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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?"
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.