

Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees? - cwan
http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/

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tokenadult
A lot of submissions are escaping the duplicate detector recently.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021813>

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manvsmachine
It seems to be a pretty simple explanation to me: we are a group of
_extremely_ opinionated people with a serious bent towards problem solveing.
Very few, if any, other fields of study are founded so deeply on the
philosophy of taking matters into one's own hands. Look at the paragon of
software engineering, the open-source model: if you see a problem, you can
_fix it yourself_. Don't like the design decisions that your favorite app is
making? _Fork it_. They're taking to long to include a feature you need?
_Build it yourself_.

Similarly, while the more traditional sciences (Bio, Physics, etc) are about
observing and understanding our environment, their engineering counterparts
are about mastering are about mastering and manipulating them in ways that we
can take advantage of. At the end of the day, scientists are looking to be
able to say, "This is how the world works". And, inevitably, an engineer will
respond, "but does it _really_ have to?"

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JoelMcCracken
I like it. Good explanation, and it resonates with my own views.

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JoelMcCracken
On another note, I personally noticed that engineering majors and science
majors tend to have a vastly different outlook on things. As a science
student, I have found it challenging to have meaningful conversations with
engineering majors. I'm not sure what the cause is, but I did not find this
article surprising _at all_. Sadly, it semi-confirms my own bias.

If I had to hypothesize, I would say that there is some perception by
outsiders of the study of engineering that makes it seem valuable. I once
heard a chem engineering student say (in chemistry class, I took two semesters
of chemistry for fun) "why would I want to be a chemistry major? you never get
to blow anything up." I'm not implying that this young man would be interested
in terrorism (I don't think so), but I just want to point out that his humor
and point of view are completely foreign to me, and but we are both ostensibly
students of science. It seems like many of the engineering students I know
like science because its "awesome", whereas many of the science students I
know like science because they think it is important and interesting.

What is more, there is a very, very large number of engineers who are also
very deeply religious in America. Which is also interesting.

I would really love to read more research into this, if anyone has any ideas.

PS, no offense to anyone in particular if you are an engineering student. I
think you understand that I'm not making statements about all engineers. I
almost went that path myself, and actually can't remember why I decided to
stick with computer science.

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fburnaby
_because its "awesome", whereas many of the science students I know like
science because they think it is important and interesting._

I think you're right on the money. I just finished an engineering degree and
am now doing a MSc. I think my engineering classmates like science because
they can learn things that are "true" and "know the answers". We would talk
about projects, and standards and make bad puns using our newly-learned
technical jargon. My science friends use words like "sexy" when describing
theories, and they like to think about things in a far more epistomologically
sophisticated way.

They mentioned the high religiosity and conservatism of engineers in the
article. I wouldn't be at all surprised if these are the traits that
distinguish engineers from scientists.

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jacquesm
Why does the army corps of 'engineers' get called in when something needs to
be destroyed ?

It seems to be pretty obvious, construction and destruction are the two sides
of the same coin.

In order to effectively destroy something it helps if you have knowledge of
how things are constructed.

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chrischen
No offense, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fly a plane into a
building and know that the building will suffer significant damage.

I mean if they were really smart, they'd have crashed one plane into one tower
at just the right place to have it collapse on the other tower. They'd would
have also saved one planeful of passengers' lives.

Plus you don't become a terrorist to destroy things just because you know how
to destroy things. They obviously did it out of radical idealism and
desperation, and something else lead to that other than the fact that they
knew how to destroy things.

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jacquesm
Destruction is obviously easier than construction. But effective destruction
is harder than it seems.

The guys that pulled 9/11 off got lucky in many respects, on the other hand if
the situation would have been a little bit different there might have been
many more people dead.

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chrischen
Yes but that still doesn't explain the motivation behind why _engineers_ would
do this. Like I said, just because you _can_ destroy doesn't push you towards
radicalism.

These guys weren't hired guns. They killed themselves.

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jacquesm
They didn't become engineers in order to destroy, that's the wrong way around.
They probably became engineers in order to learn how to build stuff, just like
most of us here.

Then at some point in their life they found themselves in a larger pool of
people that were frustrated somehow, and because of their skills they got
recruited in to those particular roles.

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chrischen
I don't know if radicalism is something you just get recruited into. You need
to be dedicated enough to commit suicide over. The question is why are there
so many engineers, not why are there engineers.

What made engineers more in that pool of frustrated people? They could come to
the US and recruit all the engineers they want. They wouldn't be very
successful, and even if they do get an engineer, it wouldn't be because he/she
is an engineer.

Why the pool of engineers were frustrated is a likely cause, but because they
know how to destroy things doesn't make them more likely to join radicalism.

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jacquesm
You most of all need to be angry.

Suicide attacks are mostly limited to religious people, I think that somehow
traces back to the philosophical part of religion that sees your earthly body
as just a temporary vessel for your eternal soul (for want of a better word).

Almost every religion has some component to that effect.

What surprises me is that I would think that most engineers know enough about
how the world really works that they would be able to pierce the veil of
religion with enough doubt that they would err on the side of caution in case
this body is all they've got.

When you're prepared to die it is relatively easy to take a lot of innocent
people with you in to the grave.

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chrischen
I don't think an engineer is necessarily a scientists, and I even know an
entomologist who doesn't believe in evolution (religious reasons).

Engineers, especially mechanical engineers, don't have to understand why the
world works to be good at their practice. I mean as long as you stay away from
the theoretical and stick to only the practical, your religious beliefs can
always be shaped to fit around your understanding of the world.

That being said, even incredibly intelligent people believe in God.
Christopher Langan claims you can prove the existence of God with mathematics:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan#Ideas.2C_aff...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan#Ideas.2C_affiliations.2C_and_publications)

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snorkel
I have yet to meet anyone from the middle east region who is _not_ an
engineer.

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natrius
Are you meeting them in America? If so, selection bias.

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chrischen
Engineers are practical. Perhaps this purely pragmatic thinking leads them
towards radicalism because it is the most practical, albeit unethical course
of action?

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m0th87
Read the article. I think the explanation it gives makes a lot more sense.

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chrischen
There's an article?

m0th87, thanks for the advice, but I already read the article. I was simply
providing a possible hypothesis, as were the suggestions in the article.

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fiaz
Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1022529>

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dpatru
Engineers are biased towards practical results. The liberal arts are biased
towards ideas.

If asked how to end US or Israeli occupation, the liberal arts major would
probably say: convince them with good arguments or vote. The engineer would
say: make it very expensive for them to continue occupation.

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kls
I wish I could dig up the link (have been searching for 10 minutes now) but I
remember reading an article that stated that engineering disciplines where
very high on the list of professions with a propensity for workplace violence.
I wonder if there is some correlation between the two.

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hugh_
How about the role played by sexual frustration? It seems to be relatively
common among engineers, and is probably a necessary, though not sufficient,
condition for becoming a suicide bomber.

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Semiapies
So that Westerns can project their stereotypes about engineers upon religious
fanatics from another culture and feel they have a deeper understanding of the
situation.

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stcredzero
Many engineers also tend more towards absolutes in their world views.

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motters
I doubt that there is any really deep explanation for this. It's probably just
that engineering is a popular course which is easy to get onto.

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natrius
Did you read the article? It addresses that point.

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dimitar
Engineers are more likely to be angry young men.

