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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
maybe not a rocket scientist, but i'm sure flying a plane into a specific building a few hundred miles away from where you hijacked it (not to mention in a slightly different direction) isn't exactly as easy as driving a car. There's navigation, speed, elevation etc.
FTA: "The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds."
Engineers are practical. Perhaps this purely pragmatic thinking leads them towards radicalism because it is the most practical, albeit unethical course of action?
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021813