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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
Didn't the EEtimes come to a similar conclusion last year?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/03/1943247
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=207001533
I recall it had more to do with planning skills than anything else.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
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.
Does literacy cause terrorism? If so, the solution is simple.
Also, this was discussed here on Slashdot twice last year:
Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? (Jan 2008)
Engineers Make Good Terrorists? (Apr 2008)
They wouldn't be targeting engineers because they have skills of getting things done and paying attention to details.
Engineering isn't science. Engineering is using what is known of science to create results. It is one of the few degrees that have that focus. Most of the other disciplines if recruited will spend their time researching and analyzing the problems and probably coming up with the idea it is a bad idea. But an engineer will just go ahead and make it go.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Could be just the engineering degree ones that are successful in blowing things up. Perhaps the ones who took degrees in fine art are busy in mountain retreats sculpting models of the end of world in matchsticks and bat guano, the ones who took degrees in drama are creating avant-garde absurdist plays and presenting these to goats in small rural farming communities, and the ones who took degrees in philosophy are arguing whether their enemies actually exist in complex latin tracts that nobody understands and the local printers won't publish for them because radishes are a poor currency.
Engineering students get dates and have nothing else do, so they might as well get on a plane and blow up their underwear.
Engineering students can't get dates and have nothing else do, so they might as well get on a plane and blow up their underwear.
Maybe these old clerics are putting high recruiting resources into enginering schools because those are the resources that they really need. Poor farm boys used to carry bombs into marketplaces are a dime a dozen. They need people who can make the bombs that actually do the dirty work.
And there doesn't seem to be a lack of fundamentalism in certain areas so finding them in wide and well adopted fields such as enginering shouldn't be an issue in and of itself.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They target engineers more than other disciplines . . . and more engineers become terrorists.
I think you answered your own question.
Most male engineers don't have fantastic communiation skills, and are thus less likely to be occupied with fun things like chatting up girls etc. Thus, when they get tired of studies it is easier to make they stray. Pretty obvious really. A marketing student will be busy going to parties etc. all year rather than studying so is a) less likely to get bored with hard work and difficult studies and b) have something fun to do when not studying.
It follows that it is much harder to recruit a marketing person.
"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. My observation is that few of them hold hard and fast convictions about anything they cannot measure or mathematically derive. Except possibly when it comes to debates about beer of the best editor to use. I think the reason to try and recruit terrorists from the engineering population is because they are far more likely to know how to destroy things effectively. Much like the way we build our military industry in the west.
Okay, there's an issue of being more conservative to a certain degree, but I can come up with lots more reasons that might give a bias to engineering:
Now, luckily, in my case, I'm now an elected official, so have other ways to channel my energies to better the world ... but I think many of us have had the discussion of what could be done if we nuked the planet from orbit and started all over again. Or even a tornado ... I'm sure we could fix up our downtown if we could get rid of a few of the eyesore buildings that the county built.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Do a search for "Taliban terrorists killed" and you will find hundreds of results of our boys doing a great job. I'm willing to bet 99% of these idiots who were killed had no degrees at all. It seams the real observation here is that there are more engineering terrorists who figure out a way to avoid being killed. So, the real title of this should be: How do so many terrorists with engineering degrees avoid our bullets?
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").
Why do so many terrorists have a complete failure to use their training or logic? There are so many logical holes in the theater we call security, an engineer should be able to exploit them like there's no tomorrow. Yet they continue to do show incompetence on large scale attacks due to logical flaws in their planning. Meanwhile countless exploitable targets go unchallenged on a routine basis. Perhaps it is failed engineers that become terrorists?
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.
So many of the Engineers I have known view "seeing both sides of the story" as some kind of weakness or soft-spined compromise. "Right is Right, Wrong is Wrong, I'm Right, and that's all there is to it. Period. Full Stop. Now If You'll Excuse Me, I've got to get back to My Important Thing."
Of course, more times than not, they ARE right. Just pains in the ass, and living in their Own Private Idaho.
It's not every engineer, of course, but a much larger percentage than, say, the writers or entertainers or sales-and-marketing suits whose company I have frequented over the past few decades. I've never made the connection before, but yes, most of the socially-dysfunctional engineers I know would make really good religious extremists.
Maybe... http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/climate-change-a-consensus-among-scientists/ "In fact, when you adjust the PetitionProject’s odd categorisation – they filed ‘chemical engineers’ as chemists and physical engineers as ‘physicists’ – the total number of engineers who signed the petition, by our reckoning, jumps to 49%"
I suppose English/Classics students argue, but they know its all futile in the larger scheme of things, as Cicero said "we're all dead, get over it losers".
Maths students argue, but only over dividing the bill.
Humanities/Politics students argue over everything, but that's all - they have no ability to do anything practical.
Engineering students, they're different. From arguing over Emacs or Vi, its no wonder they're seen as the most promising ones for a career in terrorism.
It certainly is an interesting hypothesis. However, their sample is now limited to terrorist:engineers. A test of this theory would be to check the engineers of other religious groups for similar traits. It might be the combination of these personality traits coupled with the radical teachings that inspire those individuals to act. However, the tendency might manifest itself in some other way in different religions that don't promote violent martyrdom.
...*successful* terrorists are more likely to have engineering degrees--'cause the ones who don't blow themselves up trying to make the bomb.
That reminds me of the question I was asking the other day:
Why does American Airlines recruit so many people who know how to fly airplanes?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Lo, there in the thicket rattled the snake of logic. Said he, slithering sleeky, "Be afraid not of the close-mindedness your engineering degree affords your feeble mind on the journey of truth, for you will find it blindly". And then did the engineering student question the snake, "But I have attained logic! And it was good! I have learned to question and follow not blindly but to persevere and challenge the status quo!" So then did the snake rattleth, for pissed was he for the impudence of the engineer. "Your m-value must be negative, young fool, for surely you are sliding down the slippery slope". He added, "Take care to realize soon your inevitable conversion to irrationality!" The engineer plucked an apple from the tree of un-knowledge and smashed it all over his face and rubbed it into his chest, giggling, "Haarrrr I already have dwweeeee". And thus another engineer was turned away from the cold, uncaring logic that had festered within him.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Theodore Kaczynski was a mathematician, Western educated, and by all accounts a model student and young academic. Was the CIA involved in turning him into a manic individual ? There is something about the obsessive nature that a person needs to succeed in science, engineering or maths that is part of the terrorist psyche.
Engineers crave logic. Logical people are all driven somewhat crazy by the world we live in. That will manifest itself in all sorts of strange ways. This time, it manifested itself in exploding underwear (not a very smart engineer, judging by the design). As a kind of engineer myself, I look at how limited the damage would have been, if he had blown up the plane, versus the cost of going all ape-shit over it and I naturally come to the conclusion that people need to chill the fuck out. Even if they made airport security perfect, I can think of at least a dozen non-airplane ways to kill just as many people, without the terrorist(s) even having to sacrifice his life. The way to reduce terrorism is to stop creating new ones by stop bombing their families and stop manipulating their governments.
Would they play engineer in TF2?
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I think all engineers/hackers have a certain amount of idealism in them. When they see something that is badly broken they want to fix it, and many are willing to give their time/money/talent generously.
Terrorists, in an admittedly warped sense, are idealists too. I'm an Iraqi, I think the US is a massive "bug", so I'm going to try to fix it at all costs. If I'm convinced the US is a massive bug in the software system that is the world, it makes it possible for me to want to obliterate 3,000 innocent Americans.
I'm no shrink and it sounds sacrilegious, but kernel hackers and Mohammad Atta's pals may have a lot in common. Each group is trying to make the world better, at least in their own minds.
I mean if you run one of these organizations engineers are way too valuable not to take a shot and recruit.(As others have said aboe.) So I would think they actively recruit them. Plus on top of it one of the stereotypes about engineering students is that alot of them are reclusive and don't engage in society. So basically that means they don't have the societal safety net that would keep them from doing crazy shit. (I mean it always seems like the loner is the guy that ends up going nuts, not the guy with 100 friends and parties every night like the kids at Columbine.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
They're all maniacal engineers. *rimshot*
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Having spent a bit of my youth as a "Born Again" Christian (I lean towards secular Buddhism now), I noticed that there are quite a few engineers who also see themselves as fundamentalist Christians. I think that it's not so much engineering gives you good "terror skills" (although there's something to be said for that argument), but points more toward the notion of the generally conservative engineer, or at least one that doesn't take too holistic a view of the world, thus making them ripe for all sorts of fundamentalist thought be it Islamic or Christian.
Frankly I think the neo-cons and Jihadists are just "brothers from another mother" to a certain degree. Fundies are fundies no matter what they believe... it's just they think they have an inside-scoop on how things ought to be, everybody else is wrong, and the world needs to be corrected to fit their views.
I think the unofficial motto of various aerospace corporations used to be, "Everything we make either kills people or gives them cancer!" When you think about it, the military industrial complex is focused on developing destructive devices. You don't see them building farm tractors or a new line of gardening tools. So, if you are an engineer perhaps it is only a matter of choosing an employer. I have never noticed engineers being conservative nor particularly religious neither.
I'm happy that with this Nigerian terrorist that the media is emphasizing his wealthy and privileged background.
I was disappointed that the wealthy, privileged, backgrounds of Osama Bin Laden and almost all of the 19 9/11 hijackers were not emphasized more.
As with Marxism, Islamic terrorism is not about the poor rising up against oppressors.
It is about is about rich people with unresolved issues telling the poor what to think and egging them on to take actions that really don't help the poor...........exactly the complaint that these self appointed "vanguard activists" have.
Let's pull out Occam's razor and shave a bit...
If you wanted to blow up a bridge, wouldn't it help to know how bridges are built?
most of the journos already support them
Were all the biggest terrorists of past century Engineers ? Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Bush.... I dont think so . These were the REAL terrorists who dealt with whole sale terrorism. They have killed more people than any other terrorists anytime in the history. But most of these so called "Engineer terrorists" are involved in retail terrorism and the effect was marginal comparing to the former.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
Not quite the same thing, but Bruce Salem spotted this some while back - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
I would agree that engineers, as a group, ( networking types too ), tend to have those traits.
So what?
Every profession and grouping of humans has a set of traits that are dominant in that group. All of those traits are dominant in that group for reasons, some good and some not so flattering.
Hey, everyone, stop staring at your penny-loafers for a minute. Why are engineers really chosen to be terrorists? Because they're socially awkward. It's not because they're so good at blowing stuff up (look at how many attempts fail for technical reasons). It's not because they're religious zealots (college graduates are more likely to be non-religious, or otherwise liberal). It's because a guy comes along and shows this brilliant mind a way to finally "belong" by joining a "family" that will care for him. It's the same reason so many brilliant minds became hackers and phreakers and so forth back in the day.
Goddam bankers, they're almost as bad as terrorists.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As a physicist, I find it interesting that both physicists and engineers have similar skill sets, but I have never heard of a terrorist physicist (unless you want to count Edward Teller).
Funny examples, I think any terrorist group would want both accountants and journalists. Accountants because they do have money, and need to hide it very well and probably keep a lot of it in cash thats being held by unsavory individuals. For sure, they want to keep good books.
And journalists? Terrorisim is fundamentally a journalistic act--the destruction is not the primary goal, it's the media coverage of the destruction. That's the difference between a terrorist and a guerrilla. Very few, if any, terrorist groups are pure nihlists. Most are part of a larger organization with political or social goals, and every group larger than the Unibomber needs to recruit. Journalists are going to be a lot more useful at that than engineers.
Frankly, these were poor attempts at sabotage. Unless they sabotaged their sabotaging purposely to get a free flight to the US/ wherever.
Come back when you have something relevant to contribute. Learning the difference between engineering and science might be a good first step.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
engineers do not take history classes...
The problem isn't an engineering education. The problem is a complete an total lack of humanities while undertaking said education. Well, not total lack, but a general consideration that it's a pain in the ass and not required to get your job done.
I nary saw a history class, and the only "humanities" we were offered were labeled such. (I.E. a premade minimal class just to say were had it.)
You also have the problem in that Engineering degrees are so in demand, our engineering schools have become diploma mills. Self-contained enclaves. There was no effort on the part of my school to connect what we were learning to anything else. If anything the attitude was "Engineers were special", and everything (including basic math) had a "For engineers" in the title.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
"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...
No, extraordinary claims require simple proof like anything else. The burden of proof does not scale with the grandiosity of the claims. Rather, each aspect of the extraordinary claim should be subjected to falsification.
Here are some falsification tests for Christianity, for example, which directly map to specific, "extraordinary claims" made by it.
That is because those claims have been demonstrated to be impossible or at least improbable beyond a reasonable doubt at this point. Spiritual claims are primarily testimonial. I suppose you could argue that testimonial evidence is crap, but then you'd also have to argue that the entire foundation of the legal system is crap too, since "forensic science" (at least as practiced by the government) is closer to phrenology than physics as far as being science.
Funnily enough the Aum cult used to recruit engineers too and of course Heaven's Gate was packed with web developers. It's weird because you would think that engineers would be the most immune to religion, or at least moderate it. After all engineers are taught to seek out answers, to be rational and logical and not to resort to special pleading (e.g. "it was God's will") when something doesn't work properly.
this is almost like saying "you're becoming just like your father!"
I'm almost pained to continue pursuing my studies if my outcome is already deemed to become a close-minded, uncompromising fanatic.
BS
When did Thomas Jefferson ever try to murder innocent civilians or stone women because they were raped? How about try to kill a person because he drew a cartoon? Thomas Jefferson did or advocated none of these things or anything like it. It looks like you may need to crack open your history book.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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.
When I was in college I was amazed at how politically naive and how conservative Engineering students were.
Many of them were better at things like puzzles or math than I was, but man, I could sell them the Brooklyn bridge.
To be fair, a lot of it has to do with who writes or who will write your paycheck.
That is true for everyone in every profession.
I did meet engineering students who were liberal and or non-superficial thinkers. Interestingly they all got out of the profession eventually.
A degree in engineering has one of the highest degrees of mobility in the world. Engineers are frequently dispatch across the globe for special projects from mining, bridge building, design, and implementation.
Much like churches and schools, predators go where there is prey. Churches and schools provide the perfect "fish in a barrel" environment, access to prey, authority, and oportunity. The same hold true for the preditor that preys on fear. They need to have an occupation that provides them the tools necessary. Not only would engineers have the skills to develop weapons and "Mac Guyver" solutions but ideally, the job environment endows the ability to travel without drawing attention. Engineers can travel all over for projects and confrences vs. say an automechanic. It would be suspicious for an average automechanic to have to travel to Prague for a conference but an engineer travelling abroad for their career sounds plausable.
I would suspect that fields that require or at the very least imply travel are prime targets for recruitment.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I somewhat agree. The liberal software engineer is a dying breed. Witness Slashdot, where libertarians are constantly extolling the "magic of the market" as a solution to all problems and government as the problem by definition. We have our own orthodoxies, clearly, and they aren't much different from the Fundamentalist Christians or the Jihadist Muslims.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Every serious military fan boy (or whatever) knows that combat engineers are, overall, the most economically effective soldiers.
Take everything you'd want in a grunt, but invest a little more education so they can use more technology, and that is basically a combat engineer. A super-grunt, the grunt of the future ... today.
Per dollar invested by society, per person, per pound, per whatever, combat engineers are simply the most effective soldiers on the planet. There are other groups with "more battlefield power", tac nuke artillery, attack copter pilot, etc, but they invariably require a million to trillion dollar rear echelon and military industrial complex back home, and lack the sustained long term fighting power of a combat engineering group. Anything that can crush ten combat engineering units, has an overall societal cost maybe 1e6 higher than a CE unit, so assuming enough smart enlistees, your overall military power is the highest when you maximize your combat engineers.
The only reason more combat engineers aren't used, is the quantity of enlistees with the required superior brain power is limited.
In the 70s/80s there was kind of a "revenge of the jocks" doctrinal move toward special forces, etc, but that has pretty much failed, fizzled out, and the combat engineers reign supreme on the battlefield once again...
Non-military folks can pretend to be surprised that a military force would try to recruit engineers for pageviews or whatever, but for those in the business, its no surprise at all.
(And, yes, I was in the Army in the early 90s, and no, I was in Ordnance not combat engineering, and as a supplier we were well aware that the combat engineers have by far the most effective armaments)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I don't know if I agree with this assessment.
Most real Engineers deal daily with evaluating many possible solutions and picking the "best" one. Often weighing different and conflicting criteria in doing so. (Cost, performance, lifetime, social acceptability etc, etc, etc.)
And anyone who works in the sort of field where there's a right answer and all others are incorrect runs into problems when their starting assumptions are wrong. GIGO.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The obvious point: Terrorists need people with money and people with the skills to make bombs.
Not much room for English or Journalism majors at the Al Quedia training camp.
The communication skills from those disciplines are useful, but the Islamic terrorists already have the SUV/Saudi Arabian funded clerics taking care of brain washing and recruitment.
Hey, can you think of any recruiter in any field and any country who isn't out to snag the best and the brightest?
Wouldn't it be recruiting malpractice so not do so?
I am a software engineer by trade. Note, I do not call myself a programmer, as that has an entirely different tone to it.
I can see where recruiting young engineers would be best. When I was 20, I was a sharp network engineer (again engineer) working on integrating a section of the Exxon and Mobil servers when they merged. At that time I was also studying several translations of the christian bible trying to find meaning in life.
I can see how someone with an analytical mind, logical training, and a sort of philosophical interest could be of use to nearly any cause.
Quite a few years later I am married, have a good life, and gave up the network bit for my hobby (coding). I am back in college, aiming for a degree that matters to me and now am much less prone to theological stints. Wisdom comes with age.
If you catch the young engineer while he's figuring out the world, yeah, he may just sign on for [random cause].
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 threw scientists in there, perhaps hastily, because in my mind they are not "apples and oranges" to engineers. Quite the reverse, I see them as different degrees of the same thing (un-intentional pun). Both have to be logical, methodical, mathematical. You will find both doing experiments on things to find out what really goes on. Perhaps the engineer is not about to do original research or come up with new mathematical models but they overlap a lot. Being from the UK I have no experience of creationists. Never met one as far as I know, engineer or otherwise. Likewise I haven't met many engineers who waste a lot of their breath harping on about economics or politics. Could it be, given what you say and guessing that you are from the States, that the culture of engineers is different there? Like so many other cultural differences. And could it be that the culture of Islamic or whoever engineers is different again? Could be dangerous to generalize in that way.
I would not disagree if someone called me an engineer. I have no desire to blow things up. However, having read about a bomb plot, most engineers would wonder how they might have tackled the problem, and whether they might have done it. This is not the same as having the will to do the dirty deed, but it is a start. If there is enough of a trend for engineers to be targeted for indoctrination, then that might be enough in itself. However, let us supposed there is something real there. Suppose you have fundamentalist leanings, and the talent to follow a scientific discipline. What are you likely to study at University?
A mathematician might work out how to get past the searches, and how to get a bomb onto a plane. However, having determined that it is possible, I don't really see them actually doing it: the proof that it is possible might be satisfying in itself.
Good physics often requires serious thinking outside the box. Doesn't really sit with maniacal orthodoxy. Same, I guess for most pure and applied sciences.
People who do medicine often have the fanatical mindset, but it is fanatically pro-life rather than the other way.
People who drop out of science in the UK may go into IP or law, or something completely different. In these cases, they have decided not to use their main talents. This suggests they have some balance between what they are called to do, and what they want to do with their life.
So, if you are still here, then you are a part of the population that may or may not have a pro-bombing mindset. This does not mean you are a bomber, but merely part of a group that may have an above-average portion with a pro-bombing mindset because these people do not feel attracted to the other disciplines. If you are an engineer, you will want to do something with your talents. This may be to build something. However, you do not have the same 'pro-structure' belief you find in medicine. Architects are often keen to clear sites of buildings that they disagree with. The various architects who worked on the new Wembley Stadium could agree on nothing other than the famous Wembley Towers had to be demolished. A large building project may claim tens of lives, and yet people must continue to design, knowing that their project will probably kill.
Not proved. But I can think it might work.
Engineering is a means for people who feel insecure to gain power. Personality flaws are not a real obstacle to getting a degree. I used to tutor premeds in physics and would find some pretty obsessive people, people who did not care at all about the subject, found no joy in learning it, but who covered it to get to their medical goal. But the funny thing was that I met engineering students who had just the same attitude. But physics is much more foundational to engineering that to medicine. What these students seemed most interested in were the sports cars that came along with their coop programs. I'm pretty sure that premeds who did not like medicine itself would not make it through their program while engineering students who did not like engineering would.
My experience with people who claim to be nuclear engineers here on slashdot is that they are obsessive to the point of being completely blind to reality. More than once I've said that I hoped the commenter had nothing to do with the running of a nuclear power plant because they were plainly security risks. That is on slashdot. Who know who those people really were. But there is at least an association between threats of violence and claims to be engineers. Insecure personalities could explain that association.
I've also worked with mechanical and electrical engineers who are really great people. Engineering is not a ticket to personality disorder, it just seems to attract and pass through some of that sort.
Or maybe it's that the liberal arts majors are already getting plenty of action, while for the average engineering student, the prospect of 72 virgins is pretty compelling?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Never blow yourself up!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
The most successful "terrorist" revolt in history was instigated by the middle and professional classes in the 13 colonies of the US. These are the classes that suffer the most under repressive regimes but they also have more resources (money, education) available to them to successfully react. So I would expect to see the professional classes (engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers) over-represented in an established revolutionary organization (as opposed to one-off wackos). The question that comes out of this, though, is why is the anger directed at the US, rather than at the local government that is doing the repressing? Are the local governments being seen as sock-puppets for the US as the US drains the middle east of oil?
This seems more plausible now that I've RTFA and seen that they address the recruiting issue in the article.
We are the 198 proof..
When we're done studying, we don't have to bother with girls in order to relax. We can just curl up with a good book and a bottle or two of good beer. Smart engineers know that girls are like cats: you don't have to go after them, eventually one will simply insinuate herself into your life. If you're lucky, you won't want to get rid of her by the time you realize what she's done.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I've met quite a few religious engineers. Engineering school doesn't teach evolution or anything that directly conflicts with the bible. You can't test for the existence of god, so any argument for or against religion is pointless. Some may see Pascal's wager as logical, others won't.
People with a degree and taste of freedom available in the Western countries find themselves locked out of every possibility to develop themselves in countries in the Middle-East like Saudi-Arabia, Egypt, etc. etc. if they are not part of the ruling few. If they blame only their own government they flee to the West. If they believe there is a conspiracy between the local rulers at home and the infidels that rule the West they go support violent groups like Al-Qaida that fight the West and their own governments. People without a degree tend to live happy within the constraints of dictatorships. The only long term strategy that can make an end to the wars between countries in the Middle East among themselves and against Western countries is a shift of power from those who have access to the natural resources to those that participate in the workforce. The problem however is that the Industrial Revolution does not take place in those parts of the world where there are abundant natural resources. That has to do with policies set by those who control the access to the resources who do not want changes in the economic order.
Colleges worldwide are infested with left-wing socialist professors. No surprise that their graduates are at least open to the suggestion that these views deserve their support and adoption.
You are saying that left-wing socialist professors support terrorism? Specifically left-wing socialist engineering professors? I presume you can warrant this assertion.
Obviously, they do it for the chicks.....
I studied Arabic in the Army's immersion program and I can tell you that most Arab males claim to be engineers (even if they aren't). It's one of the highest achievements in their culture. Ana Muhandis (I'm an engineer) is a common phrase and one of the first you learn.
I'm an engineer. (Civil PE, with a BS in Mechanical Engineering). I think the primary reason that terrorists recruit from engineers is because so many of the security measures (in airports for example) are transparent to us. Many of the TSA's measures are for the purpose of making the general public feel safe. Not that that's a bad thing, because there is no such thing perfectly safe in reality. The only way air travel can be perfectly safe is for it not to exist.
Really it's like any other high paying job- I think if you get the Engineering degree you can participate in the 401k plan.
I remember what Engineering school was like. It wouldn't surprise me if there is more to this than just practical skills.
First of all, Skule was harrowing and lonely. Nobody else on campus hit the books harder than eng students and that already is a reason that, shall we say, our social skills aren't always top notch. On top of that there is the condition of apartness that comes from specializing in something that nobody else gets and that gets magnified by the disrespectful attitude towards the arts you find at eng school. We all know what that was like.
And there's more. At my school the eng faculties operated on an attrition basis, failing almost half the class each year. I understand that was financially motivated, the big year 1 and 2 classes bring in tuition that supports 3 and 4's. That creates a lot of people feeling the way you do when you blow out of college, a little bit lost.
And finally there is the engineering curriculum. It's not all that well rounded. It's always been my opinion that Engineering should be a 5 year degree with some social and poli sci, or have a pre-eng phase like medicine so people could get channeled away from it in an orderly fashion instead of getting dumped out on the street when they fail. Pre-eng would be a better general-purpose education for people that don't make it all the way through.
I just think the normal approach to eng education is almost guaranteed to create outsiders.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Engineer is juse a cultural push onj the type of degrees people want there children to have.
As has been widely documented, people with a Bachelours degree tent to believe in 'woo' more then people without one. People who move onto a masters degree tend to loose there belief in 'woo'.
And religous terrorist is nothing more then someone believing in Woo...and bombs.
When you culture pushes getting a degree as an Doctor, Lawyer, or Engineering, or be an effective outcast, people come up with ways to get through school even if they don't have the chops for it. Out of the three which one do you think is the easiest to cheat your way through?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course engineers make better terrorists. Generally, engineers are better at just about everything. I know this is an offense to liberal arts and under-grad business majors. While there is a definite sub-population of engineers with social deficiencies, most REAL LIFE engineers don't fit the stereotype. 25% of all MBA graduates have engineering backgrounds, and engineers dominate many MBA programs. You will find engineering graduates pursuing careers as lawyers, surgeons, investment bankers, Fortune 500 executives, heads of state, FBI agents, rock stars (yes, I said "rock stars"), and so on. The executives running the company where I work all started as engineers. Our sales and marketing team consists mostly of engineers as well, and they are definitely not the shy nerdy type. I even have friends from college who dropped out of our engineering program and excelled to the top of their class with business degrees. We're just better at what we do! I never met anyone who washed out from a liberal arts program and had to major in engineering as their second choice.
Engineering, at its root, is the practice of taking abstract reasoning into physical form. Nobody might have ever seen a certain kind of widget before, but if you know the right equations and do the math right you can make that widget and know what it will do. This leads to a tendency to take beliefs seriously and to apply them consistently that can be dangerous when mixed with the wrong kinds of beliefs.
People are good at wearing beliefs like clothing to impress others and not really acting on them. Christians might believe "Its good to give all your money to the poor" without actually believing that they should give all their money to the poor. We're taught one thing explicitly, but by watching how other people act we learn to do something else implicitly. Its non-trivial to learn to be an engineer and take explicit ideas seriously in your professional life while not doing so in your religious life, but we as a culture have generally learned how this is possible and Christian engineering students grow up with lots of good role models showing them how to compartmentalize their beliefs. Sometimes it doesn't work, though, and the student becomes Bible literalists.
Muslims studying engineering in other countries, however, don't have the advantage of role models in how to continue believing-but-not-believing and so its far easier than it would be in the West for someone to come along and persuade them that they have to take their religion seriously.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
With some of the mind bending math that engineers must study it is no wonder at all that they often get very, very weird. As a society we have not yet faced the fact that education is actually a cause of a certain type of brain damage. It is easily observable in college sophomores who display all manner of weird social behavior. Areas of the brain that have important functions are not in proper use simple because the brain is being ravaged by excessive concentration and focus.
If you get around people in the trades much you soon find that they think that all college graduates and students are weirdos who don't know their asses from their elbows.
At the outer limit we see idiot savants who lack basic survival skills and yet display tremendous genius. Albert Einstein lived on the verge of being like that.
Follow the linked article and you get to the Atta article on his ideas on urban development in Aleppo. What's interesting is that he saw Islamic and Christian culture in fundamental and irreconciliable conflict...and he may have been right. We live in a largely secular society and it's hard for us to fathom its religious underpinning but the basis for much of our Western culture and society are rooted in the simple Christian gospel messages of Jesus which recognize that all people should be loved, regardless of their race, sex, money, age, vulnerability, or power. So ...if Jesus was truly the divine Son of God, then the inevitable
result of the conflict is failure for the ideology of terror as a means
to perpetuate values which are counter to the Gospels of Jesus. Much of our
technology was developed to accomplish Christian-based objectives (labor-saving, health, nutrition, transportation, communication) and that
would become especially obvious to a student of that technology (such as
an engineer.)
The snipes at the liberal arts in this thread perfectly illustrate why engineers make excellent unthinking soldiers. If you're trained to think that all questions of value, philosophy, politics and ethics are merely the irrational quibbles of unintelligent people, then you'll never learn the subjects, or how to evaluate them critically. And if you believe that thinking about or engaging with politics is a waste of time, you will tend to uncritically accept that whatever prejudices you were raised on are "common sense," "the plain truth," or "God's revealed wisdom."
Why so many of the terrorists have engineering degrees
Why do so taxi drivers have a medical degree in their own country? Not all pieces of paper are created equal.
Yes because so many of the professors I had in my Chemical Engineering studies were left-wing socialists. They were also greenies, who really cared about where the tailings dam went.
And all the left wing socialists I've known support fundamentalist religion and having women be third class citizens,
Engineering education is very dogmatic. Unlike proper scientists, Engineers are trained to accept a certain subset of physics/chemistry/biology, and use that to build stuff. This is not exactly a bad thing -- this is the most efficient way to train people to build stuff. But Engineers seem to forget sometimes that their understanding of the world isn't "the way it is", but merely "my understanding and perception of the world".
Programmers are like this too, often to an even greater extent. I think this mainly stems from the "that last guy was an idiot because he didn't code this in the same way I would have" mentality. Programmers probably aren't as good of candidates for terrorism, though, since they're less knowledgable in the explosion/bioweapons area.
The surviving terrorists probably are engineers.
As much as Abdula the Terrorist cell leader wants to have an argument with some philosophy major prior to an OP, it could be that an engineer is just plain more useful to the cause with advanced science training.
Also, I am not sure what college everyone went to, however it has been my experience that many people from many parts of the world, if they make it to University will take one of the hardcore sciences. That is to say to eventually become a Doctor or say an Engineer of some sort (or their parents will be pissed!). I am guessing that those on the doctor path may have a predisposition to be against blowing people up, but that could just be me.
If you like to watch buildings burn, being a fireman is a good fit.
If you like watching towers fall, building them first is a good fit.
How many of you were kids who built towers only to knock them down?
Having read through their explanation of the sample of 404 "known terrorists" they derived their figures from, I have to say that they are clearly jumping to conclusions. . .
Here's the thing; If you are an engineering type, then chances are you are comfortable with information technology to a higher degree than others. --I've known a lot of different kinds of students and not all of them are computer savvy. Further, if you are an oil worker or a baker or an unemployed man whose house has been run over by a tractor and you have notions of social justice through violence, how much awareness of you are the secret services going to have versus an engineer with an internet connection? --You know, a guy whose Google search footprint and subsequent psychological profile screams, "Malcontent!" --Surveillance is easy when you don't have to leave the Homeland office to build your suspect list.
And a sample of 404 people, (nearly all taken from internet sources, I might add), for such a squishy study is, while interesting, hardly damning proof of anything. --I mean, just the definition, 'terrorist' is a bullshit one these days. Every time a military bomb wipes out a village, it is usually reported that most of the people killed were conveniently, "Terrorists". I had no idea the world had so many engineers! And frankly, based on everything I've read, (and I've read a truckload on this), I happen to believe that a lot of high-profile 'terrorism' is performed for false-flag purposes by mind-control patsies of one sort or another. Heck, the kid who set his pants on fire just a few days ago aboard an international flight, when you dig into that highly suspicious story, appears to have been in zombie-mode and to have had several handlers who put him on the flight, by-passing security.
I would be VERY cautious about taking a study like this one at face value. I mean, yes, engineers do tend to carry certain social characteristics, and as I've always said, they are one of the most powerful groups on the planet because they make everything work. They define reality. And as such, the military industrial complex has a vested interest in making damned sure all the Pavlovian programming has well and truly taken hold in that group, with regular inoculations, so that they are easily controlled. Top priority slaves, as it were, making slavery as a way of life possible.
Geeks have been punished and programmed and used by society their whole lives exactly because of their social traits. But that doesn't make them prone to becoming systematic killers. Who got blamed during that Columbine massacre? The misfits. But upon closer inspection, it turns out those trench coat kids were not your or my kind of misfit. They didn't hang out in the computer lab and their bombs didn't work. --When it comes to labeling a social group, I'd be more worried about those Tea Party people with their guns and down-home religion, conservative rage and neighborhood mili
based on the observations of religious and/or extremist groups in turkey, i can assure you the most fertile places they prefer are wherever there are few women. for whatever reason, women quite dampen extremism wherever they are. even in religious schools that allow females and males to study together, you cant find that many extremists. but, in schools or departments which have a very low percentage of females, i have came upon more extremists during my education life. actually, some of my family acquaintances also fell into such brainwashing, even though they were from thoroughly secular and modernist families.
as a result, religious and extremist circles try to separate females and males as much as possible, wherever they can pass their will.
Read radical news here
Most countries sponsor people to get engineering degrees aboard.
New Economic Perspectives
You don't see many English majors making predator drones because they don't know how.
As an ME, my first thought about the pants bomber was how wrong it was done. Who wants to blow up an arriving airplane? Get one all full of fuel for a long trip that will make a much bigger bang. If the operative (obviously NOT an engineer) managed to get a bomb onboard undetected he should deliver it to an accomplice departing from the same concourse who has already passed screening. He can then blow up a departing flight. And don't try to blow your dick off, press the device firmly over decking that covers fuel or control lines.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Engineers have physical problems to solve. They have a toolkit of methods to solve them with. (Religion is similar in that it provides a complete framework to think in.)
An engineer, when faced with a political problem may think that if people are shocked into realizing the errors in their ways, that a logical outcome will be the result.
For example it is logical to think thus: You bomb my people; therefore I shall bomb your people and you'll realize how evil it is to my bomb people. Problem -> solution -> resolution.
Well, those schooled in say, a social science know that this logic doesn't follow due to people being adept in avoiding any idea that does not buttress their belief system.
Ignoring the religious side of things, which I would think would simply be a product of culture, I think it's just the mental process that a true engineer has.
I often find myself instantly thinking of 10 ways to circumvent whatever stupid thing the news says the TSA is going to do next.
It's not that I'm a terrorist, obviously, or that I want to circumvent these measures. It's just how my mind works.
The consensus of Slashdot's editor opinions on religious subject matter has been made painstakingly clear for as long as I can remember. Combine that with the increased popularity of liberal viewpoints in the last 6ish years, the summary makes an excellent breeding ground for flamebait: The summary implies anyone with conservative religious views is likely to be weak minded enough to accept the murderous agenda of religious extremism.
What is interesting is none of these views are perpetrated in the linked article. So to pick apart the summary:
1. Religions condone killing for evangelical purposes: A broken, squeaky wheel called the 'overall majority' of Islamic clerics denounce terrorist activities.
2. All religious persona are conservative: There is something called the 'religious right': Katherine Sebelious is Catholic.
3. All terrorists are religiously motivated: Yes, but also (and more importantly) problem-motivated. Engineers solve problems: Getting bombs through airport security is an engineering challenge.
I could go on... I'll let more commentors contribute if they wish.
I think the most important point is #3, which was completely missed in the summary. Yes, the religious extremism has to be sown, but that can be accompblished via brainwashing. You cannot however, brainwash someone to be an engineer.
In the United States, almost 30% of the population has at a Bachelors degree or higher, and again that many have attended university but only have an associates degree or nothing...
Nowhere in the links provided is "almost 30%" a number. From the above wikipedia source, "The 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau found that 19.5 percent of the population had attended college but had no degree, 7.4 percent held an associate's degree, 17.1 percent held a bachelor's degree, and 9.9 percent held a graduate or professional degree." Even if you decide to sum bachelor's degrees and graduate or professional degrees (since it's entirely feasible that the Census Bureau considers the latter to be a subset of the former), you still come away with 27%. If the country had 300 million people as of 2006, you just overestimated by 9 million residents. And 23% (Arab states) versus 27% (US?) is a mere 4% difference.
I'm not entirely sure what the poster's point was in comparing somewhat inflated/rounded-up numbers of US college graduates with other global regions, and how that makes them dime-a-dozen or whatever, but the actual percentages sourced appear to be closer than they were editorialized to be, in any event.
...Ability to blindly swallow what religious authorities tell me? Uh oh. We're a "no-go" on that one, Houston.
Engineers not religious? They are more religious than anyone, it's just that the religion is engineering and they take a ton of convincing that engineers they consider to be "above" them are wrong even when the evidence is clear. Absolute obedience to authority comes naturally to an engineer because they spend so much time early on gathering facts from authority figures that over time they lose the ability to question what they are being told, they just accept it naturally.
I know because I'm one too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least not any that would get passed along to anyone who could do anything, if they maintain that list like the no fly one.
The "Insightful" parent's stats are not reflected in the link that he provided. Here's quoting directly from Wiki:
"The 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau found that 19.5 percent of the population had attended college but had no degree, 7.4 percent held an associate's degree, 17.1 percent held a bachelor's degree, and 9.9 percent held a graduate or professional degree."
Just another day in Paradise
Apparently few engineers are actually using their engineering skills in an engineering capacity, which would argue for something else going on. As the article notes, engineers are apparently more religious than their brethren in other majors.
Many a left-wing Progressive doesn't seem to realize that the Left is largely co-opted by what we right-wingers call terrorists.
You can warrant this statement too I presume? You wouldn't be making a bare assertion would you?
that actually stems from a common misunderstanding, that highly technical degrees require highly intelligent people, and these people being of such grand intelligence are above the influence of theistic absurdities like 72 virgins after blowing yourself to bits in the name of a supernatural being.
theism is the suspension of reason. my coworker has a masters in computer science, and takes his children to the creation science museum twice a year for pictures with the dinosaurs. can an engineering doctorate holding terrorist not be convinced to enact and achieve outlandish acts of brutality regardless of what logic and reason tell him? of course.
icecream truck driver or nuclear physicist, the end result is simple: if you can get someone to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Evidently, the "engineers" who plotted those attacks didn't think that maybe they should build a foolproof electronic detonator for their bomb
And just how do you walk through a metal detector with a "foolproof electronic detonator". Remember the constraints are that you have to fit all components on your person to walk through a metal detector AND pass a pat-down. You can't have anything in the carryon because that's too easily discovered.
The issue was not coming up with a "better" detonator, the issue was that he did not practice the technique for the approach they took.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In General, Krueger found, "terrorists tend to be drawn from well-educated, middle-class or high-income families." Despite a few exceptions
I don't believe it has anything to do with technology rather I buy what the book was pointing out that terrorism takes political motivation and College students tend to have plenty of strong and forming political opinions that the poor and uneducated just don't care about.
Accountants are the ones that "disdain ambiguity"
An Engineer thrives in ambiguity as it allows him/her more freedom to design a solution to the problem.
A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake
Why do so many terrorists have a complete failure to use their training or logic?
I would argue there was no failure to use logic in the most recent attack.
After all, the guy did not know his father had warned anyone, so he wasn't really concerned about getting on a plane - he had a valid U.S. Visa. There was no question he would get on, and thus no need to use any tricks to conceal identity. In fact this is why I don't really see Bruce's workaround for the need to present ID as much of a security flaw, because in practice few people even know they are on a list and so many people easily get on even if they are on such a list...
As for the bomb itself, well the device itself was actually pretty well thought out (he could have even had a pat-down without them finding anything), it's just that he apparently got something wrong in execution. You have to think he practiced beforehand, but the problem is as always, stuff in the field works differently and also how to you really practice doing something by hand that is meant to blow you up as quickly as possible? They probably practiced with some kind of remote activation technique that he messed up doing by hand.
People think todays security sucks and it does suck from the standpoint of the traveller but it has imposed enough constraints on being sure you get an item through security that even an engineer has a hard time getting a working device through.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One reason why many, not all, engineers are conservative:
1. Regardless of what they do, people believe they are doing the right thing
2. Engineers are people
3. Engineers want to believe they are doing the right thing
4. Engineers need jobs/money.
5. Most, not all, engineering jobs are associated with the military ( in the US )
6. Republicans do more business with companies that build military hardware
7. Republican policy/tendencies create more engineering jobs and money for engineers.
8. => People who like engineering tend to be republican.
In other words, people's views shift with who writes their paychecks.
If you're getting laid, you're much less likely to hate your fellow human beings and desire to blow them (and sometimes yourself) up.
What?
Imagine having to belive something on faith and work in a career based on facts and logic. Maybe that produces unbearable tension in some people, leading to total breakdown and insate activities.
Engineering on is own is tension filled, building sturdy bridges that are cheap, fast programs that don't use a lot of storage, and all the other contradictory requirments that must be meshed, questioned, implemented, or ignored. I suspect the pressure may be just too much for some people when you add cultural pressure to "just believe".
Oh great, now being a geek will get us on the airport list to have a free prostate exam.
Table-ized A.I.
"Terrorist organizations have long recognized that engineering departments are fertile ground for recruitment and have concentrated their efforts there." Liberal types love to speculate about how scary conservative religious people are. But the population of this site is both heavily skewed towards engineers and very liberal. The reason you see engineers as terrorists is because the terrorist organizations realize the value of engineering and recruit as many as they can.
This is not a self-referential sig.
If I'm me, then I'm not some guy who's memories and personality I don't have. If I'm some dead guy in a new body, I'm not me. The concept of reincarnation either requires an idea of 'self' that contradicts everything commonly meant by self, or it is a meaningless semantic exercise used to justify success by evil and the suffering of good.
If you need to redefine self to make it work, then why not be honest and say, (for instance) "Well, lady, your baby died because some old dead guy was evil, his soul needed punishing, and, well, your baby was him. And the guy that killed your baby, well, some guy in the future who has no memory of being a murderer is going to suffer for that!" Yeah, that's comforting.
I suppose for people who need to assign meaning to things, any meaning will do, no matter how meaningless it actually is.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I didn't know there was a place to go and research the "resumes" of Terrorists. Most Terrorists I see on CNN are either children with nothing left to lose, or someone throwing the Koran in other peoples face. There are the short stories of folks that make bombs, but these stories are in the Obituaries. I have yet to see any reference in the "Jobs", "Business", or "Homes" section of the L.A.Times advertising folks to get involved with someone's jihad. Now that I think about it, maybe if a Terrorist were to put their jihad request on CraigsList.com and then got spammed for male enhancement drugs; that would be funny.
...mind-control patsies of one sort or another...zombie mode...
What do you mean by this?
Seems like it is the right wing fundamentalists that are trying to attack the liberal 'free speech' societies. The left-wing socialist professors are the ones they are the most angry at.
Observation and experience.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
What?
Where do 'right wing fundamentalists' attack liberal 'free speech' societies?
Actually, start over. What is a liberal 'free speech' society?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm an engineer as well. I've always questioned authority and the status quo, and the more I learn about science and engineering, the more I question them. Maybe there's a generational gap or personality differences at work here, but very few of the engineers I know take anything for granted. We question everything, ESPECIALLY conventional wisdom.
Granted, it can be difficult to change our minds once they're made up, but that's because our opinions are based on facts and can only be changed with more facts.
The very essence of science and engineering is to question things. Progress can never be made if we always stick the old way of thinking/doing things. I've always felt that engineers and scientists that DON'T question things don't deserve their degrees and/or titles. (This is not meant to be directed at you and I hope you don't take it personally...)
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Your specific logic is just as bad as I described generically. You have no basis for assuming that a just-fertilized cell must immediately in some fashion be associated with a soul. You have no basis for assuming that numbers of souls are increasing. You have no basis for assuming that most biological organisms are (or need be) associated with souls. The evidence is that most biological organisms are mere robotic stimulus/response machines, too limited in capabilities to attract the interest of a soul. It is not human bodies that have free will; it is their souls. That's because the definition of "free will" requires Causality to be violate-able, and this does not appear to be a valid aspect of the purely physical universe. Therefore if free will exists in humans, it exists as a non-physical aspect of humans. (Note, overall, the preceding means that a sufficiently advanced inorganic robot might attract a soul, and thereby become as much a person as the average human or equivalently-intelligent alien. Xenophobes, you have been warned!) So, a loose soul need not be especially more interested in a just-fertilized human ovum than in an average bacterium. It might claim "dibs!" to other loose souls, due to knowledge of potential growth, but it has no reason to actually move into a human body before birth takes place --especially since birth might not take place; there are a lot of possible failure modes for that organism to escape. Not to mention it is only after birth (and perhaps not until months after birth), that a typical human body is developed enough to be useful for independent behavior. On the other hand, every human body is different in such details as the wiring of the neural cortex; it likely takes time for a just-incarnated soul to find and learn how to handle the "controls", so the sooner-incarnated, the better. Shortly-after-birth is a logical compromise. Finally, it is an open question, about just how many souls exist. The Universe is a big place. Multitudes of worlds could be inhabited by souls; logically (especially since nonphysical things don't have to worry about Einstein's Speed Limit), word would get around if some world was about to have a short waiting list for souls due to a population explosion like here on Earth --which, by the way, is known to be unsustainable in the long run, so the upcoming Malthusian Catastrophe will release about 99% of those souls, for finding available bodies elsewhere. Simple, logical.
Your sample has two traits: you know them, and they are engineers. How do you know which trait to attribute your observations to? Maybe the real correlation is not with their education, but their willingness to share some of their views with you.
They just really like trains over there!
You have no basis for assuming that a just-fertilized cell must immediately in some fashion be associated with a soul.
Read my post carefully. I did not propose any alternatives I was just pointing out that your beliefs (assuming that you are the same AC) are no more (or less) logically inconsistent than any other religion's. I was not proposing an alternative I was just pointing out that you are the proverbial kettle calling the pot black.
I hold two degrees in physics, but worked as an engineer and around engineers for thirty plus years. The following are generalities: 1) Engineers think they have all the answers, and are very impatient with those who do not, especially governments. If the government isn't doing it right, they have a better answer. No mind that governments are run by people. 2) Engineers know how to design and execute a terrorist plot, including bomb making. They can also think through how to do the most damage in an unexpected and effective way.
Why are so many Christian fundamentalists who claim to be scientists actually engineers? I don't think this is wholly coincidence.
Those with socioeconomic backgrounds that allowed them to be educated to that level (engineering degrees), also have the intellectual means to understand the "rhetoric of revolution". The logical arguments (right or wrong) of freedom, rights, oppression, etc.
A "typical" illiterate, though religiously-devout follower of (insert_toxic_fundamentalist_cult_here) can have a xenophobic mindset. I think that's probably a very natural, human element. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the different. But ignorant.
To embrace a complex philosophy that includes a 1000-year history of perceived oppression and mutual war of extermination, and a sophisticated conspiracy-theory involving some un-obvious interpretations of extra-scriptural prophecies, satan, the UN, imperialistic European "pagans" (Christians and what I've heard referred to as "Sephardic" Jews - Jews of European descent - whom they claim have no birthright to Palestine, and are therefore just European invaders under the pretense of a false claim to "divine-right") . . . I think you don't just take a starving orphan off the street and indoctrinate them to that.
All they've ever known is poverty and misery. They just don't have the perspective and breadth of experience to grasp an idea of a "global jihad" - or that "revolution" means something other than swapping oppressive dictators.
If someone's known at least a little bit of middle-class lifestyle, maybe studied at a university in a wealthier country, and then gets exposed to the massive suffering that they've allowed themselves to be blind to - and opens up to the empathy, it's a powerful driver to reinforce that rhetoric.
There was also the theory that bin Laden got the idea to specifically recruit from more educated middle-upper-class people, because he wants to use the decadent west's own products against them. As a sort of a political statement. A cocky move. But that would only apply to Al Qaeda terrorists.
I don't know if the competence argument washes, because although the Khobar Towers and 911 operations - technically, were spectacularly successful, (if you look at it purely from an analytical planning-and-execution standpoint) the "shoe-bomber" and the "jockstrap bomber" were both embarrassing failures. In fact - these spectacularly executed attacks used to be the hallmark and reputation of Al Qaeda. If nothing else, their "brand" has obviously been diluted by very low-quality product now. Likely, they've lost some irreplaceable expertise. I'd posit, also, that their operational secrecy forbids any kind of process improvement. So all the obvious arguments for recruiting "engineers" don't seem to have borne fruit.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
With apologies to future Hiro (or is it future Hiro of a now dead timeline?)
"other".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
While most day-to-day engineering is, as you say, a compromise between multiple priorities, I've been told by an IBM Research "Master Inventor" that really excellent engineering figures out a way to meet all the priorities without major compromise through some new insight (but such conceptual breakthroughs are rare).
Of course, a deeper issue is, what are our priorities, values, and assumptions, and how are we choosing them? :-)
I hope we go into future technological singularities with humane values at the front of our priorities, because otherwise, building things like military robots to enforce economic dogmas (usually linked to not letting people eat unless they work) is totally ironic.
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Why not just build robots to do the work instead? The major challenge of the 21st century is overcoming the irony of the tools of abundance being used to create artificial scarcity (because the people directing the engineers are still preoccupied with perceived scarcity). A parody I wrote related to that:
"A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/32e8fc32c89c96bd?hl=en
I think many engineers spend too much time indoors with too little sunlight. They should be taking vitamin D to help ward of disease and mental illness:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
An artist or a lawyer normally do not have the necessary skills to switch a lightbulb so how could they probably build a bomb. Furthermore lawyers are better in targeting and destroying companies or the legal system. Artists are good in making fun of western symbols and values e.g. ($ EUR YEN). Also engineering students are more likely to be treated badly by others. Hey they are geeks so they respond "good" when they are the target of jokes. They are more likely introvert. The same persons tend to shoot of peoples heads in high schools for the same reasons.
So if someone thinks he is mistreated by all other people he most likely does not have any sympathy left for those jerks. Therefore the best way to prevent terror recruitment is to integrate geeks and even dorks back in society. Also as societies: We should not treat other societies as inferior, which is also a source of terrorism.
Understood. I may not qualify as a certified engineer, after all my parents are married. I couldn't even be a practicing engineer, as they are married to each other.
That aside, there is such a thing as CMMI maturity level for an organization of software engineers. Look into it. You'll see that being a software engineer by trade, and not just random corporate title, is a bit more than printing up some business cards.
For example, you wrote: "as a reincarnationist you believe that "this purely physical process" causes a pre-existing soul to be placed into the body" --that is FALSE.....What a just-fertilized ovum is, nor more and no less, is the equivalent of a "Potentially Available For Occupancy"
What is the huge significance to the time delay between birth and "occupancy"? Frankly I see no logical difference whatsoever to simply saying well the soul is created sometime later as well. Hence I take this as confirming my original statement, thank you.
Have you ever considered the possibility that some (not all) still-births are the result of NO soul deciding to claim that body?
No, I consider them the result of either birth defects or trauma inside the womb (such as strangulation by the umbilical cord). Of course I could also argue that in these cases no soul was created for them as well. Again I fail to see how your philosophy is in any way whatsoever more logical than those you deride.
All the illogic you perceived, regarding my philosophy, derived straightly from your own ridiculous assumptions about it.
No I derived them from the incredible similarity to the beliefs that you were deriding as illogical. In fact these exchanges show that, not only do you have very similar beliefs but that you have the same narrowminded-ness and inability to admit that you might, just possibly, be wrong that leads to religious conflicts. In addition your philosophy seems to be dreaming up mystical explanations for events that we actually have scientific explanations for...not a good sign if you are trying to argue logical consistency.
Personally I have no problem with you believing what you want - just don't start trying to claim that somehow you have a vastly superior, logically consistent belief and then get annoyed when someone points out your hypocrisy.
http://miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net/2008/02/18/enginneers-vs-sociologists/
I think he's utterly wrong and just acting like a jerk Randian, but I have noticed that the politics of pity defines the modern Left (very, very, very unfortunately). This leaves left-wing professors (including self-proclaimed "socialists") too shy to criticize destructive, anti-progress, nihilistic philosophies like Islamism as long as they can ground themselves in some cliche like "liberating the oppressed". It becomes easier to recruit from such classes because the professors would rather behave "tolerantly" than take a moral stand.
You've obviously got lots of experience and observation under your belt. And, you're obviously 100% right. I've convinced myself that terrorism is a left-wing thing, because try as hard as I can, I just can't find any examples of right-wing terrorism!
After a few months of dealing with clients and management, I think most engineers feel like blowing something up... ;)
The fact that they were "engineers" is not surprising. Look throughout history at the people who may have gotten engineering degrees, if such things had existed then:
* Thomas Jefferson (who was something like a surveyor's assistant, and a botanist of sorts)
* Michelangelo (who was a tinkerer and inventor, making new things)
* Edison (of the lightbulb)
* Ford (of the automobile, was known as a self-taught watch repairman as a youth, and once even held the title 'engineer')
Problem is, in today's society, an "engineer" is a really wide definition. If you're getting a useful 4-year technical degree, it's an engineering degree or a technology degree. Getting a "civil engineering" or "mechanical engineering" degree would be the most likely means to gainful employment, regardless of where you live.
And in reality, many men are well suited for the role of "engineer". They're tinkerers, problem solvers, and fixers. If a man is generally competent, he's more likely to make a decent engineer - and by association, is more likely to go into that field. ...
As for the implications of the article, I am keenly aware of the disturbing social implications resulting from widespread dispersal of this "study". I can easily see security theater like the TSA moving to profile against, say, "religious technical people", making sure to adjust their procedure to not "unjustly discriminate against Islamic engineers with one-way tickets and no luggage.
The only thing this study really tells me is that men who are of a regimented mindset and/or an engineering background are more likely to become successful terrorists when coming from an Islamic culture. To read anything more into that is foolish, but we should at least heed that correlation.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Except, most high-visibility terrorists come from rich upbringings, and good education paid for by their parents. Basically, they're the Islamic world's version of the spoiled hippie terrorist from the 1970s and 1980s. They've been given it all but fight against it - and their emotionally distant parents - in what way their culture has taught them.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Hiding sharpies in a plane requires mad Engineering skillz....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You're not claiming that I ignore, condone, or support any of those people or their actions, are you?
More to the point, why is is important to answer allegations of left-wing actions with counterbalancing right-wing actions?
And more importantly, my point that the left is largely co-opted by terrorists, etc. is that even those terrorists should perhaps be collectively labeled as 'right-wing'. Since 'right-wing' generally is used to describe Conservative, religious views, Islamic terrorists certainly fulfill one of those criteria.
But let's be clear here. No one wants to think they are wrong about anything, me included.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
ok so you are a troll but assuming you know what free speech is , and you speak english
liberal:
–adjective
1. favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.
2. (often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.
3. of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism.
4. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
5. favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
6. of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.
8. open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
9. characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.
10. given freely or abundantly; generous: a liberal donation.
11. not strict or rigorous; free; not literal: a liberal interpretation of a rule.
12. of, pertaining to, or based on the liberal arts.
13. of, pertaining to, or befitting a freeman.
–noun
14. a person of liberal principles or views, esp. in politics or religion.
15. (often initial capital letter) a member of a liberal party in politics, esp. of the Liberal party in Great Britain.
Origin:
1325–75; ME L lberlis of freedom, befitting the free, equiv. to lber free + -lis -al 1
Related forms:
liberally, adverb
liberalness, noun
Synonyms:
1. progressive. 7. broad-minded, unprejudiced. 9. beneficent, charitable, openhanded, munificent, unstinting, lavish. See generous. 10. See ample.
Antonyms:
1. reactionary. 8. intolerant. 9, 10. niggardly.
broad: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a liberal newspaper"; "tolerant ... ... ... ...
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
having political or social views favoring reform and progress
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
big: given or giving freely; "was a big tipper"; "the bounteous goodness of God"; "bountiful compliments"; "a freehanded host"; "a handsome allowance"; "Saturday's child is loving and giving"; "a liberal backer of the arts"; "a munificent gift"; "her fond and openhanded grandfather"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and self-regulating markets
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
free: not literal; "a loose interpretation of what she had been told"; "a free translation of the poem"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophies that considers individual liberty and equality to be the most important political goals.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_(politics)
The Liberal magazine is a quarterly literary and political publication "devoted to promoting liberalism around the world".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberal
The Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the mid 19th century until the rise of the Labour Party in the 1920s
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_(UK)
One with liberal views, supporting individual liberty (see Wikipedia on Liberalism for a description of the various and diverging trends of
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liberal
Of or relating to the Liberal party, its membership, or its platform, policy, or viewp
If I look at the mindset of an engineer, we see that they are very oriented to analysis and problem solving and have not studied any of the humanity subjects. For the most part they lack people skills, and therefore, cannot relate to happiness, sadness or tolerance for errors. Therefore, when faced with what they are convinced is less then perfection, (human design), they are more ready to give their life to correct the situation. I also believe that these "brainwashed" individuals are not successful in life or marriage. I don't see a man with 4 kids committing suicide unless their is dispair in the individuals life.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Engineering = time consuming + Lack of women = pent up sexual frustration. Religion = relief of such frustration. Before you know it, your blowing up a plane.
Rapper's have their bling-bling made out of platinum. My necklace is made of rhodium.
... on the customer support desk would make anyone want to blow something up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Note that if a soul can exist without a body after death, then it can exist without a body any other time, too.
Why? The genetic information of a butterfly lies within a caterpillar and yet a butterfly cannot exist without being a caterpillar first. So there is no logical reason that what you say has to be true - it might be the way the universe works but there is no reason to suggest that it MUST be the way things work.
Why should it have to be associated with a body before birth?
Perhaps that is the way that things work? There is no scientific or logical argument that you can make for or against this because there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a soul. If you believe that we do have a soul then it is just as consistent to argue that it is created at birth as it is to argue your position. Nothing in any of your posts has provided any support that your position is inherently more logical or consistent than that of more established religions. You have to remember that just because you believe a thing it does not make it right.
I understand that this is a belief that you hold dear and I have no problem with that. Just don't criticise others for having different beliefs that yours which are no more, or less logical that your own.