
Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees? - pchristensen
http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/pagenum/all/
======
angelbob
This isn't the first article to suggest that engineers and scientists have
some specific, roughly opposite traits -- scientists are exploring, querying,
doing research, and engineers (note that they mostly mention mechanical
engineers here, so ignore your computer science background for a moment) are
usually applying established results rather than exploring the problem space.

I can see how an application-focused, problem-solving discipline would be
attractive to more rigid people with an interest in applying their principles
to the world to "fix" it, and how such people might also be more likely to be
terrorists.

Computer engineers seem to be somewhat less represented by this article
(again, all they actually mention are mechanical and architectural engineers),
and I'll bet that holds up even in the west -- being a computer "engineer"
isn't like being a mechanical engineer, in that we just don't know enough
about our discipline to do much rote applying of well-known principles.

That may change when and if Moore's Law stops doing its thing and we can start
getting a good feel for the relative balance of computer resources and human
resources in terms of cost. As long as that changes by a factor of two every
eighteen months I don't see us settling into any well-established principles
of work balance between people and computers, ever.

------
raheemm
_"How should one put the balance right?" - recent Nigerian terrorist_

I think this is the key point - the conflict muslims feel between the western
lifestyle and the islamic lifestyle. This conflict is not just between
cultures. Even in muslim lands, some muslims feel a conflict between the
earthly life and the life after death. I suppose most muslims deal with this
conflict in a healthy way. But my experience as a muslim in the west, is that
there are many more who struggle with this. The problem is exacerbated by the
fact that Islam does not provide a central theological authority (like the
pope) to address these issues.

Muslims are left to their own soul-searching/research or the local imams. The
local imams are either not trained to address such issues or offer solutions
that dont work in real life.

One institution that is trying to address this problem is Zaytuna College
(<http://www.zaytunacollege.org/>). It is the first American Muslim college.
They are trying to create Muslim imams that are trained in both the islamic
laws but also in the broader western philosophies and ideas. Presumably, this
training will enable them to address such spiritual conflicts.

------
zck
Interestingly, creationists with advanced degrees often turn out to be
engineers: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis>

~~~
pchristensen
Thanks, I hadn't heard of this before!

Perhaps learning how things work makes you more sympathetic to the idea of a
creator, or suspicious of complex things occurring spontaneously, or seeing
how complex systems can arise from a few well chosen first principles.

I've found that the more I learn about society, neurology, human psychology,
and organizing principles of systems, it makes me more confident of two
things. First, that the world could definitely and logically be the product of
a certain kind of Creator (not all visions or ideas of God apply). Second,
that such a Creator is not necessary if you believe in infinite universes.

The thing that bothers me about #2 is that if you believe in infinite
universes, shouldn't there be a universe with a God in it?

~~~
carey
Which infinity? If you believe in infinite rational numbers, shouldn’t there
be a rational number equal to the ratio of a circle’s radius to its
circumference?

(I don’t believe in God or infinite universes. Standard Model FTW!)

------
fiaz
The writings of Mircea Eliade need to make their way into the Muslim world.
The need to separate the "sacred" from the "profane" will greatly benefit
Muslims to experience transcendental views internally instead of imposing
superficial ideals externally.

It is difficult to have a transcendental experience without an appreciation
for the sacred, and these two things are not mutually exclusive or only
reserved to those who follow a religion. I don't think anybody here can argue
that witnessing the birth of a child is anything but a sacred moment; perhaps
for some achieving some level of success in their profession may translate
into a sacred moment; even something as mundane as sipping a fine brew of tea
can be sacred. (These are things that don't require you believe in a "higher
power" or even a religion - but it could mean something to you and to you
alone; when it happens in the presence of somebody else and they feel it
positively at the same time, you could call that "bonding", and that too is
sacred.) It really doesn't matter what the worldly manifestation is, but
rather how it may positively affect you internally on a purely human level.
The point is that "sacred" is internally directed and brings peace to your
being. For me, defining "profane" or that which is worldly is a bit easier to
define: anything that is not sacred.

The mixture of technical problem solving and "religiosity" is a perversion of
the highest degree because then there is no distinction between _x_ and _y_
and to simply delete one of these variables becomes a technicality without
emotion, insight, or appreciation for one another or even oneself. In my
experience, this is happening in the Muslim world because there are schools of
thought (such as engineering or science) that solve problems wonderfully and
in a methodical way to give excellent results in the real world; when combined
with the uneducated view of treating every word in scripture as fact then
these two things can be intermingled without distinction: religious views are
explained through logic (sans sacred/transcendental experience) and wordly
methodologies that otherwise benefit humanity enable actions to be carried out
in the name of "religion".

If only this simple distinction of "sacred" and "profane" can find their ways
into the hearts of all people from all walks of life, I think we will be a
step closer to relating to one primarily as human beings. It is a universal
and even human understanding that anybody from any belief system can
appreciate. Anybody who mixes sacred with profane and proclaims that they
understand the belief system they adhere to is either fooling themselves or is
a flat out liar.

If you are Muslim and reading this, please reflect upon what I mean by this
distinction and discuss it at your next Halaqa, if that's your thing.

------
patio11
It seems a bit of a stretch to apply data from American engineers (who very
rarely attempt to blow up civilians) to Islamic terrorists. My school also had
conservatives disproportionately represented on the faculty -- i.e. they were
almost within a stone's throw of their representation in the general
population, not the smallest minority on campus like they were in ArtSci. As a
conservative with degrees in both making stuff and making stuff up, I always
figured this was because nobody at the engineering school ever said, in as
many words, "You're a Republican? Who let you in here?"

~~~
btilly
Sometimes you have to use the data you have and not the data that you wish you
had.

They included the American data set because it was the best data set available
on the question of political leanings of engineers. They sanity checked the
result of that data set against available data sets in other countries and
places, including a 1948 data set from Egypt, and the other data sources were
consistent with the American one. When you add the other lines of evidence
they had there strongly suggestive evidence that engineers broadly tend
towards right wing conservative politics across multiple countries and
cultures.

And having right wing conservative politics within the Muslim world is likely
to make you sympathetic towards al qaeda and related organizations.

------
bungula
Here's an exceptionally good hypotheses explaining why western educated
Muslims tend to be radicalists:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorde...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorder/)

~~~
seldo
I think it would be helpful to summarize:

"Western education forces lifelong Muslims to more thoroughly analyze their
beliefs, which until that point they just accepted without questioning. They
then go to one extreme or the other: either they reject those beliefs, or take
them to their logical conclusion and decide to convert/kill infidels."

It's interesting, but it doesn't address why this would happen to engineers in
particular, rather than just all western educated Muslims.

~~~
pchristensen
Presumably because engineers are trained to be analytical and to trust their
analysis, so they are more likely to follow through on the outcome of their
soul searching.

~~~
nwatson
Or presumably, as in another post here, that engineers tend to be more
educated in the west and work more in the west than those in other
disciplines, and so have more exposure to the west.

------
nwatson
An article I read some time back explored why many terrorists of the Islamic
bent seemed to be well-educated, had spent some time in American/European
universities, and often had established careers in "the west". The speculation
was that __some __of those who came to "the west" and tried to stay longer
term had a hard time adapting. This portion tended to become radicalized. The
article further speculated that if they had stayed in their country of origin
they would have been happy and not been radicalized.

Of all career paths someone in the middle east might choose, the one their
societies/families deem most worthy of the extra expense of a western
education is engineering. Engineering + Islam might not be the key to
radicalization, rather it's Exposure-to-West + Islam that seems to be the
stimulus for radicalization. And Engineering students from the middle east
have a much higher Exposure-to-West level than, say, art historians or
geographers.

------
xcombinator
As Oriental philosophy said "Stupid questions bring stupid answers". I propose
new questions:

Why do so many terrorist have black or brown hair?. Why do so many terrorist
are men? Why do so many terrorist are young? Why do so many terrorist are
raised out of USA?.

Extracting conclusions from over generalizations is not only usefulness, it's
dangerous.

HN is becoming more and more like reddit this days.

~~~
Locke1689
Putting aside the egregious spelling and grammar errors (I assume English is
not your native language), I fail to see your point.

 _Why [are so many terrorists male]? Why [are so many terrorists younger than
average]?_

These questions in particular seem to be fine. Questioning the pathology and
psychology of dangerous radicalism is an interesting and worthwhile question.

------
gaius
<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0912/09122601>

The Pantsbomber (or whatever we're calling him) graduated from my old
department! Ermm... This won't do anything for our reputation as being halfway
competent engineers :-/

------
roc
Is it surprising that terror plots requiring larger cash outlays,
improvisation and greater precision tend to be staffed with better-
trained/smarter operatives?

It's not like they're sending architectural engineers to die in pedestrian
human-bomb attacks. They just do it in the cases where the operative needs to
understand/learn how to package, nitrate and detonate a crude explosive under
stress, or _learn to fly a plane_.

Only through selective reporting do engineers appear over-represented.

~~~
btilly
You obviously have not read the paper that they are summarizing. Else you'd
not have brought up a point that they addressed directly and came up with
strong evidence against.

In different times and places there have been many terrorist organizations who
are supporting different kinds of causes. Engineers are significantly
overrepresented in right wing religious ones, and are virtually nonexistent in
various left wing ones.

Were it a simple case of selective reporting and economics then you would not
see a correlation between the profession involved in the terrorist
organization and the cause that organization is for. But there is a strong
correlation, and therefore something deeper is happening than us noticing
engineers because their skills and economic status make them useful to
terrorists.

~~~
roc
I hadn't read the whole paper, no.

The article went only as far as suggesting that right-wing ideologies appealed
more to the engineering mindset. And I'm hardly convinced that any given
extremist ideology is more, or less, seeking to bring order and unambiguity to
the world. That the summary went on to note that fundamentalist extremists
were _actively recruiting_ engineers didn't exactly help the argument that the
over-representation is a natural result of mind-sets.

All things being equal, perhaps there _are_ more engineers willing to kill for
Allah than ELF. But the summary in that article is so unconvincing that I'm
not particularly motivated to spend time with the paper.

------
btilly
This is all summarized from a paper they say was posted "this summer". That's
poor fact checking because if you follow the link to
[http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jih...](http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf)
you'll see a big fat 2007 on the title page for a reason.

That said it is an interesting paper, and I recommend that people read it. I
certainly learned something when I ran into it a couple of years ago.

------
gooddelta
Engineers are smart enough to see how fucked up everything is; their lack of
social skills make it easy for them to justify its violent destruction.

------
pwnstigator
[http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligenc...](http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-
intelligence.php)

 _Depending on the specific age and gender, an adolescent with an IQ of 100
was 1.5 to 5 times more likely to have had intercourse than a teen with a
score of 120 or 130. Each additional point of IQ increased the odds of
virginity by 2.7% for males and 1.7% for females._

~~~
rdouble
What does this have to do with the article? How did you get so many upvotes?
Are you that creepy guy who was banned for bringing up "casual sex" in every
other thread?

edit - seriously though... did I miss something? I didn't see the word sex
mentioned in the original article, or the word terrorism mentioned in the
second article...

~~~
dandelany
He's trying to make a tenuous leap to suggest that engineers are smart, smart
people are sexually repressed, and sexually repressed people are more likely
to be violent. I understand what he's saying, but I don't buy it. Claiming
that terrorists' grievances are based in deeply-rooted sexual problems is
juvenile, and doesn't respect the gravity or history of the situation, IMHO.

~~~
gjm11
Especially as (e.g.) there doesn't seem to be any similar terroristic tendency
among physicists, who are also very smart (anecdotally I'd say: slightly
smarter on average) and smart in broadly similar ways.

(Note: "on average" means just that; I know some very, very smart engineers.)

------
dotcoma
because engineers don't get laid enough - everybody knows this! ;-)

------
nightlifelover
Ok I've heard this before.. Let's look at other subjects.. for example
philosophy: What about the great Philosopher Dr Joseph Goebbels or Karl Marx?
The discussion is quite ridiculous.

