Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset?

An anonymous reader writes "Do engineers have a way of looking at the world not all that different from terrorists? According to an article in the EE Times, they do. The story cites 'Engineers of Jihad,' a paper (pdf download) by two Oxford University sociologists, who found that graduates in science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements. The paper also found that engineers are 'over-represented' among graduates who gravitate to violent groups. Authors Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog chalk this all up to what they call the 'engineering mindset,' which they define as 'a mindset that inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions.' Is this just pop psychology masquerading as science?"

Engineer and Terrorist are slightly similar.

[binaryspiral]

Engineer's mindset: "What makes this thing tick"

Terrorist's mindset: "I know why this thing is ticking"

Terrorist? No, I'm from Mars.

[Dr. Eggman]

We engineers aren't the most proactive types, we tend to sit next to the flag, banging away on our defenses and designing new weapons in our heads. Oh, and watching out for those dog-gone spies.

That makes sense

[danbert8]

It's all becoming clear now. A lot of Islamic terrorists are engineers. That explains why they have no infrastructure over there... The engineers are too busy killing themselves to build a society. Boy I'm glad my engineering degree will be put to better use than suicide.

Obligatory

[Pojut]

http://xkcd.com/319/ [xkcd.com]
http://xkcd.com/253/ [xkcd.com]

Anyone have a link to the one that is done in a "vertical" layout?

Re:Engineer and Terrorist are slightly similar.

[aproposofwhat]

Sociologist's mindset: "What completely obvious statement can I make about this ticking thing?"

Re:Engineer and Terrorist are slightly similar.

[techpawn]

IT Mindset: "Why did this start ticking? I'll just reboot it, maybe it will stop..."

Re:Rejected yesterday, accepted today?

[superdave80]

Great, a pissed of /.er. How long till he blows something up now?

Re:Rejected yesterday, accepted today?

[markov_chain]

I hear your pain, friend. Time to strap on some C-4 and head for the Slashdot headquarters!

Re:Rejected yesterday, accepted today?

[moderatorrater]

My writeup was very similar to the accepted submission, including a direct link to the original paper

Well, that's where you went wrong! You must not be new here, so let me give you my perspective. I've been hanging out here for about a year and a half, and I've noticed that Slashdot doesn't actually link to what's making the news, it links to the news that was made by something. If there's a cool site about how to make a jumbo jet with cardboard and semen, they'll link to Arstechnica's discussion about that site. If wikileaks gets a new memo about how Bill Gates bathes in the blood of infants every night, Slashdot links to the NY Times, with maybe a sub link to the original memo (if the editor doesn't notice it's there).

There you have it.

[fstolze]

This clearly underlines why math, science and engineering must be eradicated from the US educational system.

Re:Why not?

[somersault]

Don't you think that 'science, engineering and medicine' graduates is quite a wide range of people? This study could just as well end up with the conclusion "arts students or those without higher education aren't motivated enough to be terrorists", or "would be terrorists that don't have scientific knowledge tend to blow themselves up before they can get anywhere in the world of terror".

PS if you fucking disagree with me I'm going to fucking mailbomb all your fucking email addresses and DDoS your remaining fucking servers.

Re:Terrorist? No, I'm from Mars.

[AndresCP]

For real. It's those Demomen that are the real terrorists. Where's the investigation into black Scottish cyclopses?

Re:Engineer and Terrorist are slightly similar.

[geminidomino]

Liberal Arts Mindset: "If they make me clean out the fry vats again, I'm gonna burn this fucking place down..."

That required Circuits course for ME's

[Latent Heat]

It's that mandatory Circuits course that the mechanical engineers and others outside EE are required to take is what is breeding terrorists, I tell you. Requiring MEs to learn op amps is what is giving them that sour outlook on life.

How sociologists do science

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a frog, and yell JUMP!
The frog jumps.

Now, cut off one of its legs and yell JUMP!
The frog jumps, but not as far.

Now, cut off the other leg and yell JUMP!
The frog does not jump.

Conclusion: The amputee frog is deaf.
Abstract: For centuries, science has been mystified by how frogs hear without ears. Our recent work has at last resolved this long standing mystery by showing that in frogs, the ability to hear is closely correlated to the number of legs present on the frog. The hearing organ's location in the frog's legs explains the absence of any ears at their expected location. In future studies, we will determine if the frog's hearing apparatus is in fact located on the frog's feet, as is suspected from their ear-like morphology.

Re:is it April 1?

[Alsee]

Other than a strange obsession with Cricket

Damn foriegners and their freaky strange obsessions.
Ooooo! Gotta run..... I think Brittney shaved her head again!

-

Re:is it April 1?

[russ1337]

They refused to speak English except with the professors and had posters of Mao along with his poetry all over the half of the graduate-student office that they dominated. I don't want to sound xenophobic, but it was very strange.

I'm sure if you were studying in China you'd be speaking English to your American friends and you'd have big posters of Bush in the Student office with lists of his famous quotes... [wikiquote.org] .... right? right?


oh wait.

Re:Why not?

[MrMarket]

You could also say: "Men without girlfriends are over represented in terrorist groups."

Re:Bring on the engineering jokes

[LordSkippy]

I've always found that the second scariest thing on Halloween was a bored Engineer. The scariest? Multiple bored Engineers, working together.

Re:is it April 1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but you had a good experience because you went to Colorado. If you had gone to New York or urban parts of California, you would have been treated very rudely. Bunch of assholes in those places, I tell you.