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Henry Farrel writes in the Washington Post that there's a group of people which appears to be highly prone to violent extremism - engineers - who are nine times more likely to be terrorists as you would expect by chance. In a forthcoming book, "Engineers of Jihad," published by Princeton University Press, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog provide a new theory for why it is that engineers seem unusually prone to become involved in terrorist organizations. Gambetta and Hertog find strongly suggestive evidence that engineers are more likely to become terrorists because of the way that they think about the world. Survey data indicates that engineering faculty at universities are far more likely to be conservative than people with other degrees, and far more likely to be religious. They are seven times as likely to be both religious and conservative as social scientists. Gambetta and Hertog speculate that engineers combine these political predilections with a marked preference towards finding clearcut answers. This preference has affinities with the clear answer that radical Islamist groups propose for dealing with the complexities of modernity: Get rid of it.
Gambetta and Hertog suggest that this mindset combines with frustrated expectations in many Middle Eastern and North African countries, and among many migrant populations, where people with engineering backgrounds have difficulty in realizing their ambitions for good and socially valued jobs. This explains why there are relatively few radical Islamists with engineering backgrounds in Saudi Arabia (where they can easily find good employment) and why engineers were more prone to become left-wing radicals in Turkey and Iran.
Some people might argue that terrorist groups want to recruit engineers because engineers have valuable technical skills that might be helpful, such as in making bombs. This seems plausible – but it doesn't seem to be true. Terrorist organizations don't seem to recruit people because of their technical skills, but because they seem trustworthy and they don't actually need many people with engineering skills. "Bomb-making and the technical stuff that is done in most groups is performed by very few people, so you don't need, if you have a large group, 40 or 50 percent engineers," says Hertog. "You just need a few guys to put together the bombs. So the scale of the overrepresentation, especially in the larger groups is not easily explained."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 28 2015, @12:14AM
1. engineers spend much time on books and no pussy
2. testosterone level go down till passivity turns into self destructive rage
3. here, the perfect career for the trained sociopath
3b. (still safer than untrained ones from law schools getting into politics)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 28 2015, @03:46PM
Or,
1. Engineers include above average numbers of the socially awkward, autistic spectrum, etc., hence lacking in pussy (jihadi john was apparently a shy kid always teased for bad halitosis)
2. Engineers have natural tendency towards logic, pussy does not (or at least it's a different logic)
3. Engineers used to be reasonably paid and hence when older could pull with their wallets, but outsourcing killed that
4. Engineers have natural tendency towards military hardware but they aren't fit enough to get into the military, but the dumb sporty types who got all the pussy in high school can, and then they again get all the pussy once in uniform
All adds up to major lack of pussy.
So then the terrorists offer playing with military hardware and a few dozen virgins when you die, the engineer maybe thinks "got to die sometime, not getting any pussy here...". Then IS come along with even better offer - playing with military hardware, wages, and slave pussy cheap enough to buy now without having to die first, like the pull-with-your-wallet option except the pussy actually does what its told. SOLD.
And the ironic epilogue is that the engineer never gets revenge on the real military guys, but instead gets taken out by a glorified video-gamer who wouldn't have ever made it as a real pilot and probably doesn't get any either.