Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists?
March 23, 2016 6:07 AM Subscribe
Why do so many terrorists have an engineering background? Is there something about the way engineering students are taught to think? Or are people who prefer clearly solvable problems drawn to engineering? Scholars in a variety of disciplines are trying to understand what makes people turn to terrorism. An anthropologist argues that universities and governments make it difficult to study the socio-cultural backgrounds of terrorists because of human subjects research policies. Nevertheless, since 9/11 a growing number of social scientists are addressing the issue. These are just a few examples.
Came for Scott Atran and was not disappointed. The man has guts and a serious drive for the truth.
Previous on the blue about Atran:
Talking to the Enemy
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:17 AM on March 23, 2016
Previous on the blue about Atran:
Talking to the Enemy
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:17 AM on March 23, 2016
Engineer here! (Software, though, so maybe I only get like 60% credit) There's a particular type of pedantry among many of my colleagues, which I also saw in classmates in undergrad. You don't have to scratch very deep for it to change abruptly from pedantry to irrational anger, which appears to stem from a combination of superiority complex and crippling insecurity that somehow we're Doing It Wrong. It bubbles up in contentious discussions about stupid things (like open source projects, or vi-emacs wars), but I can 100% see how that same feeling could turn into religious extremism if the cultural background of the afflicted person happened to emphasize a particular type of theology rather than the good old fashioned Protestant work ethic and the associated American neuroses.
Anyway, I'm off to read the articles--will weigh in more after reading the actual studies.
posted by Mayor West at 6:21 AM on March 23, 2016 [73 favorites]
Anyway, I'm off to read the articles--will weigh in more after reading the actual studies.
posted by Mayor West at 6:21 AM on March 23, 2016 [73 favorites]
The metal in their ring is causing an undocumented psychological effect.
posted by fairmettle at 6:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 6:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
One thing I wonder about: in the other thread, someone was pointing out that research (as well as common sense) suggests that young people are often radicalized when they feel like they have no economic future. If there's one thing I know about engineering majors, it's that they are super focused on being employable - it's not just a personality type or a love of engineering, it's a practical choice for people who worry about being poor and unemployed. I also know a lot of international student engineering types with similar practical concerns. This makes me wonder if economic hard times would be more destabilizing and depressing for engineering majors precisely because they're already people who are hyper-worried about it.
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [50 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [50 favorites]
Hmm. From the Chronicle article:
The gap between expectations and opportunities can come to feel galling, perhaps even humiliating. Hell hath no fury like a frustrated elite.
This jives with similar trends in western society: the same kind of entitlement complex that drives religious extremism may well explain why the Internet is full of GG'ers sending SWAT teams to the houses of feminists.
posted by Mayor West at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [31 favorites]
The gap between expectations and opportunities can come to feel galling, perhaps even humiliating. Hell hath no fury like a frustrated elite.
This jives with similar trends in western society: the same kind of entitlement complex that drives religious extremism may well explain why the Internet is full of GG'ers sending SWAT teams to the houses of feminists.
posted by Mayor West at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [31 favorites]
In that "previously" thread, from 2011:
So I should sell my Caliphate 2015 Championship hat?
posted by jsavimbi at 4:32 PM on March 23, 2011
[+] [!]
Ouch.
posted by ostro at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
So I should sell my Caliphate 2015 Championship hat?
posted by jsavimbi at 4:32 PM on March 23, 2011
[+] [!]
Ouch.
posted by ostro at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don’t know the origin, but it was always a truism amongst my Christian friends at university that the dogmatic evangelicals who had trouble with the idea that bible stories could be metaphorical and have multiple interpretations tended to be the engineers.
Total speculation: arts students get introduced very early on (certainly it’s expected in the 16-18 year old level of education in the UK) that sources are not reliable and need to be evaluated in the wider context from which they originate. Extending this line of thinking to religious texts is straightforward & something that would come naturally to students of History or English. Engineers on the other hand have a very different kind of education - taking axioms and methods handed down to them by reliable authority figures and applying them to solve the problem at hand.
Whether people who are more comfortable with being told what to do gravitate to subjects like engineering or whether engineering encourages this kind of thinking & therefore creates individuals who are more susceptible to being sucked into authoritarian religious organisations is then an open question. Perhaps it’s a little of both?
More wild speculation: why engineers and not physicists? Physicists are exposed from early on to the limits of our knowledge of reality & the vital importance of experimental evidence to confirm or disprove theoretical ideas: much physics is taught via the understanding of crucial experiments that showed us how reality behaves. Does this background of scientific rigour inoculate them against blind belief in the pronouncements of religious authority figures? What about mathematicians? Are they similarly inoculated by the exploratory nature of mathematical research? Inquiring minds would love to know!
posted by pharm at 6:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [44 favorites]
Total speculation: arts students get introduced very early on (certainly it’s expected in the 16-18 year old level of education in the UK) that sources are not reliable and need to be evaluated in the wider context from which they originate. Extending this line of thinking to religious texts is straightforward & something that would come naturally to students of History or English. Engineers on the other hand have a very different kind of education - taking axioms and methods handed down to them by reliable authority figures and applying them to solve the problem at hand.
Whether people who are more comfortable with being told what to do gravitate to subjects like engineering or whether engineering encourages this kind of thinking & therefore creates individuals who are more susceptible to being sucked into authoritarian religious organisations is then an open question. Perhaps it’s a little of both?
More wild speculation: why engineers and not physicists? Physicists are exposed from early on to the limits of our knowledge of reality & the vital importance of experimental evidence to confirm or disprove theoretical ideas: much physics is taught via the understanding of crucial experiments that showed us how reality behaves. Does this background of scientific rigour inoculate them against blind belief in the pronouncements of religious authority figures? What about mathematicians? Are they similarly inoculated by the exploratory nature of mathematical research? Inquiring minds would love to know!
posted by pharm at 6:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [44 favorites]
"I think he's going to get most of the techies," Glen said finally. "Don't ask me why; it's just a hunch. Except that tech people like to work in an atmosphere of tight discipline and linear goals, for the most part. They like it when the trains run on time. What we've got here in Boulder right now is mass confusion, everyone bopping along and doing his own thing. . . and we've got to do something about what my students would have called 'getting our shit together.' But that other fellow. . . I'll bet he's got the trains running on time and all his ducks in a row. And techies are just as human as the rest of us; they'll go where they're wanted the most. I've a suspicion that our Adversary wants as many as he can get. Fuck the farmers, he'd just as soon have a few men who can dust off those Idaho missile silos and get them operational again. Ditto tanks and helicopters and maybe a B-52 bomber or two just for chuckles."
--Stephen King, The Stand
posted by valkane at 6:40 AM on March 23, 2016 [48 favorites]
--Stephen King, The Stand
posted by valkane at 6:40 AM on March 23, 2016 [48 favorites]
I think this is clearly connected with so-called "engineers disease" - ie when engineering students attempt to wade into highly contested political and sociological debates with a simplistic technological faux-solution.
Its not lack of economic prospects - its the doctrine of a totally instrumental rationality that comes along with most engineering problems. Only the means is an object of study in engineering.
Is it not just the contemporary manifestation of the problem raised in Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation", or Adorno and Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and "Eclipse of Reason". The total separation in Engineering of Means and Ends results in the possibility of such "banal evil"?
posted by mary8nne at 6:41 AM on March 23, 2016 [18 favorites]
Its not lack of economic prospects - its the doctrine of a totally instrumental rationality that comes along with most engineering problems. Only the means is an object of study in engineering.
Is it not just the contemporary manifestation of the problem raised in Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation", or Adorno and Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and "Eclipse of Reason". The total separation in Engineering of Means and Ends results in the possibility of such "banal evil"?
posted by mary8nne at 6:41 AM on March 23, 2016 [18 favorites]
Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists? Is there something about the way engineering students are taught to think?
Well, it's certainly not like engineering is going to have any effect on a terrorist's character or values. Engineering isn't concerned with questioning that. You want to see someone question their values and beliefs? Throw them into history courses that focus on the different faiths and cultures that have existed through history, and that critically examine how these faiths came about and how and why they've changed over time. Throw them into philosophy courses where their particular beliefs are challenged, and which have to be defended against and made coherent.
[Which is to say, I don't think there's anything relevant about the relation between engineering and terrorism.]
posted by Dalby at 6:44 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Well, it's certainly not like engineering is going to have any effect on a terrorist's character or values. Engineering isn't concerned with questioning that. You want to see someone question their values and beliefs? Throw them into history courses that focus on the different faiths and cultures that have existed through history, and that critically examine how these faiths came about and how and why they've changed over time. Throw them into philosophy courses where their particular beliefs are challenged, and which have to be defended against and made coherent.
[Which is to say, I don't think there's anything relevant about the relation between engineering and terrorism.]
posted by Dalby at 6:44 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Well I don't know about all this, but I'll tell you what I think is probably going on: [a bunch of conjecture and speculation specifically addressed by the article in the OP].
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:45 AM on March 23, 2016 [44 favorites]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:45 AM on March 23, 2016 [44 favorites]
If we're talking about Arabs and South Asians here I'm not sure there's statistical significance -- engineering is the default educational program for smart people from those regions. A bright young Pakistani kid isn't likely going to be a history major no matter what his political biases.
posted by MattD at 6:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [37 favorites]
posted by MattD at 6:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [37 favorites]
Another small victory for the humanities. We'll take what we can get at this point.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:51 AM on March 23, 2016 [26 favorites]
posted by kevinbelt at 6:51 AM on March 23, 2016 [26 favorites]
It's simple. In their "job description" is construction of some devices (unfortunately, mainly for killing other people) so if they want to be successful, they need technical background.
I'll finish the articles in a minute, but after reading the first two paragraphs at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I said to my partner, "This is just prima facie a stupid argument. You know what happens when English majors want to be terrorists? Nothing! Because they don't know how to build bombs!"
posted by not that girl at 6:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [27 favorites]
I'll finish the articles in a minute, but after reading the first two paragraphs at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I said to my partner, "This is just prima facie a stupid argument. You know what happens when English majors want to be terrorists? Nothing! Because they don't know how to build bombs!"
posted by not that girl at 6:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [27 favorites]
Engineering classes tend to be pretty male dominated, lots of people meet their partners a college, engineers meet less women compared to say drama, music, politics, social sciences etc, then end up lonesome dudes which when combined with outsider status in a foreign country plus a religiosity that tells them the world itself is wrong and they're not weirdos leads to bad things. This is just my armchair psychology. By the same thinking we've probably been saved from countless attacks due to World of Warcraft giving people a sense of belonging.
posted by Damienmce at 6:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Damienmce at 6:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
Also, these terrorist attacks are ultimately only a minor annoyance, but there are real ethical issues that trace to the engineering mindset and its interaction with capitalism, including surveillance capitalism.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:59 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 6:59 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Seriously folks - if you have a theory that you think explains this correlation, the researchers probably addressed it. From the article: "The vast majority of the engineers involved in 228 plots acted as group founders or leaders; just 15 percent of them made the bombs."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:02 AM on March 23, 2016 [37 favorites]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:02 AM on March 23, 2016 [37 favorites]
If we're talking about Arabs and South Asians here I'm not sure there's statistical significance -- engineering is the default educational program for smart people from those regions. A bright young Pakistani kid isn't likely going to be a history major no matter what his political biases.They specifically say that engineers are overrepresented relative to their share of the overall college-educated population. Medical students are also overrepresented, but not by nearly as much. It would be interesting to me to see whether they're looking at the population as a whole or at the population that demographically resembles the terrorists, but I'm assuming it's the latter, because these people aren't dumb.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:03 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
The metal in their ring is causing an undocumented psychological effect.
That link is bonkers:
posted by kersplunk at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [25 favorites]
That link is bonkers:
I am an Engineer.It's like a cross between the Rifleman's Creed and Dungeons & Dragons.
In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations.
Since the Stone Age, Human Progress has been spurred by the Engineering Genius. Engineers have made usable Nature's vast resources of Materials and Energy for Humanity's Benefit.
posted by kersplunk at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [25 favorites]
Jeez. Maybe someone should just post the whole article in a comment... because people are clearly not prepared to RTFA.
posted by pipeski at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [28 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [28 favorites]
"This is just prima facie a stupid argument. You know what happens when English majors want to be terrorists? Nothing! Because they don't know how to build bombs!"
You know that soldiers don't actually make their own tanks and rifles, right? That pilots are only passingly familiar with airframe construction or munitions maintenance? That there is no "shipbuilder" rating in any navy anymore?
posted by Etrigan at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
You know that soldiers don't actually make their own tanks and rifles, right? That pilots are only passingly familiar with airframe construction or munitions maintenance? That there is no "shipbuilder" rating in any navy anymore?
posted by Etrigan at 7:05 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
I'll finish the articles in a minute, but after reading the first two paragraphs at the Chronicle of Higher Education, I said to my partner, "This is just prima facie a stupid argument. You know what happens when English majors want to be terrorists? Nothing! Because they don't know how to build bombs!"The article notes that former humanities students were well represented among perpetrators of left-wing political violence. I don't want to open a can of worms about whether they were terrorists, but Ed Ayers of the Weather Underground was an American Studies major. Bernadine Dohrn majored in Poli Sci.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
not directly related to engineers, but my reading of the ``macro-level'' political science literature on this a few years back (which gets mentioned briefly in the chronicle article) is basically that there are not a whole lot of robust relationships between country-level conditions and the number (or severity) of terrorist attacks save one. Countries who are highly repressive or highly open in terms of their political institutions tend to have fewer attacks - police states don't (or perhaps they're not reported) and countries with highly functional courts, freedom of the press, and which respect human rights tend to have much fewer. But countries in an "intermediate" range of these things tend to have more (perhaps the limited freedom to organize allows these groups to recruit members but not to use elections as an alternative means to achieve their aims). Things like poverty rates don't seem to have a statistically significant effect once you condition on other observables like institutional quality.
I don't remember the micro literature as well but I seem to remember a stylized fact that terrorists with more education tended to pull off larger-scale incidents. But it might be that the correlation between engineering and ("successful") terrorism is driven by something like inherent ability rather than an engineering education per se. But, again, since there are not a lot of robust cross-country predictors of terrorism incidents, it might be a fool's errand to try to say much about this outside of a particular culture, or country, or even movement. Maybe the psychologists have the comparative advantage over the political scientists on this one.
(The University of Maryland hosts a lot of data on this here if you want to play around with it yourself - I think the Global Terrorism Database has become the standard academic dataset for looking at this stuff).
posted by dismas at 7:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
I don't remember the micro literature as well but I seem to remember a stylized fact that terrorists with more education tended to pull off larger-scale incidents. But it might be that the correlation between engineering and ("successful") terrorism is driven by something like inherent ability rather than an engineering education per se. But, again, since there are not a lot of robust cross-country predictors of terrorism incidents, it might be a fool's errand to try to say much about this outside of a particular culture, or country, or even movement. Maybe the psychologists have the comparative advantage over the political scientists on this one.
(The University of Maryland hosts a lot of data on this here if you want to play around with it yourself - I think the Global Terrorism Database has become the standard academic dataset for looking at this stuff).
posted by dismas at 7:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
I recall physicists talking about how most of the quack theories of quantum physics they received were from engineers. It may have been a story here on the Blue.
Personally, I'm surprised it's not philosophy majors.
posted by clawsoon at 7:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Personally, I'm surprised it's not philosophy majors.
posted by clawsoon at 7:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
As it says in the first article, actual (professional) engineering problems are highly ambiguous, and there is no one right answer to them: you need to choose what you feel is the best optimization (within the design guidelines - often defined by someone else) of a number of conflicting factors.
Engineering school exam questions on the other hand are usually glorified math problems of the "A train leaves Chicago travelling at 60 mph" sort, only with more complicated equations. You run up against the limits of theoretical and empirical models in some lab courses, but usually undergraduate lab experiments are designed to illustrate the principles taught in class and reinforce the determinism of engineering models rather than show any frayed edges.
I didn't really appreciate the limits of a lot of engineering theory and practice until I went to grad school, so I guess my solution to this aspect of the problem was more engineering education.
posted by cardboard at 7:09 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
Engineering school exam questions on the other hand are usually glorified math problems of the "A train leaves Chicago travelling at 60 mph" sort, only with more complicated equations. You run up against the limits of theoretical and empirical models in some lab courses, but usually undergraduate lab experiments are designed to illustrate the principles taught in class and reinforce the determinism of engineering models rather than show any frayed edges.
I didn't really appreciate the limits of a lot of engineering theory and practice until I went to grad school, so I guess my solution to this aspect of the problem was more engineering education.
posted by cardboard at 7:09 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
Norman L. Fortenberry, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education, sees engineering curricula as emphasizing human needs, contexts, and interactionsI started out in engineering (EE) for two years before going over to psych and CS. What Fortenberry talks about here may be an aspiration or an ideal but it does not map at all to my experience. It may be different in the higher levels, but what I studied was mostly applied math without any consideration of the context.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:15 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Iron Ring is a Canadian engineering thing, which so far has been the source of one domestic crazy guy who is debatably not a terrorist per se. And the Oath was written by Kipling, so yeah, it's a little archaic.
Maybe we can focus on broad stroke lazy generalizations about engineers and get away from the derail of one specific Canadian tradition?
posted by GuyZero at 7:17 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
Maybe we can focus on broad stroke lazy generalizations about engineers and get away from the derail of one specific Canadian tradition?
posted by GuyZero at 7:17 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
Build-a-Bomber Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees? Benjamin Popper's 2009 Slate article, based on Gambetta and Hertog, so intrigued me that I kept the link all these years. And when a terrorist is captured or killed, I look for the engineering connection...and often find it.
posted by Carol Anne at 7:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Carol Anne at 7:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
I wonder: Are engineers also over-represented in the decisions which lead to civilian deaths on the other side, i.e. the approved-by-a-government-so-it's-not-called-terrorism terrorism of drone strikes and Agent Orange and fire-bombing?
posted by clawsoon at 7:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 7:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
I understand that engineers were/are also overrepresented among Chinese communist party officials—at least, that seems to be the thesis of Rise of the Red Engineers, which somebody on Metafilter recommended once and which I keep meaning to read.
posted by enn at 7:24 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by enn at 7:24 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Re: bomb-building. The Red Army Faction mostly studied things like literature, film, law, and philosophy, and they were perfectly capable of building bombs (the Weather Underground somewhat less so).
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
The gap between expectations and opportunities can come to feel galling, perhaps even humiliating. Hell hath no fury like a frustrated elite.
That's a really nasty way to describe the problem.
If you're a young Arab from the lower or middle class, here's what often happens: Your family invests every thing they have in sending you to a university so you can start a professional career. If it's in the west, the price level gap really knocks them down.
So you go to college. You keep your head down, your nose in your books, your behavior on the up and up, study hard, graduate on time, and now you want to serve your country in your educated capacity.
But, to do that takes more than money. It takes "wasta" : connections. Which your family doesn't have.
So you watch as your hard partying elite fellow student, who still can't solve a single equation, gets the job you should have had, and (maybe) hires a Pakistani guy to be his ghost-thinker for 5% of what he makes. While you're lucky to get a shift in front of a shawarma machine.
This isn't a "frustrated elite." This is a serious injustice that should be discussed as such.
posted by ocschwar at 7:32 AM on March 23, 2016 [54 favorites]
That's a really nasty way to describe the problem.
If you're a young Arab from the lower or middle class, here's what often happens: Your family invests every thing they have in sending you to a university so you can start a professional career. If it's in the west, the price level gap really knocks them down.
So you go to college. You keep your head down, your nose in your books, your behavior on the up and up, study hard, graduate on time, and now you want to serve your country in your educated capacity.
But, to do that takes more than money. It takes "wasta" : connections. Which your family doesn't have.
So you watch as your hard partying elite fellow student, who still can't solve a single equation, gets the job you should have had, and (maybe) hires a Pakistani guy to be his ghost-thinker for 5% of what he makes. While you're lucky to get a shift in front of a shawarma machine.
This isn't a "frustrated elite." This is a serious injustice that should be discussed as such.
posted by ocschwar at 7:32 AM on March 23, 2016 [54 favorites]
If you're a non-engineer and have sat in on meetings with engineers (in my case, software engineers) you will very quickly see a very much tribal/religious/territorial war break-out between adherents of one technique/tool/development suite/language/etc., each convinced that their way is the only true path to success.
So, yeah, I can understand the connection. It's in their blood, exacerbated by the general atmosphere of the field.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:34 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
So, yeah, I can understand the connection. It's in their blood, exacerbated by the general atmosphere of the field.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:34 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
The interview with the UMich anthropologist was educational for me.
France has about 7.5% Muslims and [they make] up to 60–75% of the prison population. It’s a very similar situation to black youth in the United States.
posted by not that girl at 7:34 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
France has about 7.5% Muslims and [they make] up to 60–75% of the prison population. It’s a very similar situation to black youth in the United States.
posted by not that girl at 7:34 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
i mean it's kind of not the point to say "oh engineering education teaches you about ambiguity." it appears to be the case that among the group of people who selects into becoming terrorists, a disproportionate number of them are engineers. The vast majority of engineers do not. so it doesn't seem like someone goes to college to become an engineer and then ends up joining a terrorist organization, but rather that more people select into both.
it could be that terrorist organizations recruit engineers, which would explain this (although, per TFA, it doesn't seem to!). It could be that the subset of the population who is likely to join a terrorist organization (due to whatever circumstance-specific subset of grievances they have or other psychological factors...) is also likely to seek an engineer's training (perhaps because they think it will be useful for eventually becoming a terrorist, or for some other latent reason that drives both decisions). in any case, I'm not sure how much you can learn about, like, whether we should force engineers to take more gen eds from this stylized fact and it seems weird to try to shoehorn that in. (n.b. i am a big believer in the benefits of a liberal arts education!)
posted by dismas at 7:35 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
it could be that terrorist organizations recruit engineers, which would explain this (although, per TFA, it doesn't seem to!). It could be that the subset of the population who is likely to join a terrorist organization (due to whatever circumstance-specific subset of grievances they have or other psychological factors...) is also likely to seek an engineer's training (perhaps because they think it will be useful for eventually becoming a terrorist, or for some other latent reason that drives both decisions). in any case, I'm not sure how much you can learn about, like, whether we should force engineers to take more gen eds from this stylized fact and it seems weird to try to shoehorn that in. (n.b. i am a big believer in the benefits of a liberal arts education!)
posted by dismas at 7:35 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm sorry to have derailed the thread by sharing my defensive-English-major joke.
posted by not that girl at 7:36 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by not that girl at 7:36 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Seriously folks - if you have a theory that you think explains this correlation, the researchers probably addressed it. From the article: "The vast majority of the engineers involved in 228 plots acted as group founders or leaders; just 15 percent of them made the bombs."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates
Once again, Engineers are very willing to seize control of a project claiming that they know it all especially if it is being mismanaged, there are indeterminate time constraints, and the project manager is floundering and doesn't seem to be able to actually get the product constructed.
So yeah, engineers acting as group founders and leaders - once again, not surprising... find me an engineer that can keep their mouth shut if they've got a better way to do something.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:37 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates
Once again, Engineers are very willing to seize control of a project claiming that they know it all especially if it is being mismanaged, there are indeterminate time constraints, and the project manager is floundering and doesn't seem to be able to actually get the product constructed.
So yeah, engineers acting as group founders and leaders - once again, not surprising... find me an engineer that can keep their mouth shut if they've got a better way to do something.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:37 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
Sample size of one, but before I left my last engineering position, I was training a new hire (recently out of grad school) on how to take over my responsibilities on one project. It came up in conversation that one of the reasons that I was leaving was that designing weapons bothered me. Her reaction gave me the impression not that she was OK with finding more efficient ways to kill people, but that it just wasn't something she ever thought about.
My experience with getting an engineering degree is that there was nothing inherent in the curriculum that would invite one to consider the moral dimensions of one's work; if you wanted that, you had to seek it out on your own with humanities electives.
posted by indubitable at 7:45 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
My experience with getting an engineering degree is that there was nothing inherent in the curriculum that would invite one to consider the moral dimensions of one's work; if you wanted that, you had to seek it out on your own with humanities electives.
posted by indubitable at 7:45 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
It's in their blood, exacerbated by the general atmosphere of the field.
EMACS FOR THE BLOOD GOD.
posted by Mayor West at 7:46 AM on March 23, 2016 [19 favorites]
EMACS FOR THE BLOOD GOD.
posted by Mayor West at 7:46 AM on March 23, 2016 [19 favorites]
Does the article say anything about not getting laid during the entire course of a four-year university program?
posted by newdaddy at 7:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by newdaddy at 7:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
I mean, you know, just asking for a friend.
posted by newdaddy at 7:50 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by newdaddy at 7:50 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Why do so many terrorists have a religious background? Is there something about the way religious people are taught to think?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:53 AM on March 23, 2016 [23 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:53 AM on March 23, 2016 [23 favorites]
Why do so many terrorists have a religious background? Is there something about the way religious people are taught to think?
If you define religious in the William James meaning, "the sense that there is an unseen order to things and that one must conform to it harmoniously," 100% of terrorists have a religious background.
posted by ocschwar at 7:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
If you define religious in the William James meaning, "the sense that there is an unseen order to things and that one must conform to it harmoniously," 100% of terrorists have a religious background.
posted by ocschwar at 7:54 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
It came up in conversation that one of the reasons that I was leaving was that designing weapons bothered me. Her reaction gave me the impression not that she was OK with finding more efficient ways to kill people, but that it just wasn't something she ever thought about.
So the article doesn't touch on it but the majority of these jahadis are graduating from engineering programs in countries where the graduates are largely civil, mechanical and chemical engineers and then some electrical engineers. Had they gotten jobs in their local civil society they'd be doing such glorious tasks as building roads, dams, oil refineries and electricity distribution systems.
To your point - I agree that this can be a blind spot in engineering education but that at the same time most engineers have a reasonable idea of the social impact of roads and oil refineries.
Personally my thinking is more that engineering attracts the jihadist type rather than creating it. I think engineers gives you lots of opportunity to see the social impact of engineering work, but it also gives you lots of opportunity to ignore it. Mostly because you have a lot of homework that's basically all math.
posted by GuyZero at 7:57 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
So the article doesn't touch on it but the majority of these jahadis are graduating from engineering programs in countries where the graduates are largely civil, mechanical and chemical engineers and then some electrical engineers. Had they gotten jobs in their local civil society they'd be doing such glorious tasks as building roads, dams, oil refineries and electricity distribution systems.
To your point - I agree that this can be a blind spot in engineering education but that at the same time most engineers have a reasonable idea of the social impact of roads and oil refineries.
Personally my thinking is more that engineering attracts the jihadist type rather than creating it. I think engineers gives you lots of opportunity to see the social impact of engineering work, but it also gives you lots of opportunity to ignore it. Mostly because you have a lot of homework that's basically all math.
posted by GuyZero at 7:57 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
This isn't a "frustrated elite."
When Nortel blew up in Ottawa in the early 2000s, there were a lot of engineers who were suddenly let got from what many of them thought were long-lasting careers. Nortel had been around in one form or other for more than half a century at that point, but some criminal hucksters wrecked the place. Anyway.
I used to play a weekly pick-up soccer game with a bunch of these guys, and it was more than a little disconcerting to see what happened to them post-Nortel. Generally the native Canadians, regardless of ethnic background, did ok-ish and landed jobs better or worse in other engineering firms in the area, or abroad. Those from China and Taiwan also did pretty well---there seemed no barriers for them either. The guys from India struggled, and many had to look harder and longer than the others. But the ones who seemed to have no options at all were those from primarily Islamic countries. Emigration to the US was cut-off to them, and many were clearly embarrassed by the straits they were forced into, marginal jobs all, free-lance tutoring at the university, working the till at fast-food joints.
And they were also acutely aware that they were all being watched as potential enemies. Maher Arar fits the above description exactly. He was actually in a better situation than most, a citizen rather than just a resident (green card equivalent), but that still didn't protect him much.
I don't know if this speaks to disaffectation, most of the guys I knew were very happy to be in Canada. As many of them remarked to me---post 9/11 they felt the need, found themselves having to explain themselves over and again---they emigrated to get away from that shit. But it's certainly the case that the arab and sub-continent muslim engineering friends of mine had higher hills to climb than the rest of their colleagues.
posted by bonehead at 7:58 AM on March 23, 2016 [28 favorites]
When Nortel blew up in Ottawa in the early 2000s, there were a lot of engineers who were suddenly let got from what many of them thought were long-lasting careers. Nortel had been around in one form or other for more than half a century at that point, but some criminal hucksters wrecked the place. Anyway.
I used to play a weekly pick-up soccer game with a bunch of these guys, and it was more than a little disconcerting to see what happened to them post-Nortel. Generally the native Canadians, regardless of ethnic background, did ok-ish and landed jobs better or worse in other engineering firms in the area, or abroad. Those from China and Taiwan also did pretty well---there seemed no barriers for them either. The guys from India struggled, and many had to look harder and longer than the others. But the ones who seemed to have no options at all were those from primarily Islamic countries. Emigration to the US was cut-off to them, and many were clearly embarrassed by the straits they were forced into, marginal jobs all, free-lance tutoring at the university, working the till at fast-food joints.
And they were also acutely aware that they were all being watched as potential enemies. Maher Arar fits the above description exactly. He was actually in a better situation than most, a citizen rather than just a resident (green card equivalent), but that still didn't protect him much.
I don't know if this speaks to disaffectation, most of the guys I knew were very happy to be in Canada. As many of them remarked to me---post 9/11 they felt the need, found themselves having to explain themselves over and again---they emigrated to get away from that shit. But it's certainly the case that the arab and sub-continent muslim engineering friends of mine had higher hills to climb than the rest of their colleagues.
posted by bonehead at 7:58 AM on March 23, 2016 [28 favorites]
Does the article say anything about not getting laid during the entire course of a four-year university program?
There were numerous reports that the 9/11 hijackers visited strip clubs in the days/weeks before the attacks. It's unclear whether those reports really hold water, though.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:59 AM on March 23, 2016
There were numerous reports that the 9/11 hijackers visited strip clubs in the days/weeks before the attacks. It's unclear whether those reports really hold water, though.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:59 AM on March 23, 2016
"How The Terrorists Stopped Terrorism", which is probably of interest. The Bronze Age attitude is more than a little disgusting, but you must admit you don't hear of Black Septemberists doing anything anymore.
In practice, there is a fundamental difference between software engineers and other engineers, which is reflected best in their politics, I think. There is a distinct phase transition from software engineering mostly being done by former hardware engineers to software engineering being considered its own field in the 80's and 90's towards liberalism in the field, where the problems of the field were seen to be complexity itself, and the resources of the field were driven towards that goal.
posted by hleehowon at 7:59 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
In practice, there is a fundamental difference between software engineers and other engineers, which is reflected best in their politics, I think. There is a distinct phase transition from software engineering mostly being done by former hardware engineers to software engineering being considered its own field in the 80's and 90's towards liberalism in the field, where the problems of the field were seen to be complexity itself, and the resources of the field were driven towards that goal.
posted by hleehowon at 7:59 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
It seems like it could tell us something if there are professions that are strongly underrepresented among terrorists. For example if lawyers are underrepresented, it could support the idea that a need for logical closure is key (since lawyers learn to live without that), and hard work and focus less so (since lawyers must have that to some extent).
I see the article does mention medical doctors, which seems totally unsurprising given the Hippocratic Oath.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I see the article does mention medical doctors, which seems totally unsurprising given the Hippocratic Oath.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think the article says medical students are overrepresented, actually.
posted by dismas at 8:02 AM on March 23, 2016
posted by dismas at 8:02 AM on March 23, 2016
There is also a strong correlation between the use of leaded gasoline (and other lead containing products) and terrorism. Iraq and Yemen have only recently started phasing it out for example.
posted by humanfont at 8:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by humanfont at 8:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [13 favorites]
Does the article say anything about not getting laid during the entire course of a four-year university program?
There were numerous reports that the 9/11 hijackers visited strip clubs in the days/weeks before the attacks. It's unclear whether those reports really hold water, though.
Well I ask this semi-humorously, but from my own anecdotal experience (admittedly far in the past now) engineering education can very much seem isolating, grinding, dehumanizing. Engineers were recognized as geeks (and no glamour had accumulated around that term then), the work was long and difficult and obscure, and isolating from the larger university and surrounding community. As a student, it seemed one was defaulted to an adversarial relationship to classmates and to the faculty, and money and grades were always a struggle. It always looked as if someone else, studying some other thing, was having a great time at college - making connections, making real friends and relationships, finding time for extracurricular stuff, integrating their nascent careers into something larger.
posted by newdaddy at 8:10 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
There were numerous reports that the 9/11 hijackers visited strip clubs in the days/weeks before the attacks. It's unclear whether those reports really hold water, though.
Well I ask this semi-humorously, but from my own anecdotal experience (admittedly far in the past now) engineering education can very much seem isolating, grinding, dehumanizing. Engineers were recognized as geeks (and no glamour had accumulated around that term then), the work was long and difficult and obscure, and isolating from the larger university and surrounding community. As a student, it seemed one was defaulted to an adversarial relationship to classmates and to the faculty, and money and grades were always a struggle. It always looked as if someone else, studying some other thing, was having a great time at college - making connections, making real friends and relationships, finding time for extracurricular stuff, integrating their nascent careers into something larger.
posted by newdaddy at 8:10 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Engineers on the other hand have a very different kind of education - taking axioms and methods handed down to them by reliable authority figures and applying them to solve the problem at hand.
This is wholly untrue. Engineering students are taught how to derive those axioms and methods from first principles. There is very little that is accepted on faith.
posted by rocket88 at 8:18 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
This is wholly untrue. Engineering students are taught how to derive those axioms and methods from first principles. There is very little that is accepted on faith.
posted by rocket88 at 8:18 AM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
More wild speculation: why engineers and not physicists? Physicists are exposed from early on to the limits of our knowledge of reality & the vital importance of experimental evidence to confirm or disprove theoretical ideas: much physics is taught via the understanding of crucial experiments that showed us how reality behaves. Does this background of scientific rigour inoculate them against blind belief in the pronouncements of religious authority figures? What about mathematicians? Are they similarly inoculated by the exploratory nature of mathematical research? Inquiring minds would love to know!
Indeed, some Christian fundamentalists have declared war against set theory, because the idea of multiple infinities and the set of all sets not containing themselves are a gateway drug to moral relativism, Cultural Marxism and/or sodomy.
posted by acb at 8:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [15 favorites]
Indeed, some Christian fundamentalists have declared war against set theory, because the idea of multiple infinities and the set of all sets not containing themselves are a gateway drug to moral relativism, Cultural Marxism and/or sodomy.
posted by acb at 8:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [15 favorites]
The article talks about "certainty-seeking", but I think "simple-consistency-seeking" might be more precise.
As a scientist or engineer how do you spend your young adulthood? "Here's a book about how to write a conservation equation on a control volume." You want to get that degree, so you read the whole thing. This technique applies to energy in a heat sink, stress in a beam, momentum in a pipe, lift on a wing, electrons in a circuit, chemical species in a flame, neutron flux in a supernova... To the right kind of personality, this level of consistency is nice. There's a reason why one of the foundational myths of science culture is "Newton discovers that orbiting planets and falling apples obey the same law".
Now, then, how did you spend your religious youth? "Here's a book about how to treat others." You probably didn't read or understand it all at the time, but there were some awesome parts about kindness, and heavy study worked great for control volumes and such, so now you start reading the whole thing. This kindness applies to your neighbors, but it doesn't apply to Noah's contemporaries, or the Egyptian first-born. It applies to visitors to Sodom, but not to residents who mistreat those visitors... or those residents' neighbors or kids. It applies to Samaritans, probably, and to sinners but only if they repent, but the Amorites don't have a chance and don't even get me started on the Amalekites. You might think it applies to the Midianites' women and children, sure, but you'll just piss off the prophet if you try to spare 'women and/or children' instead. It probably applies more often than it used to, but right up to the end there will be people who aren't written in the book of life and so it's straight into the lake of fire with them.
(examples chosen from Christianity via my own upbringing, but some of those apply to Islam too and there's no shortage of Qur'an-specific examples that could be added)
So what do you do?
The inconsistent-but-sane response here is "hide from cognitive dissonance". You need to seize on some reason why all the nasty bits don't apply, and you don't need to critique that reason too deeply. Perhaps the evil-sounding parts were all mistranslated, perhaps it was all abrogated by newer nicer rules, or perhaps it only applies during times of existential crisis, to use a few reasons I've been given. This works for most people, including most engineering and science types. It might even work better for more experience engineering and science types; there's only so many times you can find yourself having to add a big safety margin and calibrate a measurement error estimate and apply a simplified constitutive equation and switch to a more tractable physics model before you decide that there are levels of inconsistency which you have to be willing to accept.
But it doesn't work for everyone.
One consistent response is "That evil stuff wasn't of God, so neither is anything that came via the same epistemology". The science students may have it a bit easier than the engineering students, since half the sciences will periodically alert you to inconsistencies with a fundamentalist/literalist creation story too, and factual wrongs are even harder to ignore than moral wrongs. Take this route and you may end up a universalist (even a Christian universalist), or a deist or an agnostic or an atheist, but whatever you are will not be very popular among your prior, fundamentalist social circles. Pack your bags just in case your parents disown you when they find out.
(A friend's upbringing this time; fortunately his case turned out well)
This first alternative can get even worse in cultures far less tolerant of apostasy. Even if you're not likely to be killed, how motivated are you to pursue a train of thought that might end with your loved ones thinking you'd deserve to be?
But the other consistent response is "That God stuff wasn't evil, so neither is anything that can be given the same justification". Even that conclusion alone isn't enough to turn someone into a terrorist; just because you *can* justify evil doesn't mean you *want* to. But we can see how the psychological ground is all tilled and watered and ready to let weeds germinate?
On edit:
posted by roystgnr at 8:31 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
As a scientist or engineer how do you spend your young adulthood? "Here's a book about how to write a conservation equation on a control volume." You want to get that degree, so you read the whole thing. This technique applies to energy in a heat sink, stress in a beam, momentum in a pipe, lift on a wing, electrons in a circuit, chemical species in a flame, neutron flux in a supernova... To the right kind of personality, this level of consistency is nice. There's a reason why one of the foundational myths of science culture is "Newton discovers that orbiting planets and falling apples obey the same law".
Now, then, how did you spend your religious youth? "Here's a book about how to treat others." You probably didn't read or understand it all at the time, but there were some awesome parts about kindness, and heavy study worked great for control volumes and such, so now you start reading the whole thing. This kindness applies to your neighbors, but it doesn't apply to Noah's contemporaries, or the Egyptian first-born. It applies to visitors to Sodom, but not to residents who mistreat those visitors... or those residents' neighbors or kids. It applies to Samaritans, probably, and to sinners but only if they repent, but the Amorites don't have a chance and don't even get me started on the Amalekites. You might think it applies to the Midianites' women and children, sure, but you'll just piss off the prophet if you try to spare 'women and/or children' instead. It probably applies more often than it used to, but right up to the end there will be people who aren't written in the book of life and so it's straight into the lake of fire with them.
(examples chosen from Christianity via my own upbringing, but some of those apply to Islam too and there's no shortage of Qur'an-specific examples that could be added)
So what do you do?
The inconsistent-but-sane response here is "hide from cognitive dissonance". You need to seize on some reason why all the nasty bits don't apply, and you don't need to critique that reason too deeply. Perhaps the evil-sounding parts were all mistranslated, perhaps it was all abrogated by newer nicer rules, or perhaps it only applies during times of existential crisis, to use a few reasons I've been given. This works for most people, including most engineering and science types. It might even work better for more experience engineering and science types; there's only so many times you can find yourself having to add a big safety margin and calibrate a measurement error estimate and apply a simplified constitutive equation and switch to a more tractable physics model before you decide that there are levels of inconsistency which you have to be willing to accept.
But it doesn't work for everyone.
One consistent response is "That evil stuff wasn't of God, so neither is anything that came via the same epistemology". The science students may have it a bit easier than the engineering students, since half the sciences will periodically alert you to inconsistencies with a fundamentalist/literalist creation story too, and factual wrongs are even harder to ignore than moral wrongs. Take this route and you may end up a universalist (even a Christian universalist), or a deist or an agnostic or an atheist, but whatever you are will not be very popular among your prior, fundamentalist social circles. Pack your bags just in case your parents disown you when they find out.
(A friend's upbringing this time; fortunately his case turned out well)
This first alternative can get even worse in cultures far less tolerant of apostasy. Even if you're not likely to be killed, how motivated are you to pursue a train of thought that might end with your loved ones thinking you'd deserve to be?
But the other consistent response is "That God stuff wasn't evil, so neither is anything that can be given the same justification". Even that conclusion alone isn't enough to turn someone into a terrorist; just because you *can* justify evil doesn't mean you *want* to. But we can see how the psychological ground is all tilled and watered and ready to let weeds germinate?
On edit:
If you define religious in the William James meaning, "the sense that there is an unseen order to things and that one must conform to it harmoniously," 100% of terrorists have a religious background.By this definition, terrorist engineers have two religious backgrounds. I've never thought of Occam's Razor as a religious principle before, but I suppose in some sense it is, and it's occasionally capable of cutting in more than one direction.
posted by roystgnr at 8:31 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
Well, it's certainly not like engineering is going to have any effect on a terrorist's character or values. Engineering isn't concerned with questioning that.
and
My experience with getting an engineering degree is that there was nothing inherent in the curriculum that would invite one to consider the moral dimensions of one's work; if you wanted that, you had to seek it out on your own with humanities electives.
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering. To achieve Professional status an engineer must demonstrate a knowledge of applicable ethics and law.
There is very little in this thread that isn't wild conjecture, semi-offensive stereotypes, armchair psychology, or "I knew this guy once..." anecdotes.
posted by rocket88 at 8:33 AM on March 23, 2016 [26 favorites]
and
My experience with getting an engineering degree is that there was nothing inherent in the curriculum that would invite one to consider the moral dimensions of one's work; if you wanted that, you had to seek it out on your own with humanities electives.
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering. To achieve Professional status an engineer must demonstrate a knowledge of applicable ethics and law.
There is very little in this thread that isn't wild conjecture, semi-offensive stereotypes, armchair psychology, or "I knew this guy once..." anecdotes.
posted by rocket88 at 8:33 AM on March 23, 2016 [26 favorites]
Well I ask this semi-humorously, but from my own anecdotal experience (admittedly far in the past now) engineering education can very much seem isolating, grinding, dehumanizing.
As a survivor (a graduate, even) of engineering school in the 2000s, this was largely my experience. It's hard to put my finger on it, but a lot of this seemed unnecessary; well beyond the difficulty inherent in the subject matter. And that's from the perspective of someone who is quite highly 'privileged', especially in the context of this thread.
Most of the talk I heard from my fellow students on the topic at the time took the form of comments made when the school or the media would pay some lip service to wondering why things like depression and suicide were so prevalent on college campuses, along the lines of "take a look around, isn't it obvious?"
I was never sure how much of a correlation there really was between the two (the isolating/dehumanizing aspects of engineering education and suicide/depression) at the time, and I'm not sure how much correlation there is with inclination toward violence/terrorism, but I do think they are both interesting questions.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 8:37 AM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
As a survivor (a graduate, even) of engineering school in the 2000s, this was largely my experience. It's hard to put my finger on it, but a lot of this seemed unnecessary; well beyond the difficulty inherent in the subject matter. And that's from the perspective of someone who is quite highly 'privileged', especially in the context of this thread.
Most of the talk I heard from my fellow students on the topic at the time took the form of comments made when the school or the media would pay some lip service to wondering why things like depression and suicide were so prevalent on college campuses, along the lines of "take a look around, isn't it obvious?"
I was never sure how much of a correlation there really was between the two (the isolating/dehumanizing aspects of engineering education and suicide/depression) at the time, and I'm not sure how much correlation there is with inclination toward violence/terrorism, but I do think they are both interesting questions.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 8:37 AM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
Engineering students are taught how to derive those [...] from first principles. There is very little that is accepted on faith.
What a very powerful little it is.
posted by Rat Spatula at 8:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
What a very powerful little it is.
posted by Rat Spatula at 8:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering.
Mine had a mandatory Engineering Ethics class. It focused very narrowly on preventing accidental deaths in engineering disasters: "don't kill people with radiation by accident" (Therac-25), "don't blow up teachers in space ships by accident" (Challenger), "don't accidentally kill hotel guests with faulty support structures" (Hyatt Regency walkway).
There was no talk that I can recall of topics like whether the goal you are trying to accomplish is ethical in and of itself.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 8:47 AM on March 23, 2016 [19 favorites]
Mine had a mandatory Engineering Ethics class. It focused very narrowly on preventing accidental deaths in engineering disasters: "don't kill people with radiation by accident" (Therac-25), "don't blow up teachers in space ships by accident" (Challenger), "don't accidentally kill hotel guests with faulty support structures" (Hyatt Regency walkway).
There was no talk that I can recall of topics like whether the goal you are trying to accomplish is ethical in and of itself.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 8:47 AM on March 23, 2016 [19 favorites]
Engineering students are taught how to derive those [...] from first principles. There is very little that is accepted on faith.
What a very powerful little it is.
Please explain.
posted by rocket88 at 8:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
What a very powerful little it is.
Please explain.
posted by rocket88 at 8:48 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Research and discussions about the root causes of terrorism are important. Here's another. Carry on.
posted by mareli at 8:50 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by mareli at 8:50 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
→ reinforce the determinism of engineering models rather than show any frayed edges
I must have had a very different experience at the university I went to, which had a long history of being the research and material testing labs for Scottish heavy industry. We were shown early on that theory is a good investigative prop but you had know context, and in some cases, the political motivation for design codes and deemed best practice. It also helped that we had a great (and shifting) mix of exchange students, all of whom brought their own local outlooks.
Personally, I went through university worryingly fundamentalist, and my parents were kind of going through a young earth literalist bit at the time. Lucky escape, eh?
posted by scruss at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I must have had a very different experience at the university I went to, which had a long history of being the research and material testing labs for Scottish heavy industry. We were shown early on that theory is a good investigative prop but you had know context, and in some cases, the political motivation for design codes and deemed best practice. It also helped that we had a great (and shifting) mix of exchange students, all of whom brought their own local outlooks.
Personally, I went through university worryingly fundamentalist, and my parents were kind of going through a young earth literalist bit at the time. Lucky escape, eh?
posted by scruss at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Research and discussions about the root causes of terrorism are important.
It's also important that we don't continue to use that as an excuse to tell ourselves just so stories to marginalize already vulnerable groups further and to create new sterotypical bogeymen.
posted by bonehead at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's also important that we don't continue to use that as an excuse to tell ourselves just so stories to marginalize already vulnerable groups further and to create new sterotypical bogeymen.
posted by bonehead at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sorry, it was a glib way of saying: As someone who works as an engineer, I think the overlap between "engineer's disease" and "terrorist mindset" is self-evident and unsurprising. Ruminating on this topic puts me in mind of specific colleagues over the years who I found spooky, and who very definitely believed with every fiber that there is an unseen order to things and that one must conform to it harmoniously. I found them spooky not because I felt that they might become violent, but rather because they seemed distressingly single-minded and immune to the broadening effects of discussion or cross-discipline study. Lots of these guys had dreams of writing PERL scripts that would trade stocks for them, or building a perpetual motion machine (sometimes couched as a "more efficient" engine).
Terrorist theology, to me, is clearly parallel to engineering - you take a few basic principles, turn the crank, and conclusions come tumbling out. Garbage in will produce garbage out, of course - Moon Law in yields Sovereign Citizen out. The same essential kind of cargo-cult approach to critical thinking is on display all over. Read Martin Gardner's compendia of science & medical cranks, it's a very similar thing. Lots of those guys were (or fancied themselves) engineers. L. Ron Hubbard specifically stated that Scientology would be a rational, evidence-based approach. It never actually says Moon Law on the tin.
But I don't know about correlation or causation. Maybe people all over are nuts, and the problem with engineers specifically is that they are 'makers' and inclined to fetishize gear anyhow.
posted by Rat Spatula at 9:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [16 favorites]
Terrorist theology, to me, is clearly parallel to engineering - you take a few basic principles, turn the crank, and conclusions come tumbling out. Garbage in will produce garbage out, of course - Moon Law in yields Sovereign Citizen out. The same essential kind of cargo-cult approach to critical thinking is on display all over. Read Martin Gardner's compendia of science & medical cranks, it's a very similar thing. Lots of those guys were (or fancied themselves) engineers. L. Ron Hubbard specifically stated that Scientology would be a rational, evidence-based approach. It never actually says Moon Law on the tin.
But I don't know about correlation or causation. Maybe people all over are nuts, and the problem with engineers specifically is that they are 'makers' and inclined to fetishize gear anyhow.
posted by Rat Spatula at 9:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [16 favorites]
After all, a bunch of people have been literally tortured because of this.
posted by bonehead at 9:02 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by bonehead at 9:02 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
We've got lots of anecdotes about engineers in this thread. Anybody have personal anecdotes about terrorists? 'Cause we're making a lot of assumptions about what the "terrorist mindset" is all about, and I wonder how close to the mark we might be (or not). Do terrorists really think the way that we're assuming they do?
posted by clawsoon at 9:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 9:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
> Came for Scott Atran and was not disappointed.
Of course, his name is nowhere to be found in the post. Just another reminder to posters: please name the authors of the texts you're linking to. It's simple courtesy, and it makes searching for authors' names a lot easier.
posted by languagehat at 9:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
Of course, his name is nowhere to be found in the post. Just another reminder to posters: please name the authors of the texts you're linking to. It's simple courtesy, and it makes searching for authors' names a lot easier.
posted by languagehat at 9:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
Does this background of scientific rigour inoculate them against blind belief in the pronouncements of religious authority figures? What about mathematicians? Are they similarly inoculated by the exploratory nature of mathematical research?
It may help with religion, but Ted Kaczynski showed that doing mathematics isn't necessarily going to deter someone from violence.
posted by A dead Quaker at 9:09 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
It may help with religion, but Ted Kaczynski showed that doing mathematics isn't necessarily going to deter someone from violence.
posted by A dead Quaker at 9:09 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
" Anybody have personal anecdotes about terrorists?"
I only know one guy who might be considered a terrorist, and that's with a pretty broad definition of the term. He was a really nice, friendly, thoughtful guy. I really enjoyed spending time with him, and I'm glad I knew him (although obviously, I'm sad about what happened after we drifted apart). I would rather hang out with him than with, well, literally *any* of the engineers I've known.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:15 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I only know one guy who might be considered a terrorist, and that's with a pretty broad definition of the term. He was a really nice, friendly, thoughtful guy. I really enjoyed spending time with him, and I'm glad I knew him (although obviously, I'm sad about what happened after we drifted apart). I would rather hang out with him than with, well, literally *any* of the engineers I've known.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:15 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
So for probably underrepresented professions I'm gonna go with
Poet
Horseback riding instructor
Social worker
Romance novel writer
posted by freecellwizard at 9:16 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Poet
Horseback riding instructor
Social worker
Romance novel writer
posted by freecellwizard at 9:16 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Engineering students are taught how to derive those [...] from first principles. There is very little that is accepted on faith.
What a very powerful little it is.
Please explain.
Every engineering program teaches students the scientific underpinnings of their field, and how those were discovered.
But not every student learns it. As an engineering student, you have the option of taking your field's domain knowledge as Knowledge Received From On High, apply it to your homework, exams, lab reports, and get good grades. You can then start doing that in industry. You won't make fellow in your field's professional association. You won't get medals. But you'll make a living.
And you can quite readily integrate your field's knowledge with other Received Knowledge such as your religion's scriptures. Engineers who are young earth creationists exist. Scientists, not so much.
posted by ocschwar at 9:19 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
What a very powerful little it is.
Please explain.
Every engineering program teaches students the scientific underpinnings of their field, and how those were discovered.
But not every student learns it. As an engineering student, you have the option of taking your field's domain knowledge as Knowledge Received From On High, apply it to your homework, exams, lab reports, and get good grades. You can then start doing that in industry. You won't make fellow in your field's professional association. You won't get medals. But you'll make a living.
And you can quite readily integrate your field's knowledge with other Received Knowledge such as your religion's scriptures. Engineers who are young earth creationists exist. Scientists, not so much.
posted by ocschwar at 9:19 AM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
So for probably underrepresented professions I'm gonna go with
Poet
Gonna have to disappoint you on the poets. More, and more.
Poet
Gonna have to disappoint you on the poets. More, and more.
Look inside jihadi groups and you’ll see bearded men with kalashnikovs reciting poetry, discussing dreams, and weeping on a regular basis.posted by clawsoon at 9:23 AM on March 23, 2016 [9 favorites]
If you're a non-engineer and have sat in on meetings with engineers (in my case, software engineers) you will very quickly see a very much tribal/religious/territorial war break-out between adherents of one technique/tool/development suite/language/etc., each convinced that their way is the only true path to success.
In the case of emacs users, they would be correct. In the case of users of heretical text editors, they would be incorrect.
posted by theorique at 9:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
In the case of emacs users, they would be correct. In the case of users of heretical text editors, they would be incorrect.
posted by theorique at 9:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
for a crowd that does pretty well with racism and sexism, y'all seem to have your job-ism pretty fucked up.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:42 AM on March 23, 2016 [18 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 9:42 AM on March 23, 2016 [18 favorites]
Also gonna have to disappoint you on horseback riding instructor.
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Jury's out on romance novel writer.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:06 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
"Engineers on the other hand have a very different kind of education - taking axioms and methods handed down to them by reliable authority figures and applying them to solve the problem at hand."
To get to the point where the methods are handed down, you usually have to pass the class about the fundamentals principles from which the method can be derived. But sure, you don't really have to remember/use the theory behind. What you SHOULD remember is that the method isn't some kind of absolute truth, it exists because it was shown a good way to solve the problem, and other/better methods are possible (and not all problems are the same) and shouldn't be rejected outright (but they do have to be shown viable).
These classes are attended by humans and humans are even more faillible than engineering methods, so yeah strange stuff can happen, but I'm not so sure it's the education that leads to it.
All that is moot for software engineering, this stuff is all pure medieval religious conflict, there's no fundamental principle of how software should be built ;)
posted by coust at 10:12 AM on March 23, 2016
To get to the point where the methods are handed down, you usually have to pass the class about the fundamentals principles from which the method can be derived. But sure, you don't really have to remember/use the theory behind. What you SHOULD remember is that the method isn't some kind of absolute truth, it exists because it was shown a good way to solve the problem, and other/better methods are possible (and not all problems are the same) and shouldn't be rejected outright (but they do have to be shown viable).
These classes are attended by humans and humans are even more faillible than engineering methods, so yeah strange stuff can happen, but I'm not so sure it's the education that leads to it.
All that is moot for software engineering, this stuff is all pure medieval religious conflict, there's no fundamental principle of how software should be built ;)
posted by coust at 10:12 AM on March 23, 2016
And you can quite readily integrate your field's knowledge with other Received Knowledge such as your religion's scriptures. Engineers who are young earth creationists exist. Scientists, not so much.
Oh come on, this is ridiculous. There are lots of scientists who get caught up in unprovable orthodoxy. Like say, Kary Mullis, Phillipp Lenard and Brian Josephson. There are working microbiologists who don't believe in evolution.
The basic question about what connection there is between Islamist terrorists and studying engineering is fine although there may not be any clear-cut answers. But please don't get imperious about it.
posted by GuyZero at 10:13 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
Oh come on, this is ridiculous. There are lots of scientists who get caught up in unprovable orthodoxy. Like say, Kary Mullis, Phillipp Lenard and Brian Josephson. There are working microbiologists who don't believe in evolution.
The basic question about what connection there is between Islamist terrorists and studying engineering is fine although there may not be any clear-cut answers. But please don't get imperious about it.
posted by GuyZero at 10:13 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
Engineer here chiming in. I am not the smartest engineer in any room I've sat in so far so that probably gives me an arm's length distance to speak about my tribe.
My observation is that since we can solve the problems that we encounter (both in the job and in daily life) or identify the 'root cause', point to 'dumb' design decisions and almost always have a philosophical motivation of how things should be vs how things are, we tend to look down on nuances that don't alter the overall 'solution space'. My female colleagues that I'm close to told me about these traits and why they are generally reluctant about going out with engineers. I definitely consider them more in tune with social mores than myself and most of my male colleagues. Maybe I am just trying too hard to explain what people here might succinctly call 'engineer's disease'.
Also, in an ideal world, we would like to 'start from scratch' wherever possible rather than fix someone else's mistakes/poor choices. I have often used this expression - "nuke it. It's not a whole lot of additional effort to redesign this". I can completely see this as a logical launching point for sick people to go on and do whatever stupid thing they decide to do.
But in the same vein, I have to mention that the article makes some really spurious arguments
posted by savitarka at 10:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
My observation is that since we can solve the problems that we encounter (both in the job and in daily life) or identify the 'root cause', point to 'dumb' design decisions and almost always have a philosophical motivation of how things should be vs how things are, we tend to look down on nuances that don't alter the overall 'solution space'. My female colleagues that I'm close to told me about these traits and why they are generally reluctant about going out with engineers. I definitely consider them more in tune with social mores than myself and most of my male colleagues. Maybe I am just trying too hard to explain what people here might succinctly call 'engineer's disease'.
Also, in an ideal world, we would like to 'start from scratch' wherever possible rather than fix someone else's mistakes/poor choices. I have often used this expression - "nuke it. It's not a whole lot of additional effort to redesign this". I can completely see this as a logical launching point for sick people to go on and do whatever stupid thing they decide to do.
But in the same vein, I have to mention that the article makes some really spurious arguments
posted by savitarka at 10:27 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering. To achieve Professional status an engineer must demonstrate a knowledge of applicable ethics and law.
There is very little in this thread that isn't wild conjecture, semi-offensive stereotypes, armchair psychology, or "I knew this guy once..." anecdotes.
There are entire fields of engineering that neither need nor have the PE certification. Aerospace engineering is one of them. I imagine most EEs and Computer Engineering majors also don't opt for a PE. No such class was in my curriculum and I only recall Civil Engineering majors doing that. This was my experience going through a 4 year program in the US in the mid-2000s.
posted by indubitable at 10:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
There is very little in this thread that isn't wild conjecture, semi-offensive stereotypes, armchair psychology, or "I knew this guy once..." anecdotes.
There are entire fields of engineering that neither need nor have the PE certification. Aerospace engineering is one of them. I imagine most EEs and Computer Engineering majors also don't opt for a PE. No such class was in my curriculum and I only recall Civil Engineering majors doing that. This was my experience going through a 4 year program in the US in the mid-2000s.
posted by indubitable at 10:29 AM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think this is missing an obvious factor, which is that in the Middle East and most of Asia, almost anyone from the upper social strata has some amount of engineering training. It's considered a necessary prerequisite for politics, business, almost anything else -- in part because there aren't a whole lot of slots for other education options. Whereas in the developed world, there are all kinds of other rigorous education options including the humanities, law, medicine, etc. that are considered suitable preparation for the scions of the upper class, and in fact engineering is a niche field that you only go into if you're truly interested in it.
posted by miyabo at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2016 [11 favorites]
"There is also a strong correlation between the use of leaded gasoline (and other lead containing products) and terrorism. Iraq and Yemen have only recently started phasing it out for example."
Indeed. There's been a sharp drop in juvenile crime in the US, roughly coinciding with the decline in environmental lead exposure. Interesting stuff.
posted by jetsetsc at 10:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Indeed. There's been a sharp drop in juvenile crime in the US, roughly coinciding with the decline in environmental lead exposure. Interesting stuff.
posted by jetsetsc at 10:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
With respect to "engineer's disease," it's worth pointing out that a plurality of the disagreement about climate change comes from engineers, rather than climate scientists. That is, people who lack the training and context to really understand climatology, much less had even a single course in the subject, or even read a Wallace Broecker book.
In college, training as a geologist, I learned not to trust engineers, because they tended not to have adequate education in geology, even when their engineering specialty would have benefited from it. For example, a dam failure that could have been avoided by knowing more hydrogeology. Then, when I got into the working world, I found that what I learned in school was far too true. Many engineers essentially ignored what was outside of their area of expertise and assumed you were stupider because you weren't one of them. Plenty didn't, of course, but I knew more than a few who did. I was hoping it would have been otherwise. And then another time, I was at a meeting about hydraulic fracturing at a small town in PA, near where I lived at the time, where an engineer (who I think said he used to work on nuclear power plants?) insisted that it was bad to pump oil out of the ground because it was necessary to lubricate the movement of tectonic plates.
He didn't take correction from an actual geologist well. Not that I'm brilliant, but any first or second-year geology student could have easily corrected him on that one and also told him how we have the data to know better.
(Pro tip: If anybody even discussing climate change can't tell you what thermohaline circulation is, or the specific temperature at which water is most dense, start ignoring them, they don't have enough basic knowledge to be a source of clarification for you)
This is not to say that all engineers are obtuse, or even that all engineers as a class are the same. However, I've noticed that a lot of engineers, particularly male engineers, are the kind of people who overstate their own ability and knowledge (Dunning-Kruger strikes again!) and disparage the knowledge and value of people who are not like them. In my experience, the women I knew who were engineers almost never had that problem. But, like many fields, it would really benefit from gender parity.
Anyway, the ridiculously over-confident and dismissive are over-represented in engineering. They're over-represented in corporate business arrangements, too, but I think there's a little less of the generic businessman type in areas where terrorists are overrepresented. What we're seeing here is a field where a certain personality type is common, and who then goes on to do other things. And the article goes to the trouble of pointing that out:
"The need for closure, he says, is an example of systematic thinking, or a preference for conducting analysis without the distraction of emotions. In some cases, systematic thinking is accompanied by traits like self-aggrandizement and low levels of empathy. But that cluster of characteristics isn’t necessarily dangerous, he says. Maybe one person in five has them, he guesses. These people might seek rule-bound jobs, like engineering or computer science. They probably wouldn’t blow themselves up...Will it make any difference in the fight against violent extremism? Probably not. 'You’d have to pre-empt the inclusion of, say, the one billion men in society who have this trait,' Victoroff says. And, he adds, no therapy can cure it."
One billion sounds low to me.
posted by Strudel at 10:49 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
In college, training as a geologist, I learned not to trust engineers, because they tended not to have adequate education in geology, even when their engineering specialty would have benefited from it. For example, a dam failure that could have been avoided by knowing more hydrogeology. Then, when I got into the working world, I found that what I learned in school was far too true. Many engineers essentially ignored what was outside of their area of expertise and assumed you were stupider because you weren't one of them. Plenty didn't, of course, but I knew more than a few who did. I was hoping it would have been otherwise. And then another time, I was at a meeting about hydraulic fracturing at a small town in PA, near where I lived at the time, where an engineer (who I think said he used to work on nuclear power plants?) insisted that it was bad to pump oil out of the ground because it was necessary to lubricate the movement of tectonic plates.
He didn't take correction from an actual geologist well. Not that I'm brilliant, but any first or second-year geology student could have easily corrected him on that one and also told him how we have the data to know better.
(Pro tip: If anybody even discussing climate change can't tell you what thermohaline circulation is, or the specific temperature at which water is most dense, start ignoring them, they don't have enough basic knowledge to be a source of clarification for you)
This is not to say that all engineers are obtuse, or even that all engineers as a class are the same. However, I've noticed that a lot of engineers, particularly male engineers, are the kind of people who overstate their own ability and knowledge (Dunning-Kruger strikes again!) and disparage the knowledge and value of people who are not like them. In my experience, the women I knew who were engineers almost never had that problem. But, like many fields, it would really benefit from gender parity.
Anyway, the ridiculously over-confident and dismissive are over-represented in engineering. They're over-represented in corporate business arrangements, too, but I think there's a little less of the generic businessman type in areas where terrorists are overrepresented. What we're seeing here is a field where a certain personality type is common, and who then goes on to do other things. And the article goes to the trouble of pointing that out:
"The need for closure, he says, is an example of systematic thinking, or a preference for conducting analysis without the distraction of emotions. In some cases, systematic thinking is accompanied by traits like self-aggrandizement and low levels of empathy. But that cluster of characteristics isn’t necessarily dangerous, he says. Maybe one person in five has them, he guesses. These people might seek rule-bound jobs, like engineering or computer science. They probably wouldn’t blow themselves up...Will it make any difference in the fight against violent extremism? Probably not. 'You’d have to pre-empt the inclusion of, say, the one billion men in society who have this trait,' Victoroff says. And, he adds, no therapy can cure it."
One billion sounds low to me.
posted by Strudel at 10:49 AM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Another thing it would be interesting to look at is whether engineers are overrepresented in other perfectionistic ideologies, such as Marxism, libertarianism, evangelical Christianity, Objectivism, and similar. The engineering mindset tends to look for perfect solutions, the one "Right Way", optimization, and so forth.
posted by theorique at 10:52 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by theorique at 10:52 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Engineers who are young earth creationists exist. Scientists, not so much.
About that...
I mean, it's a nice theory you have there and all, but like so many other just-so stories, it simply doesn't hold.
posted by Dysk at 11:03 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
About that...
I mean, it's a nice theory you have there and all, but like so many other just-so stories, it simply doesn't hold.
posted by Dysk at 11:03 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Ted Kaczynski showed that doing mathematics isn't necessarily going to deter someone from violence.Well, not when the MK Ultra folks are done with you, anyway.
This may be good evidence against my overwrought theory above, though. If craving for consistency is the causal factor linking engineering to religious terrorism, then it ought to be a much stronger factor linking mathematics. The (coincidentally-named) Principle of Explosion is as unforgiving of inconsistency as you can get.
Yet after Kaczynski and "Alexander Pell" I can't find even a third example of a mathematician terrorist... Surely there's been more than one per century?
posted by roystgnr at 11:04 AM on March 23, 2016
I think this is missing an obvious factor, which is that in the Middle East and most of Asia, almost anyone from the upper social strata has some amount of engineering training.
The article says that the researchers control for that by using people from the same countries (and I'd suspect, though it doesn't say in the article, similar social/economic strata), though.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
The article says that the researchers control for that by using people from the same countries (and I'd suspect, though it doesn't say in the article, similar social/economic strata), though.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:08 AM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
They focused on three traits. One is the need for cognitive closure, or a preference for order and distaste for ambiguity. [...] also have two other tendencies: They accept prevailing hierarchies and, when confronted with the unfamiliar, they experience high levels of disgust.
Show people how to embrace uncertainty and have a little empathy, problems solved! (We are doomed.)
posted by DigDoug at 11:21 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Show people how to embrace uncertainty and have a little empathy, problems solved! (We are doomed.)
posted by DigDoug at 11:21 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Previously, from March 2008. Lazy me wants to know if this is the same study group and university?
Islamic terrorists are more likely to be engineers than members of any other profession--and not because engineers possess superior technological skills. That's the conclusion of a controversial Oxford University study that has the engineering community buzzing. (PDF) The study's disturbing finding blames what it calls a universal engineering mindset, which it describes as one drawn to structure and rules plus clear, single solutions to complex problems. When coupled with the harsh realities of life in many Islamic countries, terrorism can be the result, the study says. ~ Via EETimes
Some righteous snarking online includes,
This assertion based on some very fuzzy numbers indeed.
We compiled a list of 404 members of violent Islamist groups drawing from a variety of sources... Our sources include... the press, governmental and nongovernmental organisations and websites... We searched in Lexis Nexis... and in Google. We also searched... Fox News; CTV News; Dutch News...
posted by infini at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2016
Islamic terrorists are more likely to be engineers than members of any other profession--and not because engineers possess superior technological skills. That's the conclusion of a controversial Oxford University study that has the engineering community buzzing. (PDF) The study's disturbing finding blames what it calls a universal engineering mindset, which it describes as one drawn to structure and rules plus clear, single solutions to complex problems. When coupled with the harsh realities of life in many Islamic countries, terrorism can be the result, the study says. ~ Via EETimes
Some righteous snarking online includes,
This assertion based on some very fuzzy numbers indeed.
We compiled a list of 404 members of violent Islamist groups drawing from a variety of sources... Our sources include... the press, governmental and nongovernmental organisations and websites... We searched in Lexis Nexis... and in Google. We also searched... Fox News; CTV News; Dutch News...
posted by infini at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2016
Sorry, it was a glib way of saying: As someone who works as an engineer, I think the overlap between "engineer's disease" and "terrorist mindset" is self-evident and unsurprising.
I saw someone on HN* recently advocating for a formal specification of law, where legal decisions could be both algorithmically determined and provably correct. This pretty much speaks for itself, I think.
* I don't know why I keep doing it to myself either.
posted by invitapriore at 11:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
I saw someone on HN* recently advocating for a formal specification of law, where legal decisions could be both algorithmically determined and provably correct. This pretty much speaks for itself, I think.
* I don't know why I keep doing it to myself either.
posted by invitapriore at 11:26 AM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
I can't find even a third example of a mathematician terrorist
Ted Gold started out as a math major but went to sociology as more relevant to his cause. Mark Rudd now teaches college math in New Mexico.
Other Weather Underground members were English majors.
posted by BWA at 11:35 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Ted Gold started out as a math major but went to sociology as more relevant to his cause. Mark Rudd now teaches college math in New Mexico.
Other Weather Underground members were English majors.
posted by BWA at 11:35 AM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
What about mathematicians? Are they similarly inoculated by the exploratory nature of mathematical research?
Mathematics research involves a lot of self-induced cognitive dissonance, intentionally seeking out (not merely tolerating) ambiguity, and a decently high failure rate, among other aspects of the activity which might suggest that its practitioners are no more prone than usual to the type of absolutist attitudes that I (maybe naively) consider to be a prerequisite for the kind of political violence under discussion.
Moreover, mathematics is, because of the philosophically baked-in specific standards of truth (which I might even say are what characterize mathematics), pretty egalitarian compared to other academic pursuits, at least anecdotally. While the engineer might entertain a quixotic obsession with "correctness", I'm offended -- I think, basically as a mathematician, even if what's at issue is not math -- by assertions that definitely non-inevitable things (impractical rules, archaic social conventions with no remaining socially practical value, etc.) are How Things Are or How Things Should Be Done. Exposure to math -- where we're certain by fiat, in principle -- has shoved in my face how unstructured many types of non-mathematical reality actually are. Instead of looking like Distilled Truth, holy books and constitutions look to me like low-rent Euclid.
In other respects, I'm quite politically extreme, at least compared to demographically similar people, but being a mathematician may well have to do with why I'm not an "extremist" or a "fundamentalist" of one stripe or another.
posted by busted_crayons at 11:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
Mathematics research involves a lot of self-induced cognitive dissonance, intentionally seeking out (not merely tolerating) ambiguity, and a decently high failure rate, among other aspects of the activity which might suggest that its practitioners are no more prone than usual to the type of absolutist attitudes that I (maybe naively) consider to be a prerequisite for the kind of political violence under discussion.
Moreover, mathematics is, because of the philosophically baked-in specific standards of truth (which I might even say are what characterize mathematics), pretty egalitarian compared to other academic pursuits, at least anecdotally. While the engineer might entertain a quixotic obsession with "correctness", I'm offended -- I think, basically as a mathematician, even if what's at issue is not math -- by assertions that definitely non-inevitable things (impractical rules, archaic social conventions with no remaining socially practical value, etc.) are How Things Are or How Things Should Be Done. Exposure to math -- where we're certain by fiat, in principle -- has shoved in my face how unstructured many types of non-mathematical reality actually are. Instead of looking like Distilled Truth, holy books and constitutions look to me like low-rent Euclid.
In other respects, I'm quite politically extreme, at least compared to demographically similar people, but being a mathematician may well have to do with why I'm not an "extremist" or a "fundamentalist" of one stripe or another.
posted by busted_crayons at 11:39 AM on March 23, 2016 [7 favorites]
Next question: Are engineers, as a result of the hasty conclusions which engineers' disease lead them too, more likely to conclude that engineers are more likely to become terrorists?
Are we doing the same thing that we're accusing engineers of doing, using too little data to come to conclusions which are too sweeping?
posted by clawsoon at 11:47 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
Are we doing the same thing that we're accusing engineers of doing, using too little data to come to conclusions which are too sweeping?
posted by clawsoon at 11:47 AM on March 23, 2016 [12 favorites]
More anecdata: on my facebook, 98% of the people who post conspiracy theory links are engineers. The other people are a comparative literature major and a theologist.
I've taught in a technical university and co-written a BA-program in structural engineering. I like engineers and engineering. But the conspiracy stuff baffles me.
posted by mumimor at 11:48 AM on March 23, 2016
I've taught in a technical university and co-written a BA-program in structural engineering. I like engineers and engineering. But the conspiracy stuff baffles me.
posted by mumimor at 11:48 AM on March 23, 2016
Well, Islam is a prescription for engineering a society, so this may partially explain why radical Islam breeds terrorists.
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 11:53 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 11:53 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Engineering also seems to be a relative haven for the more hardcore kinds of Christian in the U.S. I always just saw this as representing a a branch of higher study that can make you some good money - which this variety of religious person seems to be quite amenable to (and to be fair it's a good idea if you're planning to have a lot of kids) - without even coming into direct conflict with religious beliefs about the nature of the universe.
posted by atoxyl at 12:02 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 12:02 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Put that together with this:
If you're a young Arab from the lower or middle class, here's what often happens: Your family invests every thing they have in sending you to a university so you can start a professional career. If it's in the west, the price level gap really knocks them down... But, to do that takes more than money. It takes "wasta" : connections. Which your family doesn't have.
(And yeah, I realize that people who end up in radical ideologies don't seem to necessarily start out extraordinarily personally religious.)
posted by atoxyl at 12:08 PM on March 23, 2016
If you're a young Arab from the lower or middle class, here's what often happens: Your family invests every thing they have in sending you to a university so you can start a professional career. If it's in the west, the price level gap really knocks them down... But, to do that takes more than money. It takes "wasta" : connections. Which your family doesn't have.
(And yeah, I realize that people who end up in radical ideologies don't seem to necessarily start out extraordinarily personally religious.)
posted by atoxyl at 12:08 PM on March 23, 2016
Poet
Horseback riding instructor
Social worker
Romance novel writer
Yeah, the failed painters, failed writers, failed commercial pilots, and chicken farmers usually go into government.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:28 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Horseback riding instructor
Social worker
Romance novel writer
Yeah, the failed painters, failed writers, failed commercial pilots, and chicken farmers usually go into government.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:28 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Here I was going to write some foofy thing about how we could do a better job at integrating the engineering disciplines with the arts and humanities, try to be more inclusive of engineers in campus life, provide better mental health options, improve the gender and ethnic diversity of engineering programs, but yeah, what was I thinking, just round 'em all up and put 'em in a camp somewhere, because "engineer's disease"!
/rolls eyes so hard they fall out/
posted by newdaddy at 12:32 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
/rolls eyes so hard they fall out/
posted by newdaddy at 12:32 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
1. Category, Determinism, and Hierarchy are artifacts of cognition. For many tasks that deal with natural phenomena they are useful approximation of relationships.
1.There is something interesting about engineering that pushes people toward being cranks. Is this related? As someone mentioned above, is it a way for people with traditional beliefs to do rewarding scientific work while being abstracted from aspects of the sciences that would more directly contradict their faith?
3. I would conjecture that engineering is an important outlet for nationalist expression in the middle east for a number of reasons. Starting with the failure of Iran to nationalize its oil production in the 1950s, the growth of homegrown expertise has been a strategic objective for many states.
It's likely that people interested in sovereignty would pursue engineering as a discipline because it is the most obvious form of control that western countries exert over gulf states. The relationship between extremism, nationalism, and terrorism is complex.
4. The proportion of people with the means to pull off a terrorist attack (especially pre/early internet) is not particularly high. This is the reason that security services used get very excited about Chief Bombmakers. Now there are a lot of bombmakers, but maybe the technical skills are still concentrated in people who would be engineers?
posted by ethansr at 12:36 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
I guess the thing I'm not getting here is, if you think engineers are a high percentage of terrorists, why wouldn't you look very closely at how we educate and socialize engineers, as a major potential cause for this outcome? Instead, the tack here seems to be "they're different than us" which is unhelpful and built mostly on anecdotes of "that one weird guy I talked to once". I sort of object to the 'othering' of engineers that is happening here.
If the cause were something innate to engineers, and their personality type, wouldn't you expect there to be some correlation between the number of terrorists in a country and the number of engineers per capita in that country? Japan, just for instance, has a lot of engineers, relatively, but not very many terrorists.
posted by newdaddy at 12:58 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
If the cause were something innate to engineers, and their personality type, wouldn't you expect there to be some correlation between the number of terrorists in a country and the number of engineers per capita in that country? Japan, just for instance, has a lot of engineers, relatively, but not very many terrorists.
posted by newdaddy at 12:58 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think a lot of the speculation in this thread about what part of an engineering education makes us engineers violent terrorists (personally I blame the long line-up and the smaller Tim's on the engineering side of campus vs the shorter line and much bigger Tim Horton's on the science side of campus fostering a life-long grudge against non-engineers) is making a wild leap in assuming that the experience of an engineering student in the USA is the same as say in Iran . For example when I was doing my engineering learnin' we didn't have a choice on whether we took classes specifically on ethics and the impact of technology on society, we had to. We all had to take a class on professional ethics and the law as well since virtually all engineers must have a P.Eng. here. This is not the case, I gather, in the United States, and the US and Canada are otherwise pretty similar culturally and in terms of curriculum. I don't think we can meaningfully speculate on what, if anything, in the engineering curricula makes for violent jihad without comparing what that education looks like in the countries these terrorists came from. I am also pretty suspicious that there is some singular engineering mindset, and what we aren't seeing here in the thread is just confirmation bias for any particular trait you pull out of your ass.
Now for some wild speculation of my own: Engineering still has a problem with just being in the 21st century in terms of diversity &c. I wouldn't be surprised if the same underlying forces that make engineering faculties and the engineering profession weirdly socially conservative also end up creating a safe space for people leaning towards terrorism and extremism, especially extremism aimed at creating or preserving a socially conservative space (I am completely talking out of my ass here!). Maybe someone with an analytical mindset that could either major in science or major engineering would lean towards engineering if they had more extreme conservative or religious views because other engineers are either themselves somewhat conservative or ambivalent.
Regarding Dunning-Kruger, I've always found Comp-Sci majors to be the worst, but I think that's simply because the sphere of things I know something about and the sphere of things they know know something about don't intersect very much. So when a Comp-Sci major speculates about something they know little about but I actually know something about it's glaring (probably the converse it true as well, but I prefer not to think about that). There is a reason why we all diagnose the Dunning-Kruger effect in professions other than our own.
I've always favoured a more prosaic explanation for engineers-as-cranks: there are simply more engineers than say scientists in the world because a lot of people go into engineering and the barrier to being an engineer is lower vs a scientist. For example I doubt anyone would take me seriously if I pointed to my B.Sc. in chemistry alone as reason why I should be called a chemist, but my B.Sc. in chemical engineering entitles me to being called an engineer. So in the internet message board cliché of engineers with wacko opinions: if the fraction of people who are wackos is similar between engineers and say climate scientists, we would expect more engineer-wackos to climate scientist wackos because there are simply more engineers to be wacko in the first place. This analysis may not be true, but I like it because I can continue on being an engineer without critically analysing how my education may have left me with gaping blind-spots that pre-dispose me to being a wacko.
posted by selenized at 12:59 PM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
Now for some wild speculation of my own: Engineering still has a problem with just being in the 21st century in terms of diversity &c. I wouldn't be surprised if the same underlying forces that make engineering faculties and the engineering profession weirdly socially conservative also end up creating a safe space for people leaning towards terrorism and extremism, especially extremism aimed at creating or preserving a socially conservative space (I am completely talking out of my ass here!). Maybe someone with an analytical mindset that could either major in science or major engineering would lean towards engineering if they had more extreme conservative or religious views because other engineers are either themselves somewhat conservative or ambivalent.
Regarding Dunning-Kruger, I've always found Comp-Sci majors to be the worst, but I think that's simply because the sphere of things I know something about and the sphere of things they know know something about don't intersect very much. So when a Comp-Sci major speculates about something they know little about but I actually know something about it's glaring (probably the converse it true as well, but I prefer not to think about that). There is a reason why we all diagnose the Dunning-Kruger effect in professions other than our own.
I've always favoured a more prosaic explanation for engineers-as-cranks: there are simply more engineers than say scientists in the world because a lot of people go into engineering and the barrier to being an engineer is lower vs a scientist. For example I doubt anyone would take me seriously if I pointed to my B.Sc. in chemistry alone as reason why I should be called a chemist, but my B.Sc. in chemical engineering entitles me to being called an engineer. So in the internet message board cliché of engineers with wacko opinions: if the fraction of people who are wackos is similar between engineers and say climate scientists, we would expect more engineer-wackos to climate scientist wackos because there are simply more engineers to be wacko in the first place. This analysis may not be true, but I like it because I can continue on being an engineer without critically analysing how my education may have left me with gaping blind-spots that pre-dispose me to being a wacko.
posted by selenized at 12:59 PM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
From the first linked article:
The sample of engineers whom Gambetta and Hertog describe represents a tiny fringe, and the two researchers are wary that their work might be misconstrued.
Yeah. No shit.
Metafilter users routinely dismiss studies like these for their lack of rigor, small sample sizes, and their sloppy "correlation must mean causation" conclusions. But that's only when those conclusions don't match their personal biases.
posted by rocket88 at 1:09 PM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
The sample of engineers whom Gambetta and Hertog describe represents a tiny fringe, and the two researchers are wary that their work might be misconstrued.
Yeah. No shit.
Metafilter users routinely dismiss studies like these for their lack of rigor, small sample sizes, and their sloppy "correlation must mean causation" conclusions. But that's only when those conclusions don't match their personal biases.
posted by rocket88 at 1:09 PM on March 23, 2016 [10 favorites]
Personally, as a Moolenaarian extremist, I have to restrain my desire to kill the infidel when I am forced to endure the open blasphemy of the St. IGNUcius day parade.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 1:11 PM on March 23, 2016
:%g/EMACS/dposted by [expletive deleted] at 1:11 PM on March 23, 2016
Metafilter users routinely dismiss studies like these for their lack of rigor, small sample sizes, and their sloppy "correlation must mean causation" conclusions. But that's only when those conclusions don't match their personal biases.
Well I should say the reason I like to bullshit about this topic is that I know a lot of engineers. I don't mean it particularly seriously.
posted by atoxyl at 1:12 PM on March 23, 2016
Well I should say the reason I like to bullshit about this topic is that I know a lot of engineers. I don't mean it particularly seriously.
posted by atoxyl at 1:12 PM on March 23, 2016
Well I should say the reason I like to bullshit about this topic is that I know a lot of engineers. I don't mean it particularly seriously.
50% of the people I know are women (shocking)
How seriously are you going to take my opinions about how good they are at driving?
BECAUSE OH MAN WOMEN DRIVERS, AMIRITE?
Do their uteruses get in the way of steering? I dunno, just bullshitting here. I don't mean it particularly seriously.
posted by GuyZero at 1:27 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
50% of the people I know are women (shocking)
How seriously are you going to take my opinions about how good they are at driving?
BECAUSE OH MAN WOMEN DRIVERS, AMIRITE?
Do their uteruses get in the way of steering? I dunno, just bullshitting here. I don't mean it particularly seriously.
posted by GuyZero at 1:27 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
I always regret these sarcastic comments, but really, there's no number of engineers that you can personally know that make random generalizations OK.
posted by GuyZero at 1:34 PM on March 23, 2016
posted by GuyZero at 1:34 PM on March 23, 2016
I've always heard that people who study engineering tend to become Scottish. What's up with that?
posted by valkane at 1:50 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by valkane at 1:50 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
I always regret these sarcastic comments, but really, there's no number of engineers that you can personally know that make random generalizations OK.
To clarify my comment, the only reason I didn't say that I'm an engineer is that I don't really think software development of the sort I do is usually approached rigorously enough to be called engineering. I just meant to specify that I'm coming at this like "man, why are [in-group] so weird," not "[out-group] are weird and they should feel bad," in case it wasn't obvious since you don't know me. (Also the only hypothesis I personally put forward was one that you actually favorited.) But yeah there are definitely some comments taking it too far in this thread.
posted by atoxyl at 1:57 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
To clarify my comment, the only reason I didn't say that I'm an engineer is that I don't really think software development of the sort I do is usually approached rigorously enough to be called engineering. I just meant to specify that I'm coming at this like "man, why are [in-group] so weird," not "[out-group] are weird and they should feel bad," in case it wasn't obvious since you don't know me. (Also the only hypothesis I personally put forward was one that you actually favorited.) But yeah there are definitely some comments taking it too far in this thread.
posted by atoxyl at 1:57 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
And the Oath was written by Kipling, so yeah, it's a little archaic.
Not that oath though. Because Kipling, for all that he was a bad man in lots of ways, was a very good writer. He wrote the one used in Canada, which is reproduced in here.
posted by howfar at 2:03 PM on March 23, 2016
Not that oath though. Because Kipling, for all that he was a bad man in lots of ways, was a very good writer. He wrote the one used in Canada, which is reproduced in here.
posted by howfar at 2:03 PM on March 23, 2016
I've always heard that people who study engineering tend to become Scottish. What's up with that?
Only true engineers though.
posted by ocschwar at 2:11 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
Only true engineers though.
posted by ocschwar at 2:11 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
I came from the Computer Science side of academia and not engineering, although there was some overlap in coursework. As far as my experience goes, this comment reminds me a lot of a course I took:
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering. To achieve Professional status an engineer must demonstrate a knowledge of applicable ethics and law.
We were required to take a Philosophy of Technology course. I really enjoyed it, probably due to having a few friends who were majoring in philosophy and generally finding my CS courses challenging and useful but less entertaining than my electives. My classmates didn't like the class. Some of them treated every non-CS, non-math class as one that they should be able to blow off. Others were genuinely not able to get the coursework, which was a combination of Philosophy 101 and specific readings related to the ethics of technology. I treated college as a way to become more well-rounded (well, academically -- I was a bit of a shut-in) but many people were just punching through those credit-hours. It was one of the first classes where I realized some of my classmates really just wanted to have a degree-to-career path and were really into defining themselves by their majors.
If I remember correctly, a former MeFi poster was actually in that class. He was very verbose, but I have no idea how he felt about the coursework or how he did.
posted by mikeh at 2:14 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Every engineering program I've seen teaches courses like Engineering Ethics and Social Implications of Engineering. To achieve Professional status an engineer must demonstrate a knowledge of applicable ethics and law.
We were required to take a Philosophy of Technology course. I really enjoyed it, probably due to having a few friends who were majoring in philosophy and generally finding my CS courses challenging and useful but less entertaining than my electives. My classmates didn't like the class. Some of them treated every non-CS, non-math class as one that they should be able to blow off. Others were genuinely not able to get the coursework, which was a combination of Philosophy 101 and specific readings related to the ethics of technology. I treated college as a way to become more well-rounded (well, academically -- I was a bit of a shut-in) but many people were just punching through those credit-hours. It was one of the first classes where I realized some of my classmates really just wanted to have a degree-to-career path and were really into defining themselves by their majors.
If I remember correctly, a former MeFi poster was actually in that class. He was very verbose, but I have no idea how he felt about the coursework or how he did.
posted by mikeh at 2:14 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm an engineer and work with about 25 others.
What are we like? Well, some of us are loners but most are sociable. Some are shy but most are pretty outgoing. Some are single and unattached but most aren't. Some are women. Some are Asian. Some are Muslim.
Some are artists and some are musicians. Quite a few are into sports, either as participants or fans. Some are liberal and some are conservative. As far as I know none are terrorists.
I can't think of a single character trait or personality type that would apply to more than half of us. We're remarkably very very different people. We all received an engineering education.
posted by rocket88 at 2:21 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
What are we like? Well, some of us are loners but most are sociable. Some are shy but most are pretty outgoing. Some are single and unattached but most aren't. Some are women. Some are Asian. Some are Muslim.
Some are artists and some are musicians. Quite a few are into sports, either as participants or fans. Some are liberal and some are conservative. As far as I know none are terrorists.
I can't think of a single character trait or personality type that would apply to more than half of us. We're remarkably very very different people. We all received an engineering education.
posted by rocket88 at 2:21 PM on March 23, 2016 [6 favorites]
Will this article convince Ted Cruz that the police should also be patrolling engineering schools?
posted by gteffertz at 2:28 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by gteffertz at 2:28 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
rocket88, I hear what you're saying, but 25 people, probably in one area of engineering, isn't really a representative population when it comes to statistical extrapolation, is it? At least that's what my engineering statistics class would lead me to believe.
posted by mikeh at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2016
posted by mikeh at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2016
I can't think of a single character trait or personality type that would apply to more than half of us.
Oh yeah? How do they feel about lighthouses? Be honest.
posted by valkane at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2016
Oh yeah? How do they feel about lighthouses? Be honest.
posted by valkane at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2016
I'm an engineer. From Bangalore. With a whole family full of 'em naturally. I have no idea what the argument is about but I thought I'd wade in with my 2 female rupees worth.
posted by infini at 2:30 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by infini at 2:30 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think it's not the article's point to imply a direct correlation between an engineering degree and a propensity to plan acts of terror, either -- the higher representation of engineers isn't particularly normalized to the number of total higher education degrees earned by people in the studied society, only to the subset of people who joined terrorist groups.
There are a lot of correlations that probably intersect with this slice, but this article only extrapolates upon one. That doesn't make the single group unnotable.
posted by mikeh at 2:36 PM on March 23, 2016
There are a lot of correlations that probably intersect with this slice, but this article only extrapolates upon one. That doesn't make the single group unnotable.
posted by mikeh at 2:36 PM on March 23, 2016
Maybe I'm missing something, but I believe they did attempt to normalize it (from the first link):
"This frequency far exceeded what would be predicted statistically; among male college students from the 19 countries represented in the sample, fewer than 12 percent studied engineering."
My personal (engineer's) take on the study is that, when you narrow your "terrorist" subset down to people that have completed very successful attacks and gained world-wide attention, engineers are simply overrepresented because we're very good at whatever we set out to do. I have not been convinced that there is anything in the "engineering mindset" that lends towards black/white thinking or terrorism.
""Having equations that balanced was very comforting," she says. Life, on the other hand, can be messy. Many times the choice is not between right and wrong, Stern says, but "between bad and worse.""
Maybe that works in school. In industry, finding the right spot "between bad and worse" is often the starting premise of any project.
posted by permiechickie at 5:00 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
"This frequency far exceeded what would be predicted statistically; among male college students from the 19 countries represented in the sample, fewer than 12 percent studied engineering."
My personal (engineer's) take on the study is that, when you narrow your "terrorist" subset down to people that have completed very successful attacks and gained world-wide attention, engineers are simply overrepresented because we're very good at whatever we set out to do. I have not been convinced that there is anything in the "engineering mindset" that lends towards black/white thinking or terrorism.
""Having equations that balanced was very comforting," she says. Life, on the other hand, can be messy. Many times the choice is not between right and wrong, Stern says, but "between bad and worse.""
Maybe that works in school. In industry, finding the right spot "between bad and worse" is often the starting premise of any project.
posted by permiechickie at 5:00 PM on March 23, 2016 [5 favorites]
Engineers are like [this] because [hunch + anecdotal evidence].
Is this thread for real?
posted by delight at 5:38 PM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
Is this thread for real?
posted by delight at 5:38 PM on March 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
If the cause were something innate to engineers, and their personality type, wouldn't you expect there to be some correlation between the number of terrorists in a country and the number of engineers per capita in that country? Japan, just for instance, has a lot of engineers, relatively, but not very many terrorists.
Saying that engineers are overrepresented among terrorists is not the same as saying that terrorists are overrepresented among engineers. There are presumably other factors that influence the likelihood of being a terrorist that would account for not seeing many terrorists in some countries with large proportions of engineers, even if engineering is truly associated with terrorism.
posted by gingerest at 5:39 PM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Saying that engineers are overrepresented among terrorists is not the same as saying that terrorists are overrepresented among engineers. There are presumably other factors that influence the likelihood of being a terrorist that would account for not seeing many terrorists in some countries with large proportions of engineers, even if engineering is truly associated with terrorism.
posted by gingerest at 5:39 PM on March 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
engineers are simply overrepresented because we're very good at whatever we set out to do.
I'm sure there is some element of selection bias here but I'm not sure if this is it or if I want this to be it.
posted by GuyZero at 6:00 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm sure there is some element of selection bias here but I'm not sure if this is it or if I want this to be it.
posted by GuyZero at 6:00 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
My experience with getting an engineering degree is that there was nothing inherent in the curriculum that would invite one to consider the moral dimensions of one's work; if you wanted that, you had to seek it out on your own with humanities electives.
Charles Schwartz is emeritus now but when he was teaching regular physics classes he told every class the first week he hoped none of them would ever take a job making weapons and he hoped that all of them would enroll in his Friday afternoon 2 credit pass/fail seminar on social responsibility so there is actually one counterexample.
Here is his booklet:
Social Responsibility
vol. 2 no.1
Information for Students on the military aspects of careers in PHYSICS
posted by bukvich at 6:44 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Charles Schwartz is emeritus now but when he was teaching regular physics classes he told every class the first week he hoped none of them would ever take a job making weapons and he hoped that all of them would enroll in his Friday afternoon 2 credit pass/fail seminar on social responsibility so there is actually one counterexample.
Here is his booklet:
Social Responsibility
vol. 2 no.1
Information for Students on the military aspects of careers in PHYSICS
posted by bukvich at 6:44 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wow, as a female engineer, it sure is awesome to come into this thread and see comments that blame sociopathic & violent behavior on the lack of women in the field! Not only do we get to face sexism and repeated messages of "you're not welcome here" every day while we attempt to do our goddamn jobs, but we also get blamed for not providing sex/love/affection for all the lonely engineers, thereby curing them of their pathology. Protip: people who are violent, angry, misanthropic, and filled with hate don't get magically cured if they get laid. It's not women's work to civilize or socialize men by volunteering their time, emotional labor, and bodies. This is especially true when we're talking about environments that are actively hostile to women in the first place.
posted by hindmost at 6:58 PM on March 23, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by hindmost at 6:58 PM on March 23, 2016 [21 favorites]
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is definitely in play here. Given the number of engineering students produced each year vs the number that go on to be terrorists, if engineering programs breed terrorists they aren't doing a terribly good job of it. I'd be more inclined to trust that this article is the impartial piece it pretends to be if it didn't lead with that headline.
posted by teh_boy at 7:48 PM on March 23, 2016
posted by teh_boy at 7:48 PM on March 23, 2016
In case anyone's actually interested in what Gambetta and Hertog themselves actually got up to, here's a link to their 2009 paper (pdf): Why are there so many engineers among Islamic radicals? European Journal of Sociology, 50 (2). You can also read an excerpt from their recent book, Engineers of Jihad:The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, here (also pdf).
Meanwhile according to the news, Najim Laachraoui, one of the suspects in the recent Brussels bombings "is believed to have studied electromechanical engineering at a local Catholic high school". Not being familiar with the French educational system, I'm not so sure what it means to study engineering at the high school level. Also, they're careful to hedge this with "is believed" which probably means they haven't been able to get confirmation from the school itself.
posted by mhum at 7:48 PM on March 23, 2016
Meanwhile according to the news, Najim Laachraoui, one of the suspects in the recent Brussels bombings "is believed to have studied electromechanical engineering at a local Catholic high school". Not being familiar with the French educational system, I'm not so sure what it means to study engineering at the high school level. Also, they're careful to hedge this with "is believed" which probably means they haven't been able to get confirmation from the school itself.
posted by mhum at 7:48 PM on March 23, 2016
If we're talking about Arabs and South Asians here I'm not sure there's statistical significance -- engineering is the default educational program for smart people from those regions. A bright young Pakistani kid isn't likely going to be a history major no matter what his political biases.
This is...ignorant. I have taken classes with Pakistani anthropology PhD students in the US.
posted by threeants at 8:45 PM on March 23, 2016
This is...ignorant. I have taken classes with Pakistani anthropology PhD students in the US.
posted by threeants at 8:45 PM on March 23, 2016
The article did a pretty good job of mentioning the uncertainty involved with a hypothesis, then moving on to discuss the implications if it were true, then repeating this down the chain so that while they never say anything that is a stretch on its own, by the end they are devoting multiple paragraphs to solutions for the severe problems caused by engineering education. Which, reading the article as a whole, there is zero evidence to suggest is a problem.
If it is true that Baader-Meinhof or the Weather Underground did not show the same pattern, that would certainly suggest that some sociological explanation about the type of people who enter engineering, from Islamic countries, in the present day, compared to other times and places, is an important factor. I'm biased--I've long thought frustrated elites were the ones who led the resistance historically. And usually elites who had done at least moderately well in the world created by their later enemy. Why engineers here and now, and not lawyers, I don't know, but the article doesn't really spend much time drilling down on that, moving on quickly from sociology with a "not all elites" comment.
This may sound like I've got a strong opinion or didn't like the article. I thought the article was interesting and I don't mind wild speculation (see my above paragraph as exhibit A.) I also find the fact that engineers are over represented, for whatever reason, helpful when dealing with pro-stereotyping tech heads who seem to think it's irresponsible not to generalize from rare events.
posted by mark k at 9:21 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
If it is true that Baader-Meinhof or the Weather Underground did not show the same pattern, that would certainly suggest that some sociological explanation about the type of people who enter engineering, from Islamic countries, in the present day, compared to other times and places, is an important factor. I'm biased--I've long thought frustrated elites were the ones who led the resistance historically. And usually elites who had done at least moderately well in the world created by their later enemy. Why engineers here and now, and not lawyers, I don't know, but the article doesn't really spend much time drilling down on that, moving on quickly from sociology with a "not all elites" comment.
This may sound like I've got a strong opinion or didn't like the article. I thought the article was interesting and I don't mind wild speculation (see my above paragraph as exhibit A.) I also find the fact that engineers are over represented, for whatever reason, helpful when dealing with pro-stereotyping tech heads who seem to think it's irresponsible not to generalize from rare events.
posted by mark k at 9:21 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's a clever psychological question, of "engineers vs extremists, what's the relationship?" I'm now wondering, what happens to people who have a "low need for cognitive closure"? For example, is Donald Trump's personality high, or low closure? It seems like a really complicated concept. I found these two explanations.
Need for Cognition
Need for Cognition is defined as the tendency to engage in and enjoy cognitive efforts (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). This motivation varies along a bipolar continuum. An individual with a high Need for Cognition finds satisfaction in thinking whereas an individual with a low Need for Cognition perceives thinking as a chore. … Individuals with a high Need for Cognition are more likely to engage in information seeking activities than individuals with a low Need for Cognition (Cacioppo et al., 1996, pp. 239–242). An individual with a high Need for Cognition will also seek more information, evaluate… and use a wider variety of information sources, including sources that were previously unknown (Cacioppo et al., 1996, p. 239; Petty et al., 2009). Last, simple messages tend to be more accepted by individuals with a low Need for Cognition, but rejected by individuals with a high Need for Cognition, and vice versa (e.g. Williams- Piehota et al., 2003).
Need for Cognitive Closure
Need for Cognitive Closure, in contrast, is defined by a desire for unambiguous information, as opposed to uncertainty or ambiguity (Kruglanski, 1989). It is conceptualized as a stopping mechanism that allows one to stop generating and testing hypotheses, and to form a judgment. This mechanism differs among individuals: some people may form a definitive opinion based on limited information while others may always resist making up their minds, whatever the amount of evidence at hand (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, pp. 343–344). … Individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure see uncertainty as aversive, which translates into two tendencies in their behaviors. On the one hand, individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure want to quickly terminate a state in which they feel uncertain (urgency tendency), and, on the other hand, they want to keep that state from recurring (permanence tendency) by relying on past knowledge and avoiding new information (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, p. 345). … there is a correlation between a higher Need for Cognitive Closure and a lower number of information sources that are sought before reaching a given judgment and a higher reliance on early or incomplete information (see Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, pp. 345–347). … Confidence in one’s decision is higher in individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure, as a result of the absence of extensive information processing (see Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, p. 345). Finally, they also prefer abstract descriptions and category labels, as these can be applied across a variety of situations, thus providing a more permanent knowledge.
Super interesting stuff. These theories are based on self-report inventories, though. Second, I wish there were concrete examples that we could relate with. Third, the bit about "abstract descriptions" is at first glance confusing: e.g., where would enjoyment of abstract art fall under this rubric; does preference for abstract art reflect high or low need for cognitive closure?
posted by polymodus at 11:18 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Need for Cognition
Need for Cognition is defined as the tendency to engage in and enjoy cognitive efforts (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). This motivation varies along a bipolar continuum. An individual with a high Need for Cognition finds satisfaction in thinking whereas an individual with a low Need for Cognition perceives thinking as a chore. … Individuals with a high Need for Cognition are more likely to engage in information seeking activities than individuals with a low Need for Cognition (Cacioppo et al., 1996, pp. 239–242). An individual with a high Need for Cognition will also seek more information, evaluate… and use a wider variety of information sources, including sources that were previously unknown (Cacioppo et al., 1996, p. 239; Petty et al., 2009). Last, simple messages tend to be more accepted by individuals with a low Need for Cognition, but rejected by individuals with a high Need for Cognition, and vice versa (e.g. Williams- Piehota et al., 2003).
Need for Cognitive Closure
Need for Cognitive Closure, in contrast, is defined by a desire for unambiguous information, as opposed to uncertainty or ambiguity (Kruglanski, 1989). It is conceptualized as a stopping mechanism that allows one to stop generating and testing hypotheses, and to form a judgment. This mechanism differs among individuals: some people may form a definitive opinion based on limited information while others may always resist making up their minds, whatever the amount of evidence at hand (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, pp. 343–344). … Individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure see uncertainty as aversive, which translates into two tendencies in their behaviors. On the one hand, individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure want to quickly terminate a state in which they feel uncertain (urgency tendency), and, on the other hand, they want to keep that state from recurring (permanence tendency) by relying on past knowledge and avoiding new information (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, p. 345). … there is a correlation between a higher Need for Cognitive Closure and a lower number of information sources that are sought before reaching a given judgment and a higher reliance on early or incomplete information (see Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, pp. 345–347). … Confidence in one’s decision is higher in individuals with a high Need for Cognitive Closure, as a result of the absence of extensive information processing (see Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009, p. 345). Finally, they also prefer abstract descriptions and category labels, as these can be applied across a variety of situations, thus providing a more permanent knowledge.
Super interesting stuff. These theories are based on self-report inventories, though. Second, I wish there were concrete examples that we could relate with. Third, the bit about "abstract descriptions" is at first glance confusing: e.g., where would enjoyment of abstract art fall under this rubric; does preference for abstract art reflect high or low need for cognitive closure?
posted by polymodus at 11:18 PM on March 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Here's a transcript from a talk by David Kilcullen (slyt) describing the motivation of terrorists:
It may surprise you or not surprise you that when we went to Iraq in 2007, General Petraeus and I said, “Do you know why these people fighting? Show us the data,” no study like [the Vietcong Motivation & Morale Study (1966), pdf] had ever been done. That was the period when the Secretary of Defense and military commander on the ground used to describe the enemy as “evil-doers” and say that “the evil-doers hate us because they hate who we are, not because of what we do.” And we said, well, let’s look into that. […]
Based on [a survey of 24,000 people in detention]— which was partly quantitative and partly based on interviews— we determined that 70% of the people were fighting us primarily for economic reasons. Another 20% were fighting us because they had belonged to a former regime group for a formerly dominant social group that had been dispossessed by what happened in Iraq after 2003. They were fighting us to reestablish their position of social or political ascendancy. Less than 10% of the people that we were fighting were motivated predominately by religious motivation or ideology associated with Al-Qaeda. And in fact, a high proportion those 10% were foreigners; they weren’t even from Iraq. So that’s the sort of data set for Iraq and we did similar surveys in Afghanistan later the tended to show that basically what you have on on the ground in most cases is a very, very small number of irreconcilable fanatics who draw their power from their ability to intimidate, manipulate, and mobilize a much larger group of people who are fighting us primarily because we’re in their space and feel like they need to defend themselves rather than because they naturally support that small extremist clique.
posted by yaymukund at 11:38 PM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
It may surprise you or not surprise you that when we went to Iraq in 2007, General Petraeus and I said, “Do you know why these people fighting? Show us the data,” no study like [the Vietcong Motivation & Morale Study (1966), pdf] had ever been done. That was the period when the Secretary of Defense and military commander on the ground used to describe the enemy as “evil-doers” and say that “the evil-doers hate us because they hate who we are, not because of what we do.” And we said, well, let’s look into that. […]
Based on [a survey of 24,000 people in detention]— which was partly quantitative and partly based on interviews— we determined that 70% of the people were fighting us primarily for economic reasons. Another 20% were fighting us because they had belonged to a former regime group for a formerly dominant social group that had been dispossessed by what happened in Iraq after 2003. They were fighting us to reestablish their position of social or political ascendancy. Less than 10% of the people that we were fighting were motivated predominately by religious motivation or ideology associated with Al-Qaeda. And in fact, a high proportion those 10% were foreigners; they weren’t even from Iraq. So that’s the sort of data set for Iraq and we did similar surveys in Afghanistan later the tended to show that basically what you have on on the ground in most cases is a very, very small number of irreconcilable fanatics who draw their power from their ability to intimidate, manipulate, and mobilize a much larger group of people who are fighting us primarily because we’re in their space and feel like they need to defend themselves rather than because they naturally support that small extremist clique.
posted by yaymukund at 11:38 PM on March 23, 2016 [8 favorites]
This thread is WELL ACTUALLYs within WELL ACTUALLYs, truly a honeypot trap.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:35 AM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:35 AM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
Fun fact: one of my profs and a couple of classmates in my engineering school in the mid-2000s were immigrants from the former Soviet Union. All three were female and all three talked about how weird it was that engineering was considered a man's job in the US, since it was considered women's work in their countries of origin.
So maybe don't apply your dickish anecdotal stereotypes of what American engineers are like and why they are the way they are are to explain the behavior of engineers in vastly different cultures that have totally different cultural contexts for the job of engineering, hey?
Signed, another pretty offended non-sociopathic (American) female engineer.
(Also, my all-engineering college definitely talked about the context of our work and ethics, and I graduated in 2006. It's my understanding that we were on the forefront of an ASEE push to do so. So yeah, mid-2000s, maybe you didn't get that memo, but I think it's becoming more and more standard in engineering curricula)
posted by olinerd at 5:01 AM on March 24, 2016 [9 favorites]
So maybe don't apply your dickish anecdotal stereotypes of what American engineers are like and why they are the way they are are to explain the behavior of engineers in vastly different cultures that have totally different cultural contexts for the job of engineering, hey?
Signed, another pretty offended non-sociopathic (American) female engineer.
(Also, my all-engineering college definitely talked about the context of our work and ethics, and I graduated in 2006. It's my understanding that we were on the forefront of an ASEE push to do so. So yeah, mid-2000s, maybe you didn't get that memo, but I think it's becoming more and more standard in engineering curricula)
posted by olinerd at 5:01 AM on March 24, 2016 [9 favorites]
How far is the distance from this being ye close to profiling of paperbags?
posted by infini at 5:13 AM on March 24, 2016
posted by infini at 5:13 AM on March 24, 2016
I always regret these sarcastic comments, but really, there's no number of engineers that you can personally know that make random generalizations OK.
posted by GuyZero at 4:34 PM
I know plenty of engineers that are OK at making random generalizations and follow plenty of rules of thumb.... generally not the "Many profest Christians are like to foolish builders, who build by guess, and by rule of thumb." kind of rule of thumb but... well... its sort of topical.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:03 AM on March 24, 2016
posted by GuyZero at 4:34 PM
I know plenty of engineers that are OK at making random generalizations and follow plenty of rules of thumb.... generally not the "Many profest Christians are like to foolish builders, who build by guess, and by rule of thumb." kind of rule of thumb but... well... its sort of topical.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:03 AM on March 24, 2016
Protip: people who are violent, angry, misanthropic, and filled with hate don't get magically cured if they get laid.This certainly sounds correct a priori, but I went to double-check, and it looks like it's empirically true too. Lone actor terrorists in the USA are less likely to be married, but that sample size is microscopic, and terrorist group members are roughly as likely to be married as the population as a whole; presumably if there's no significant difference there then even the unmarried ones aren't all Elliot Rodger types.
Side note: Those stats also confirmed my assumption that the vast majority (87%, as it turns out) of terrorists are men, but shut down my preconception that the majority would be young. Perpetrators of violent crime in general are very disproportionately young, but the average age for terrorists in the US is apparently barely younger than for the country as a whole.
posted by roystgnr at 7:36 AM on March 24, 2016 [1 favorite]
I wonder how much it's the result of social contagion rather than specific personality traits. mark k mentions the very different sorts of people who were involved in Baader-Meinhof, the Weather Underground, and other terrorist groups of the '60s and '70s.
Perhaps it has nothing to do with the personality traits of engineers, but rather an attraction to "people like me" who are "doing something important". So if a few engineering types were early recruits to Islamic terrorism, perhaps that started a snowball; disaffected engineers, who otherwise would've remained disaffected and depressed by themselves, realized that there were groups they could join where they'd be welcomed, where they'd find people like them.
Engineers in 1970s Germany, on the other hand, wouldn't have expected to get a warm welcome from the film students and journalists who founded the Red Army Faction.
Engineers also didn't seem to been drawn to terrorism in the Provisional IRA, which was dominated by construction and other blue-collar workers.
Perhaps the engineering connection is a historical accident; a real connection, but not a connection to engineering itself. Rather, a connection to a seed which happened to involve, early on, engineers. If the tape of history was re-run, perhaps a completely different occupational group would be dominating Islamic terrorism right now.
posted by clawsoon at 7:44 AM on March 24, 2016 [5 favorites]
Perhaps it has nothing to do with the personality traits of engineers, but rather an attraction to "people like me" who are "doing something important". So if a few engineering types were early recruits to Islamic terrorism, perhaps that started a snowball; disaffected engineers, who otherwise would've remained disaffected and depressed by themselves, realized that there were groups they could join where they'd be welcomed, where they'd find people like them.
Engineers in 1970s Germany, on the other hand, wouldn't have expected to get a warm welcome from the film students and journalists who founded the Red Army Faction.
Engineers also didn't seem to been drawn to terrorism in the Provisional IRA, which was dominated by construction and other blue-collar workers.
Perhaps the engineering connection is a historical accident; a real connection, but not a connection to engineering itself. Rather, a connection to a seed which happened to involve, early on, engineers. If the tape of history was re-run, perhaps a completely different occupational group would be dominating Islamic terrorism right now.
posted by clawsoon at 7:44 AM on March 24, 2016 [5 favorites]
I hear bakers and cooks made pretty good assassins in Medieval Times...
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:21 AM on March 24, 2016
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:21 AM on March 24, 2016
If you think there is a predominant engineering personality type or a so-called "engineers' disease" approach to problem solving, you will probably see it in the engineers you meet, but that's almost certainly observation bias.
(and the portrayal of engineers in TV and movies doesn't help)
posted by rocket88 at 9:12 AM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
(and the portrayal of engineers in TV and movies doesn't help)
posted by rocket88 at 9:12 AM on March 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
mareli, thanks for the post -- I'm definitely going to be buying and reading this book.
My super tentative hypothesis is that -- if there really is a consistent reason that people with formal engineering training or with work experience in engineering are more likely than others to get drawn into terrorism -- some similar dynamics operate regarding which software developers get drawn to the free & open source software movements (especially the more zealous bits).
posted by brainwane at 7:51 AM on March 29, 2016
My super tentative hypothesis is that -- if there really is a consistent reason that people with formal engineering training or with work experience in engineering are more likely than others to get drawn into terrorism -- some similar dynamics operate regarding which software developers get drawn to the free & open source software movements (especially the more zealous bits).
posted by brainwane at 7:51 AM on March 29, 2016
Are you saying that Debian maintainers are more likely to be terrorists, brainwane? :-)
posted by clawsoon at 1:18 PM on March 29, 2016
posted by clawsoon at 1:18 PM on March 29, 2016
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posted by korpe4r at 6:12 AM on March 23, 2016 [11 favorites]