/. - Engineers have a Terrorist Mindset?

[Pavan Dave]

Link to Slashdot Article.

Originally Posted by /.

"Do engineers have a way of looking at the world not all that different from terrorists? According to an article in the EE Times, they do. The story cites 'Engineers of Jihad,' a paper (pdf download) by two Oxford University sociologists, who found that graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements. The paper also found that engineers are 'over-represented' among graduates who gravitate to violent groups. Authors Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog chalk this all up to what they call the 'engineering mindset,' which they define as 'a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.' Is this just pop psychology masquerading as science?"

Interesting article. Enjoy!

[dlavery]

Great. Just what we need. DHS showing up at all the regional competitions.



-dave



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[Graham Donaldson]

Call me naive, but DHS? What's that?

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by robotcanuck1676

Call me naive, but DHS? What's that?

Department of Homeland Security

[Zyik]

I don't know... I don't think many terrorists practice Gracious Professionalism. Should only take them a couple of regionals to figure that out. At least, I hope they can figure that out...

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Zyik

I don't know... I don't think many terrorists practice Gracious Professionalism. Should only take them a couple of regionals to figure that out. At least, I hope they can figure that out...

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

[Zyik]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

I don't think you can, or at least I can't think of how. The "they" I was talking about was the DHS.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

The same way you Graciously Accept

[GaryVoshol]

I think the cause and effect is backwards here. More likely terrorist organizations covet engineers who can help their causes through the diabolical and evil use of technology.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

I think the cause and effect is backwards here. More likely terrorist organizations covet engineers who can help their causes through the diabolical and evil use of technology.

I agree. If I were a terrorist organization, I would recruit three types of college grads: chemists, engineers, and communications majors. Engineers can design things and figure out potential failure modes; if your goal is to cause terror, what would advance your cause better than destroying something that people think of as strong and undestroyable? Chemists can obviously make explosives/chemical weapons and communications types know how to get your message out and magnify the terror caused by their actions. So, I think what the terrorists need is scientists and engineers; thus, they recruit them. The lack of communications types and the presence of doctors puzzles me though.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

I agree. If I were a terrorist organization, I would recruit three types of college grads: chemists, engineers, and communications majors. Engineers can design things and figure out potential failure modes; if your goal is to cause terror, what would advance your cause better than destroying something that people think of as strong and undestroyable? Chemists can obviously make explosives/chemical weapons and communications types know how to get your message out and magnify the terror caused by their actions. So, I think what the terrorists need is scientists and engineers; thus, they recruit them. The lack of communications types and the presence of doctors puzzles me though.

Somoneone's studied the chaos theory of terrorism..
Anywho, I agree with you 100%.

As an example, if you were the head of a Terrorist organization (just pretend you're Doctor Evil for a moment) would you hire a person with a degree in General Studies who can flip burgers, or would you recruit the top sientists of the world (however you had to) into your organization.

Look at every movie dealing with terrorism ever made. The lead Terrorist just has a huge ego, but (most of the time) no knowledge of what to actually do with the technology they want to use to overthrow the nation, world, planet, univers.. (whatever it may be).

Engineers don't have a terrorist mindset per-say, but in a terrorist organization, I would expect at least 50% of that organization to be made up of some pretty darn smart people to come up with these brilliant (albeit destructive) objects seen across the world to create chaos.
(Cell phone bombs, mines, RF remote bombs, etc...)

And going back to the hollywood representation of the subject at hand, would you want (a person like the character of) McGyver on your side if you were the head of a terrorist organization (who comes with a huge engineering background), or the average Joe who knows how to operate a grill at McDonalds?

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously (and) Professionally blow up a building?

It's called the R&D department. Companies do destructive testing all the time to make products better.
Of course, on the flipside is the ways to make things better by an accident (or an act of terrorism) such as the sinking of the Titanic which changed safety regulations on passenger ships drastically since then for the better, or terrorism examples (9/11, Oklahoma City, etc...) which has brought us the attention of how to act in a situation like that to keep ourselves as safe as possible.
That's obviously not the best way to learn (accidents, or acts of terrorism) but to say absolutely no good comes from them is false. The percentage is very low, and the bad outweighs the good in the minds of all those who are involved in the bad, but (overall as a human entity living on this planet) we (hopefully) learn from everything that goes wrong in this world (and beyond for those NASA folks).

[JaneYoung]

But isn't one way to look at this - that a terrorist mindset would follow the thinking process of an engineer?

Not the other way.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

Like this!

Joking aside, I have no idea why there is any correlation between degree and terrorism.

[4throck]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

Call and warn people beforehand, Weathermen style? Blow it up in such a way that it doesn't damage other buildings?

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

How do you Graciously Professionally blow up a building?

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/smash-lab/smash-lab.html