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Comment by _h4xr | Hacker News Reader

This seems like an incredibly poor idea. For whatever reason, people with engineering and hard-science backgrounds are much more likely to become terrorists (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists...). And dollar-for-dollar, US companies still seem to get more out of engineering investments than overseas companies do (even when they're using workers who immigrated). And with a deficit like the one we have, throwing more money at uncertain projects is a poor plan, even if it is investment, rather than spending.

So, this is a waste of money we don't have, in order to get worse results that it would get if we spent it here, with the side effect that it could increase the supply of terrorists.

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> people with engineering and hard-science backgrounds are much more likely to become terrorists

Of all the out-of-context-nonsense this has to be the best piece ever. Seriously ?

You think maybe that errrm, toddlers or gradeschoolers or writers are going to be as adept as technical people at blowing stuff up or destroying it ?

The Army corps of engineers is just as good at putting stuff together as they are at taking it apart.

Of course technical people would be the ones you find behind successful acts of destruction.

But that does not mean that all engineering and hard-science types are more likely to become terrorists.

It just means that if you take a random sampling of people and you test them for terrorist potential you will find that the technical ones will do better at it.

If this is the 'right attitude', then why bother letting those scary muslims have any education at all ? Maybe we should bomb all those schools, that way they're certainly not going to be engineers and science types.

Bollocks.

What I think is that if having an education will make them less susceptible to brainwashing. Engineering takes skill and critical thought.

If that means that the few engineers that will go through this program ending up as terrorists will be better at it, then that's just too bad, but as a scheme education certainly beats arming opposing groups (the normal way to deal with this problem).

Probably referring to this article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227127.200-can-unive...

It's behind a paywall, but the gist is, the engineering mentality of "there is a right answer" correlates to a certain extent with the religious mentality of "there is a right belief".

A lot of piecemeal evidence suggests that characteristics such as greater intolerance of ambiguity, a belief that society can be made to work like clockwork, and dislike of democratic politics which involves compromise, are more common among engineers

Note that technical ability is nothing to do with it; no terrorist organization worth its salt sends skilled bombmakers on suicide missions, they're too valuable.

Why engineers? Everybody's first reaction is that they are recruited for their technical proficiency in bomb-making and communications technology, but there is no evidence for this. A tiny elite tends to do the technical work in these groups, and jihadist recruitment manuals focus on a personality profile rather than technical skills.

Of course technical people would be the ones you find behind successful acts of destruction.

But that does not mean that all engineering and hard-science types are more likely to become terrorists.

Right, but that's not what I said at all. Regardless of why there is a correlation between engineering education and terrorism, there is a correlation; whether you're equipping potential terrorists with the tools to commit terrorist acts, or somehow making non-terrorists more terroristic, the end result is the same.

It just means that if you take a random sampling of people and you test them for terrorist potential you will find that the technical ones will do better at it.

That's interesting; I hadn't heard that the same kind of study had been duplicated elsewhere. Do you have a source? Before I saw the study, I was struck by how many of the 9/11 hijackers had an engineering, compared to, e.g., American terrorists. (The Unabomber is the closest analogue, and his academic background was fairly abstract).

What I think is that if having an education will make them less susceptible to brainwashing.

And yet that effect is clearly counteracted by whatever else it is that makes engineers more likely to blow stuff up. If they're half as willing but ten times as able to commit terrorist acts, we still lose.

Any time you educate someone in technology you increase their potential to do harm.

The high school kid with sharpshooter skills can do more harm than the one without, the professor with a good and solid understanding of chemistry will be able to do more damage than the one that studied English poetry in the 17th century.

Technology is a two-edged sword (for want of a better analogy), you can do good with it or bad. Technology education is neutral as well.

The people that have access to technology decide what they can do with it. And that means that if you educate people in a country where terrorism is high that you will proportionally educate more terrorists.

But that's not a reason to deny the others of that education, in fact that's an excellent reason to educate all of them, which will to some extent level the advantage of technically inclined people bent on destruction.

Check out the high schoolers that are technically inclined, I'll bet you that a good portion of those that studied chemistry got in to it because they liked to play with stuff, and in the process learned a thing or two about explosives, maybe even played with them.

I know I did. And if I should turn 'terrorist' I'd probably make a half decent one, as would anybody else with some understanding of technology.

What stops people from doing stupid stuff though is not just their technical education - or lack thereof - , but their overall education and worldview.

And if you were a terrorist in the making, aged 15 or so and nicely brainwashed by your environment, told to go study engineering, you would do it to and you'd possibly excel at it.

So, that might even be the spot where you might find out who these people are and deflect them before they can do real harm.

You'll stop losing by creating economic parity and making sure that those in the world that would turn to terrorism have too much to lose themselves.

You'll never achieve that goal by denying them an education, that makes the disparity even greater.

I know I did. And if I should turn 'terrorist' I'd probably make a half decent one, as would anybody else with some understanding of technology.

This is (if you'll excuse the aside) one of my favourite hypothetical exercises.

The conclusion I usually draw is mostly that technical knowledge is a lot less important than technical competence. And also that the main "failure" of terrorist attacks (or planned attacks) are due to a lack of this competence higher up the chain.

Whereas the actual bombers or bomb makers (to take a primitive example) might be highly educated they are usually recruited (or as you say sent after recruitment to receive training) to achieve a plan. The planners are almost certainly a lot less technically skilled - they make crazy mistakes or bad choices and it all goes bad for them.

When you consider how GOOD a terrorist you yourself could be (in a coldly logical way) and then think that the vast majority of visitors here are as good or better then I think it puts things in a lot of perspective compared to the fear these people are supposed to instil. The people that do turn to it are, really, no match to our collective might.

About 5 years ago, visiting some friends in Colorado living somewhere high up in the rockies the talk turned to terrorism.

So I posed a question to these guys, all of them are pretty smart.

Given a 50 dollar budget, how much damage could you do to society.

Let me phrase the outcome of the rest of the talk like this: We, collectively should be really happy that the terrorists are unable to think as clearly as this group of middle-aged mostly hippies, vets and engineers.

Sabotage is so much easier than construction.

Flying planes into buildings is destruction on a massive scale, but if you sat and did some cold hearted calculations on how to make sure you kill a large number of people with low tech means you could do a whole lot 'better' than that. It wont' get your cause 10 years worth of television coverage though.

The 'love affair' between terrorism and media is for the most part what keeps this whole thing going.

Yep done the same thing with a couple of my mates too. We went for a financial/digital attack as the easiest vector.

We actually agreed, in the end, it was lucky these groups have an obsession with causing deaths. Callous as it sounds, killing people in large enough numbers is bloody difficult.

> The 'love affair' between terrorism and media is for the most part what keeps this whole thing going.

Agreed! Ironic really that it's partly that which they crave!

Unfortunately (as someone else here has posted evidence) your assertion is bull.

Of course engineers feature in terrorist attacks. But that does not make them initially more likely to be a terrorist.

Besides if we had that attitude everyone would end up as unskilled and on the dole :-)

it all sounds a lot like the old political line to me ;-)

While the OP's argument is easily absurd, there is (contrary to intuition) little causality between education and terrorism: http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/terrorism2.pdf

But even if a better education caused or prevented terrorism, what's orders of magnitude more significant in this fund is the good PR it generates for America.

Ok, thanks for that correction. It seemed to make some kind of sense. My 'wishful thinking' is probably that educated people make better decisions in life, pity to see that isn't the case.

And I fully agree on the PR factor, it's a pretty smart move. Educate instead of arm. It makes perfect sense too.

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