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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?"
Engineer's mindset: "What makes this thing tick"
Terrorist's mindset: "I know why this thing is ticking"
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.
I think there's a bit of a difference in "I'm always right" as opposed to "I'm going to kill those that don't think like me". Though IANATerrorist.
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.
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!
Great, a pissed of /.er. How long till he blows something up now?
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
This clearly underlines why math, science and engineering must be eradicated from the US educational system.
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 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.
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.
Other than a strange obsession with Cricket
Damn foriegners and their freaky strange obsessions.
Ooooo! Gotta run..... I think Brittney shaved her head again!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You could also say: "Men without girlfriends are over represented in terrorist groups."
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
Almost everyone in the middle east gets a higher education degree. They study and get their degrees and in their mid-20's they graduate without the ability to go to anymore school and NO JOB PROSPECTS. An inability to support their family drives them to religion and in some cases extremism where they blame all the problems in the middle east on not being religious enough (not pleasing god), or blame all the problems in the middle east on external forces. The problems in the middle east are economic. You have essentially a very small group that lives extravagantly using oil money and the rest of the population struggles to get by with no real jobs or careers that take advantage of their advanced degrees. The one exception seems to be the emirate of Dubai who actually appears to be starting a real economy.
Until there is real social and economic changes in the middle east the countries will continue to breed extremists, because people without prospects for the future will always cause trouble. Saudi is the prime example but Iran is as well, the religious leaders live extremely well, probably in the top 5% economically in the country while the poor people in the villages in the outer reaches freeze to death in a snow storm. Until there is real economic freedom and equal justice for all the area is for the most part a lost cause. Run the oil wealth out and the countries won't be able to provide the minimal support their populations need to survive and then there will be real change.
Your description about Chinese would be right if it's still 30-40 years ago. Now no one still believes the propaganda. In fact, the reason so many Chinese want to go to college in the US is because they think they can get a better education here. The way you put it sounds like they're sent here on a mission, like the terrorists; they're not.
China doesn't have a monopoly on propaganda.
Islam is a young, viral religion. There was another young, viral religion which not but a millenia ago murdered people for centuries.
I'm just sad that people don't realize this idiotic religious tribalism brings us all to hell.
+5, Truth
> Slashdot Libertarianism is mostly hypocritical anarchism
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.")
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Nonsense. By your lights, critical thinking is in principle impossible given the existence of 'unprovable postulates'. "I exist" and "Time flows" and "Cause and effect exists" and "The information my senses provide me is accurate and true" are all testable and can all be corroborated with evidence. 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. Within the context of what is real, the logic and consistency of evidence do matter insofar as they enable an understanding of how reality works. And by corollary, there is simply no such thing as 'outside the context of what is real'. If you disagree, I suggest you contemplate the fact that you are using a computer - a fantastically sophisticated testament to our ability to 'actually' understand reality - to write your comments. Your frittering crap about unprovable first principles is of no relevance.
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
I made no claims about the historical significance of religion, nor of its functional utility. Believing in the toothfairy may have profoundly affected history, and it may be useful and meaningful to millions of people. That doesn't lend the slightest credence to the assertion that it is true. And that's the toothfairy. Last time a checked, no Toothfairyists were blowing up children with carbombs.
you presume to lecture a Muslim on the Qu'ran
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. And just in case you missed the memo, the "Argument from Authority" carries no weight in rational discourse: the fact that this guy is a Muslim is irrelevant. Or would you just as happily claim that all Christians in the redneck South are expert Biblical scholars simply by virtue of being Christian?
the guy who studies the book every week at his mosque is obviously the one arguing from a position of dogmatic ignorance here
If I studied Superman comic books every week, it wouldn't make them one iota more legitimate as a guide to building a civil society or as a guide to understanding reality. All of my criticism of the Quran stands.
A-Bomb