Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
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Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
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Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#2Main argument according to reviews is the gap between aspiration and achievement that occurs when engineers' expectations of success are not met is what drives many of us, apparently, to join extremist groups.
The explanatory and predictive power of, "just sore losers" seems weak.
A review of the book (FT, paywalled) summarized other arguments about polarized, binary thinking, and an inability to accept culture, ambiguity, and a lot of what I see as sanctimonious bullshit the way non-STEM students do.
Defense of any principles (right, left, or religious) is considered extremist and dangerously reactionary these days.
One would hope that before laying the critical foundations to discredit educated conservatives (who largely take STEM degrees), academia might dedicate some thought to resolving why there are people with debt-funded $100k+ graduate degrees who read horoscopes, Piketty, and can't calculate a tip.
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#3Main argument according to reviews is the gap between aspiration and achievement that occurs when engineers' expectations of success are not met is what drives many of us, apparently, to join extremist groups. The explanatory and predictive power of, "just sore losers" seems weak. A review of the book (FT, paywalled) summarized other arguments about polarized, binary thinking, and an inability to accept culture, ambi…
> Defense of any principles (right, left, or religious) is considered extremist and dangerously reactionary these days.
Economic orthodoxy being is also considered radical and extremist by the mainstream.
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#4What I want to know is, are senior engineers 100x more likely to be extremists? Is Steve Wozniak the next Osama bin Laden?
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#5Maybe engineers are just more likely to be effective extremists?
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#6Of course, knowing that extremists are usually engineers only helps you if you have a known extremist and want to guess his profession. Extremists are a pretty small group, and engineers a much larger one, so I'd have to assume that extremism is still very rare among engineers, meaning knowing whether someone is an engineer or not is completely useless for predicting if they're an extremist.
But hopefully, you've got a STEM degree, and can figure that fact out out yourself ;)
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#7What I want to know is, are senior engineers 100x more likely to be extremists? Is Steve Wozniak the next Osama bin Laden?
Probably not, I don't see him getting off the couch anytime soon.
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#8Of course, knowing that extremists are usually engineers only helps you if you have a known extremist and want to guess his profession. Extremists are a pretty small group, and engineers a much larger one, so I'd have to assume that extremism is still very rare among engineers, meaning knowing whether someone is an engineer or not is completely useless for predicting if they're an extremist. But hopefully, you've got…
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Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#9What I want to know is, are senior engineers 100x more likely to be extremists? Is Steve Wozniak the next Osama bin Laden?
No, just more likely to be a 10x extremist.
Re: Engineers of Jihad: Connection between Violent Extremism and Education
#10Since we know that every second (software) engineer is a 10x genius Ninja, we're already talking about some extreme stuff right there.