5 ms·

This is the group that’s surprisingly prone to violent extremism

7 points by tdurden 11y ago

MollyR 11y ago
Really, saying engineers are more prone to terrorism. . . Talk about misunderstanding causation and correlation. I don't see people committing violent acts of terrorism in the name of engineering.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  The article discusses underlying causes of the correlation.
- jameskilton 11y ago
  You've missed the point of the article. The article is talking about how engineers have the mind-set that can more easily lead someone to joining a terrorist organization than other field mindsets. It has nothing at all to do with "terrorism in the name of engineering". Whether it's a correlation =/= causation mishap, given the author's profession and that it's a full book many years in the making, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
- MollyR 11y ago
  In reference to some of the comments below me. This article seems eerily similar to this http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chine... I stand by my early comment as well. As I don't think over representation of engineers in terrorist groups suggests causation. It can easy be attributed to another hidden variable such as the same culture that creates more engineers also creates more terrorist candidates(not that I think it does).
  - richmarr 11y ago
    > ... It can easy be attributed to another hidden variable such as the same culture that creates more engineers also creates more terrorist candidates (not that I think it does). There are plenty of problems in science, but I'm reasonably confident that a researcher at Oxford, and his co-author, an associate professor, probably understand the relationship between correlation and causation. From the abstract of their paper in the European Journal of Sociology they hypothesised and then tested multiple hypotheses before arguing for a likely cause.
    - MollyR 11y ago
      I am not a fan of an appeal to authority, because I've seen people do worse in biomedical research. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674 but I haven't read the original paper either. So here is a link to the abstract for curious people. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6607832 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... I can't actually find the full article. So I'm going to refrain from commenting on it.
      - richmarr 11y ago
        According to abstract of their paper, these two researchers hypothesised and then tested several possible explanations of the observed correlation. That fact alone disproves your claim that they mistook correlation for causation. The article also discusses a third factor.
        MollyR 11y ago
        If you get me the actual paper, I might change my mind. Without more information from the actual whole paper, I'm not going to update my reasoning. I've seen it numerous times in psychology and sociological papers. I've even seen biologists mistake correlation and causation in their own experiment. As being part of the scientific community, I was forced to read tons and tons of retraction papers by my PI (principal investigator).So again I'm holding out until I get the actual paper, and I standby my skepticism.
        richmarr 11y ago
        Sorry, unless I'm missing something your reasoning is faulty. You don't need to read the paper to see that their method involved looking and testing hidden variables, disproving your assertion that they mistook correlation for causation. You may disagree with their conclusion, but their method disproves your accusation.
        11y ago
panarky 11y ago
From a Bayesian perspective, this story illustrates how ridiculous it is to target Muslims for additional surveillance, or to stop accepting refugees from Syria. Let's say there are 500,000 people with the ability and intent to commit a terrorist act. This includes 40,000 Daesh, 10,000 Boko Haram, the military wings of Hezbollah and Hamas, Maoist rebels and Hindu nationalists in India, Basque separatists, FARC in Colombia, neo-Nazis and other violent white supremacists, etc. So the Bayesian prior is something like 5e5 / 7e9 = 0.00007. Even if 70% of terrorists are Islamic, with 1.6e9 Muslims, knowing someone is Muslim only changes the posterior to about 0.0002. Since there are many non-Islamic terrorists, this is probably overstated. If the article is right that engineers are overrepresented among terrorists by a factor of nine, then law enforcement would be more justified in targeting engineers for investigation than they would be in targeting Muslims generally. That's obviously ridiculous. The posterior is so low for both engineers and Muslims that it would be a huge waste of time with an astronomical false-positive rate. Just looking at the math shows that these broad generalizations are useless.
irickt 11y ago
Quotes Friedrich von Hayek: "[people with engineering training] react violently against the deficiencies of their education and develop a passion for imposing on society the order which they are unable to detect by the means with which they are familiar."
lostmsu 11y ago
The study itself is behind the paywall, so there's no actual data to discuss. It would be very funny, if the study result was actually produced by a gender difference, rather than a profession.

7 points by tdurden 11y ago

Really, saying engineers are more prone to terrorism. . . Talk about misunderstanding causation and correlation. I don't see people committing violent acts of terrorism in the name of engineering.

WalterSear 11y ago
The article discusses underlying causes of the correlation.
jameskilton 11y ago
You've missed the point of the article. The article is talking about how engineers have the mind-set that can more easily lead someone to joining a terrorist organization than other field mindsets. It has nothing at all to do with "terrorism in the name of engineering". Whether it's a correlation =/= causation mishap, given the author's profession and that it's a full book many years in the making, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
MollyR 11y ago
In reference to some of the comments below me. This article seems eerily similar to this http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chine... I stand by my early comment as well. As I don't think over representation of engineers in terrorist groups suggests causation. It can easy be attributed to another hidden variable such as the same culture that creates more engineers also creates more terrorist candidates(not that I think it does).
- richmarr 11y ago
  > ... It can easy be attributed to another hidden variable such as the same culture that creates more engineers also creates more terrorist candidates (not that I think it does). There are plenty of problems in science, but I'm reasonably confident that a researcher at Oxford, and his co-author, an associate professor, probably understand the relationship between correlation and causation. From the abstract of their paper in the European Journal of Sociology they hypothesised and then tested multiple hypotheses before arguing for a likely cause.
  - MollyR 11y ago
    I am not a fan of an appeal to authority, because I've seen people do worse in biomedical research. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30534674 but I haven't read the original paper either. So here is a link to the abstract for curious people. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6607832 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... I can't actually find the full article. So I'm going to refrain from commenting on it.
    - richmarr 11y ago
      According to abstract of their paper, these two researchers hypothesised and then tested several possible explanations of the observed correlation. That fact alone disproves your claim that they mistook correlation for causation. The article also discusses a third factor.
      - MollyR 11y ago
        If you get me the actual paper, I might change my mind. Without more information from the actual whole paper, I'm not going to update my reasoning. I've seen it numerous times in psychology and sociological papers. I've even seen biologists mistake correlation and causation in their own experiment. As being part of the scientific community, I was forced to read tons and tons of retraction papers by my PI (principal investigator).So again I'm holding out until I get the actual paper, and I standby my skepticism.
        richmarr 11y ago
        Sorry, unless I'm missing something your reasoning is faulty. You don't need to read the paper to see that their method involved looking and testing hidden variables, disproving your assertion that they mistook correlation for causation. You may disagree with their conclusion, but their method disproves your accusation.
        11y ago

panarky 11y ago

From a Bayesian perspective, this story illustrates how ridiculous it is to target Muslims for additional surveillance, or to stop accepting refugees from Syria. Let's say there are 500,000 people with the ability and intent to commit a terrorist act. This includes 40,000 Daesh, 10,000 Boko Haram, the military wings of Hezbollah and Hamas, Maoist rebels and Hindu nationalists in India, Basque separatists, FARC in Colombia, neo-Nazis and other violent white supremacists, etc. So the Bayesian prior is something like 5e5 / 7e9 = 0.00007. Even if 70% of terrorists are Islamic, with 1.6e9 Muslims, knowing someone is Muslim only changes the posterior to about 0.0002. Since there are many non-Islamic terrorists, this is probably overstated. If the article is right that engineers are overrepresented among terrorists by a factor of nine, then law enforcement would be more justified in targeting engineers for investigation than they would be in targeting Muslims generally. That's obviously ridiculous. The posterior is so low for both engineers and Muslims that it would be a huge waste of time with an astronomical false-positive rate. Just looking at the math shows that these broad generalizations are useless.

irickt 11y ago

Quotes Friedrich von Hayek: "[people with engineering training] react violently against the deficiencies of their education and develop a passion for imposing on society the order which they are unable to detect by the means with which they are familiar."

lostmsu 11y ago

The study itself is behind the paywall, so there's no actual data to discuss. It would be very funny, if the study result was actually produced by a gender difference, rather than a profession.