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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?"

3 of 837 comments (clear)

  1. Engineers don't kill people, people kill people by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.

    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 ... 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.

    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 ?

  2. Re:The Engineer by khallow · · Score: 0, Troll

    Just because there are soldiers there, doesn't make it a "legitimate military target". Recall you also need to be at war with them (unless they don't attempt to honor international law in this area), the target has to be of military value, and you must comply with the various international treaties on war in how you carry the attack out (for example, wearing uniforms). Just showing up in civilian disguise and setting off a bomb that happens to kill soldiers doesn't fulfill these requirements.

  3. Re:The Engineer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Wow, some idiot is apologizing for jews who kill arabs while decrying arabs who kill jews. to some jews, the world is divided into jews and non-jews, and if you're born palestinian, fuck you, you die.

    It's really sad. You'd think the jewish people especially would be done with racism ever since the Holocaust. instead, some jews got so batshit insane scared that they were willing to become that special blend of racism and nationalism...