Engineers and terrorism

So what makes engineers more likely to become terrorists? The most obvious theory is their technical expertise; al-Qaida and other terror groups need to recruit people who can make bombs. But Gambetta and Hertog say that doesn't explain the overlap. Their study found that engineers serve the terrorist organizations they join in many more capacities than making or deploying explosives. A significant number held higher-level posts that didn't directly involve their engineering training at all.

The authors instead conclude that the phenomenon is explained by a combination of mindset and professional circumstance. Citing studies finding that engineers as a group are more politically conservative than other professions, Gambetta and Hertog write that engineers by nature are more likely to be drawn to the kind of rigid, hierarchical worldviews that radical Islam provides: Their governing mentality "inclines them to take more extreme conservative and religious positions everywhere." What's more, although engineering is considered an elite profession in Middle Eastern countries, the region's job market for engineers dried up during the economic crises of the 1970s and '80s, frustrating that era's recent graduates and driving them to radicalize. -Source

It must be shocking to certain types of "intellectuals" to find that a set of disciplines which deal heavily with math, science and applied logic, and that depend witch's brew of intelligence, education, experience and innate talent tend to create people who see the world in terms of precision, logic, absolutes and hierarchy rather than relatives, unknowns and all people as "Free and Equal Supermen (ht: What's Wrong with the World for that term)." What is the world coming to when empirical studies start to show that ideas have consequences?..

What connects terrorists like the isolated incidents which have been the majority of reports before and after 9/11 is not ideology or profession, but a combination of intelligence, social awkwardness, sexual frustration and feeling isolated. The "Pants-Bomber" fits that description. So did Timothy McVeigh and Nidal Hasan. Engineers simply tend to have all three to one degree or another.