/. - Engineers have a Terrorist Mindset?

[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.

[Molten]

I told a friend of mine and he said it was an insult. I just saw it as entertainment. It is just a joke. Whether the writers intend it to be or not, it is a joke and nothing more.

[MiniNerd24]

I don't know anything about blowing up buildings but I'm wondering "How many of you have made ridiculous weapons out of stuff?" We made/make a pneumatic cannon out of the 120 psi cannisters the escape(dump) valve ducttaped to an 8ft. piece of PVC and fire it annually. (This is sooo fast )

[Tytus Gerrish]

I must admit. Most of my creations are distructive in nature. and i have violent tendencies when it comes to usigng these devices. i also notice that im very agressive when i have a machine at my comand Be it a Potato gun, Car ,18v drill, hammer, acetylene torch, or a robot like SwampThing. i think i would be a good asset to a terrorist regime.

[JaneYoung]

Is there a value for life and a respect/tolerance for other belief systems when developing creations that are destructive in nature?

[4throck]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Is there a value for life and a respect/tolerance for other belief systems when developing creations that are destructive in nature?

Not that are apparent through FIRST. Maybe it will turn out that you need all of that humanities stuff that you though were pointless in the first place.

[petek]

Originally Posted by Molten

I told a friend of mine and he said it was an insult. I just saw it as entertainment. It is just a joke. Whether the writers intend it to be or not, it is a joke and nothing more.

My first instinct was to treat it as a joke or misguided academic pursuit. However, after reading the paper, I have to say the authors raise some interesting points. I don't quite buy in to some of their methodology and as they point out, there is not sufficient hard data to draw absolute conclusions, but in my experience, a lot of what they say about engineers' political, religious and social leanings rings true. In any case, the subject of the paper is anything but a joke and the authors seem to have treated it with enough rigor that it bears thought, even if you don't agree with their conclusions.

[1086wulf]

Maybe its not that engineers have a terrorist mindset but that terrorists get engineering degrees so they can blow stuff up but i doubt you will become a terroist just because you're smart and have an engineering degree. and then there's civil engineers and people like them. i doubt that they would know how to make a bomb so its doubtful they are terrorists, very good ones at least. plus lots of terrorists are just random people from all parts of life that just have some beef with government or something.