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Why Do So Many Terrorists Have Engineering Degrees
Socguy noted that Slate is apparently a little desperate for some traffic as they are writing about"Why so many of the terrorists have engineering degrees, and they come to the conclusion that engineers and engineering students are much more likely to hold strong conservative and religious views than a general cross section of the public. Further, engineers tend to hold a particular mind-set that disdains ambiguity and compromise. Terrorist organizations have long recognized that engineering departments are fertile ground for recruitment and have concentrated their efforts there. A 2005 report from British intelligence noted that Islamic extremists were frequenting college campuses, looking for 'inquisitive' students who might be susceptible to their message. In particular, the report noted, they targeted engineers."
Could it be that engineering degrees are a dime-a-dozen in oil-rich countries where middle-eastern terrorists usually originate? How many people in these countries don't have engineering degrees?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Inventor and engineer, also a revolutionary. Lucky for him (and us), a successful one.
Wonder what names the British called him and his compatriots? Blow the dust off your history book and find out.
Boy did I ever post this anonymously.
From my engineering degree
Chemical explosives - check
Electronic devices - check
Radio communications - check
Problem solving techniques - check
Analyzing systems for failure modes/exploitation - check
Nah .. can't see why an engineering degree would be useful to a terrorist at all
What was really fun was that the US Green card application specifically asks you if have had training in a lot of the above techniques. and I had no idea what sort of red flags sent up by me truthfully answering the questions
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
While I might somewhat agree with the notion that engineers disdain ambiguity, I completely disagree with the statement that engineers hate compromise. Im my mind, engineering is the art of compromise, and that is what separates us from "scientists". We crave efficiency, which in turn *requires* compromises. We constantly make tradeoffs between costs, quality and schedule, with the goal of meeting requirements most optimally. Ask any engineer who has designed a product and they will tell you that they could have made it (choose 1): better, sooner, cheaper. Instead, compromises were made along the way to meet some criteria in all 3 of those measures.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I'd guess art students aren't as good at making bombs.
Or engineers are good at planning, organizing, and building stuff. While in college they're probably most impressionable to joining causes. Every organization on the planet wants eager, smart people working for them.
Developers: We can use your help.
Engineering is about carefully following an existing set of rules, like building codes and the laws of physics. It can require cleverness, but only in how to best achieve your goals while staying within the rules ("solve this problem, within these constraints"). Maybe there's a mindset where it just doesn't really matter where the rules come from, and religious rules are just as good as physical or legal rules? This would be in contrast to science, where the goal is to find the rules and poke at them until you understand them ("find out what the constraints are, and why").
Perhaps another reason engineers predominate is because it is easier to get a visa, or otherwise travel, to Western countries if one is an engineer.
Proverbs 21:19
Must have been bottom of the class engineers who barely passed at all. All of the terrorist attacks carried out (all 5-10 of them over two decades) against the U.S. were poorly planned and poorly executed. Even the September 11 attacks could have been 10 fold more deadly had they been timed and executed better.
And don't get me started on the shoe and underwear bombers. Evidently, the "engineers" who plotted those attacks didn't think that maybe they should build a foolproof electronic detonator for their bomb rather than rely on the skillz of someone who is willing to blow himself up.
Why am I harping on this? It pisses me off that as a result of the actions of a few idiots, a TRILLION FUCKING DOLLARS (that is, the life's work of at least a million people) has been blown reacting to these idiots. The terrorists have WON. They've caused grievous damaged to the United States thanks to the response of the U.S. government and it's sheeple.
Had we done NOTHING at all in response to the attacks (except for maybe giving the FBI a billion dollar budget increase or something cheap like that) it would have cost us far less treasure and lifetimes of labor. Those freaking towers were only insured for a couple of billion, tops.
If we're going to spend a trillion dollars fighting a few evil individuals, they better be a Lex Luther...not Cletus.
Goddam bankers, they're almost as bad as terrorists.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"engineers and engineering students are much more likely to hold strong conservative and religious views than a general cross section of the public" Nonsense, I've been hanging around with scientists and engineers most of my life.
The article didn't say scientists, it said engineers. Why did you throw scientists in? Apples and oranges.
My observation is that few of them hold hard and fast convictions about anything they cannot measure or mathematically derive.
My experience differs greatly. And one problem is a lot of engineers think you can measure or mathematically derive things you really can't. And I think there is a reason a lot of the more prominent creationists are engineers.
Except possibly when it comes to debates about beer of the best editor to use.
Or the federal reserve or the gold standard or welfare or income tax or flat taxes or open source or...
Okay, I know nobody RTFAs. But the original paper is here, and it makes the following points:
1) It has nothing to do with technical abilities. Terrorists don't attempt to recruit people by technical ability, they just take whoever they can get.
2) It has nothing to do with ease of immigration as a skilled migrant. The paper cites studies on American religious terrorists (the nominally Christian far-right) and concludes that the unusual tendency of engineers towards right-wing radicalism seems universal.
3) The paper argues that the 'styles of thinking' that predispose people towards engineering, also predispose them towards right-wing radicalism. Engineers are more reliably right-wing than even economists! (who are the second-most reliably right-wing academic group). Likewise, a liberal arts education is correlated with left-wing radicalism (e.g., communist bombing campaigns in postwar Western Europe). But there have been relatively few left-wing bombing terrorist acts after the end of the Soviet Union, while right-wing radicalism is on the rise. Hence mad engineers rather than mad Marx-spewing liberal arts graduates.
The article even hits on it.
Who is more likely to commit an act of terrorism:
1) A doctor who works 60 hours a week and golfs with his buddies
2) An unemployed engineer who is socially inept and having difficulties earning a living wage
The article points out that in Saudi Arabia, where the rapidly growing economy has resulted in very low unemployment for engineers, there is no over abundance of engineering degrees in terrorist organizations. But in other countries where grow has been slow or stymied and engineering education has been heavily promoted, unemployment, specifically in the engineering sectors, has been especially high.
The best way to fight against extremist recruiting is to maintain low unemployment and to keep people socially engaged. So long as people are comfortable with their existence and have hope for the future, any extremist group will have a hard time coming up with fresh recruits.
That is why, IMO, the most critical aspect of world wide security is not nukes or armies, not even police or surveillance laws. The most important factor to peace, stability, and security is the Middle Class.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I hate to say the following for two reasons. 1) it is a stereotype of my own design, and 2) I am an engineer.
Engineers are ALWAYS right. ALWAYS. Even when (especially when?) something is clearly opinion based.
Ask a non-eng what their favorite color is, you get a simple answer.
Ask an eng the same, you get an answer PLUS reasons why it is superior to other colors.
As I said, I am an engineer. It was only after I noticed behavior like this in other engs that I noticed it in myself as well.
I don't like having that trait (flaw?) and have had to make a conscious effort to be less judgmental. (Yet remaining critical.)
So, yeah, as RobotRunAmok pointed out - engs tend to think/say "Right is right - AND I'M RIGHT" even when it isn't a correct/incorrect discussion, sometimes when they are clearly incorrect (they defend what they've said, clearly wrong.)
Also, and again this is something that I've caught myself doing, is that these personality types can and do play the Devil's Advocate rather well - up to a point. There is a difference between seeing the other side of a discussion and being contrarian for the sake of "being right."
The above may not be worded all that well, but I need my morning coffee. Besides, it hardly matters if you disagree with me, since I KNOW that I am correct.
By contrast, Liberal Arts grads. are trained to see both sides of the story and to offer a 'balanced' perspective. But they're unable to cope with issues that aren't a template of 'there are two sides to every story and they're both equally valid' - which is a problem because most situations do not have two valid 'sides' and because the media, and news in paticular, is dominated by Liberal Arts grads.
Which is why science reporting is so crap - no, saying that the LHC will create a black hole the will destroy the earth is not an 'equally valid viewpoint' that the BBC should report in the interest of balance.
As a CS grad from a liberal arts school, I got to deal with the liberal arts types that parent is referring to quite a bit.
There were generally 3 modes of thinking for the less bright liberal arts students: ..." These folks are easy to find in the English or psychology departments, and by avoiding ever drawing any conclusions avoid having their conclusions being demonstrated incorrect. Often, they were extremely good students in high school, because their high school classes emphasized memorize-regurgitate over critical thinking.
1. "I'm right, because I'm morally right, and anyone who disagrees with me is mysogynistic / racist / classist / homophobic." This would be found most commonly in the [insert historically disadvantaged group here] Studies departments. They also tend to join up with identity-based groups on campus.
2. "On the other hand
3. "These 'facts' make me feel like I'm right" This is where truthiness trumps facts. You find these people in the political science and history departments. They also spend a lot of their time in on-campus activism, and are often humorously misinformed.
All of them have real trouble in fields like math and science because in those fields there are correct and incorrect answers, and incorrect answers cannot be met by "that's just, like, your opinion, man". Of course, xkcd shows it far better than I ever could.
Worth mentioning is that the smarter liberal arts types aren't like this at all. For instance, smart English majors can point out the structures of literature that make it all tick, or exactly how a sentence can be better phrased. Smart history majors can provide all the major sources for a historical event, explain what biases each source had and how that affected their description of the event, piece together what probably actually happened, and are probably some of the best BS detectors out there.
I am officially gone from
Oh, I'm aware of the theories. I'm just not buying it. It's a cop out, a trite explanation for the unfair, uncaring and utterly random events of life. It's a means to excuse unfairly gained power and wealth, and a method of severing compassion with the less fortunate. Each 'deserves' their lot in life, and some imaginary cosmic balance is maintained. But all it does is serve to mask the most basic mistake that ego makes: the idea that it is a separate thing to begin with. Forget karma and reincarnation and even free will, it's all a sop to an ego that sees itself as separated from the universe. Balance happens between two separate things. The concept of balance is alien to unity. Without the need for a settling of accounts, there is no need for rebirth. With no need for rebirth, suffering ends.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton