond our knowdlenge to be posible.
and if you want to know my religious postition:
every human been has to belive in some idea that is followed by someone else, some attach to un-proben facts like goods and miracles, i belive in cience, which is for me the more coherent of all the ideas i could belive in.
most religions (mostly cristian-ish) are leechers of the money, and only seek power and control over ppl, they keep people controled by fear (watch out, if you do bad you end up saying sorry to the big horns guy in flames) and most of them are sustained in imposible ideas, and unproben "facts" (a man that revives? cmon, that tech wasnt created at that time, and now it is hard to achieve with apliances like heart-shock machines)(we where created as his image? and all the bad we do? isnt it that we are the "same" as him, then he can be "bad" too?)
too much of this religions are based on truism, most of them are not even logical/probable/reproducible/coherent
Interesting how perceptions change. Back in the '90s I used to enjoy going to the old furniture & junk shop just up the road, and buying arcane textbooks from yesteryear. I picked up an anglo-saxon primer, several advanced mathematical texts from the 1940s, etc.
One of the most interesting is a 1950s text on guided missiles.
Now, there's no dangerous information in this book - it's mostly a historical relic detailing rather gruesome experiments teaching pigeons to peck at targets, and the birth of radio control. But fast forward to the new millenium, and can you imagine how it could be portrayed if I ever annoyed the wrong people?
"Citizen Z, an engineer and known radical non-conformist, was arrested following a tip-off from a concerned member of the public. Police have stated that a subsequent search of his premises revealed combustible substances, ingredients for explosives, and text detailing the construction of guided missiles and weapons of mass destruction".
Poring through historical texts makes it very clear how attitudes have changed in the last half-century. People are concerned about the growing, patent-based corporate oligopoly on knowledge, but few realise that the oligopoly stretching ever backwards in time, too.
Concerns about falling academic standards don't fully address the problem. The fact is there's a hell of a lot of knowledge in early 20th century texts (even those 1940s books on advanced vector maths) that isn't available *anywhere* any more, even if academic standards were maintained. I think this is far more dangerous & insidious - what use is a prior art clause in legal patent disputes when there is no remaining public record of the precedent?
Increasingly, public knowledge and skills are being taken from us, and sold back to us in a product form, often encumbered with a shelf-life. This is accomplished via Hysteria about terrorism, media demonisation of those with skills and knowledge ("eggheads"), Law and other government sanctions.
Best regards,
C
Hmmmmm.
Socially awkward, technically-minded achievers...
Why is this a stretch of the imagination?
I agree that some of the beliefs are just ridiculous ... and you rightly point it out ...
>>we where created as his image? and all the bad we do? isnt it that we are the "same" as him, then he can be "bad" too?
I mean, why would god need a bellybutton? come to thing of it, why would god need teeth? after all, why would god need to eat? does god need to take a dump once in a while? I guess not - after all, "nothing escapes god."
Kevin Smith on Prince
I think you have a good analysis going, but that you're missing the divide between the terrorist leaders and their followers. The leaders of the particular main terrorist group, Al Qaeda, are trying to preserve their own influence, yes. Their followers are viewing it as a clash of views, though, and that's why the leaders cast it as a religious war. It's not because the West finds a religious war scarier. It's because a religious war is the only way they recruit followers.
There have been lots of terrorists throughout history who had no power and were trying to gain some. The first steps to power are to state your views and make them heard. Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh come to mind.
Others use the term "religion" to describe the same thing, as I did above.
Dictionary.com's first definition of Dictionary is: 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. Note that a superhuman agency, ritual obervances, and moral codes are not required.
A set of beliefs about the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe that says "the universe exists without having been created by any supreme being, it has no purpose of existence, and it exists according to laws describable by science" is an atheistic religion according to this definition.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Now, this hypothesis is bullshit of course. However, this ties in with a similar and much more severe problem coming up here in America. What problem you ask? The belief that anyone who's actually thinking logically must "have something wrong with them". This is not quite the same as the "terrorist" label. It's become more of a general social stigma in America. I'm not old enough to remember much into the cold war history, but from everything I've read, this problem has been getting worse for a while now.
But isn't it odd that the towers fell relatively symmetrically almost as if they were downed by preplaced explosives?
Ah, now there you go thinking again son.
Isn't it also odd that NORAD, which is there to coordinate ICBM defense, managed to miss (supposedly) 4 planes in one day?
Boy, I thought I told you to cut that out.
If you look at the 5 frames of video released from the Pentagon, doesn't the 'plane' appear to be moving a little too fast for a 757?
Son, what the sam hell's wrong with you? You hate America or something?
Isn't is highly unlikely, that debris fell from towers 1 and 2, ignited a fire inside building 7, and then the fire became distributed evenly within building 7, weakening the structure of the building evenly enough to cause it to collapse in a way that appeared exactly like a controlled demolition?
Boy, you're really starting to piss me off.
And just how did the two main towers manage to fall at nearly free fall speed without having explosives to move mass?
Boy, you can take that physics shit and cram it up your ass.
And shouldn't people in suicide missions actually die?
Goddammit boy, you know you can't trust them British media!
Look, I'm not hating on my country. Britain does the same thing (2005/07/07). And Germany did the same thing with the Reichstag. And I'm also not just focusing on 'terrorist' attacks. Depleted uranium shells anyone? Iraq trading oil for euros? Anyone?
But of course, I'm thinking. I'm thinking logically about evidence I've seen. What is that called again? Scientific ... something or other. And that makes me UnAmerican.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Steven Jones really is a terrorist.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
Your definition of religion is a lot more restrictive than mine is.
This is neither good nor bad but it does mean we are talking past each other.
I don't expect you to change your definition and, except for the limited purposes of talking to you, I won't be changing mine.
I do accept that according to your definition, many of the things that I call a religion are not. Likewise, I hope you accept that many of the things you call "not a religion" I would say are religions.
It is up to those reading this thread to realize that although we are both using the term "religion" in acceptable/dictionary-definition ways, we are not using the same dictionary.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Qu'ran is a set of goalposts, and the Qu'ran itself is not the final word on Allah's will. The teachings of Islam are also refined over the centuries by Islamic scholars. Take slavery for instance. While the Wahhabis (a Muslim fundamentalist sect) disagree, almost every other sect of Islam has decreed that slavery is incompatible with the Islamic concept of social justice and of racial equality (as advocated in the prophet's last sermon). That's a change over time.
Heck, if there was only one way to live your life according to the Qu'ran, we wouldn't even have Islamic sects. But we do -- which is another sign that religion is not some dry, cookie-cutter, mindless robot factory. Islam contains everything from the fundamentalist hardliners to the contemplative mystics to the barely faithful. All of these people consider themselves Muslims. All of them respect the Qu'ran. All of them are religious to some extent or another, but they don't need *your* sanction to be "doing it right."
But, hey, again as an outsider to a concept, you seem to have the arrogance to lecture people on what religious faith is and how there's only One Way To Do It. Nothing breeds confidence like ignorance, hey?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you can't see how to pull out relevant lessons for life from a complex body of work, then it's pretty obvious that you have a very poor, humanities-free education that has left you intellectually handicapped. Interpretation is a vital part of reading any non-technical text, and it is very much possible to come away from reading the Bible or the Qu'ran is more questions than answers.
Dogma is what happens when you decide on an answer and believe in its inerrant truth. Faith does not require this. Faith can still leave room for seeking, and all intellectually honest people do so.
Then again, intellectual curiosity winning out over stubbornness isn't necessarily that common of an engineer's trait, so maybe this article had some merit, after all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
because if i identify islamofascism, which is a real trend, i must automatically be a fascist myself. it's impossible of course to hate both zionists and islamofascists, which i do. in your mind, i have to be one extreme or the other, i can't be a moderate on the issue
by your thinking, german nazism was created by poverty. by your thinking, japanese nationalism before world war ii was created by povery
ethnocentrism is an evil endemic to all ethnicities in the world. and if you have a fascist movement based on that, you have fascism defined, and there is nothing about poverty that created islamofascism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of my coworkers fathers was an autoworker for Ford....and he refused to buy a car that was assembled/built on Fridays.
:P :)
And incidentally, it proves your conjecture "Among lazy illiterate American Auto workers...." 'cause any fool knows that a
four day weekend is better than a three day weekend
Now, what percentage of the total workforce sick time is on Monday or Friday?
Nice try at sidestepping my argument.
Yes we disagree about the definition of religion. But if you really thought about yours, you would see that yours is so broad it’s meaningless:
You say that the part I’ve emphasised is not necessary. But then what’s left? A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. Well that pretty much covers every single human on the planet. Which one of us doesn’t have a set of beliefs about the universe and our place in it? So you’re effectively saying we all have religion, that we’re all religious. Okay, then why not just say all people think thoughts? What’s the point of that statement, exactly? Can’t you just come up with a better counter-argument against atheism? Apparently not.
I think you want to say that we’re all the same when it comes to not having answers about the unanswerable, that religious people don’t have the market cornered on dogmatism. No argument there. But resorting to “atheism is just another religion” is not the way to make your point. It’ childish and illogical.
I suspect you haven’t really listened carefully to atheist argmuments. You’ve certainly ignored mine. I’m not trying to unconvert you, but your statement that atheists are religious was so graspingly absurd, I had to say something.
bullshit. i refuse to believe someone could study engineering for 4 years and come out the other side believing in the supernatural.
Mechanical engineers build weapons.
Civil engineers build targets.
http://xkcd.com/373/
That was so much simpler than all those extra words I've been hammering out, one lousy key at a time.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
http://www.glossopspur.com/notowarnewsd.html 4th February Blair 'unaware' of WMD threat - Tony Blair has said he was unaware the 45 minute claim over Iraq's WMD meant only battlefield weapons when he urged MPs to vote for war in March last year. Is he serious? He took us to war without knowing the facts, he said that at the time of the war he was personally unaware that Saddam Hussein did not have the ability to fire long-range chemical and biological weapons! Robin Cook, the former cabinet minister, directly challenged the claim. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8839.htm It was this claim that led to allegations the British Government had "sexed up" intelligence reports and indirectly led to the death of British defence whistleblower Dr David Kelly.
The British claim of biological and chemical weapons standing ready to fire was supported by Powell in his crucial address to the UN Security Council in February 2003, in which he described how missiles with WMD warheads were hidden in western Iraq."
Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection," he said.
...
In September 2002, the British Government's intelligence dossier on Iraq said that "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa".
On the controversial aluminium tubes, Iraq claimed they were to make the bodies of rockets. But Powell told the UN Security Council in February 2003 that "Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb".
...
Concerns over the use of the aluminium tubes as evidence for Iraq's nuclear ambitions date back to August 2001, when the US Department of Energy's intelligence office assessed samples and said they were not wellsuited for a centrifuge and were more likely for making rockets. The International Atomic Energy Agency agreed with that assessment.
But the US in particular kept using the aluminium tubes to help prove the case for war during 2002 and early 2003.
The Iraq Survey Group concluded in its final report last year that Iraq had not tried to restart its nuclear weapons program after 1991.
The US presidential commission on Iraq intelligence found in March this year that the intelligence community "seriously misjudged the status of Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program".
If you doubt this why don't we try this experiment. You close your eyes and you jump of the stairs backwards. You make yourself believe this will have no effect on you (use alcohol if necessary), and we test the result, ok ? We don't consider your perspective reasoned well enough to warrant an experiment, certainly not one at our expense. You "test the result."
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Naw. It's mostly totally unselfconscious, unexamined selfishness combined with a sort of odd belief in 'freedom' that is so strong that it basically amounts to belief in predestination. ("Everyone has absolute choice in everything that happens to them, so therefore it's obvious that everyone deserves exactly what they are getting. Except me, because I deserve more.") The latter is merely a verbose restatement of the former, at the level I'd probably address to a 3rd grader who asked me "What is 'hypocritical anarchism'"? RTFC
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..