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>How will more smarts give us peace in the Middle East? Less religion (or at least less true believers). In addition to intelligence, technology can also incre

>How will more smarts give us peace in the Middle East? Less religion (or at least less true believers). In addition to intelligence, technology can also increase the comfort of everyday life. Comfort + rational thinking = less likely to risk your life killing others.

fredfoobar42 10y ago
You'd think that, but there's been a huge swath of engineering school graduates joining ISIS and similar organizations. It's not that ISIS is recruiting them, something about engineering students [makes them more likely to join ISIS](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent-extremism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/1...)
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  The engineering school of the university I work at is plastered with posters urging students it's not too late just make the call don't make the jump. If it weren't so tragic it would be funny that it's the only college that seems to have that problem So I guess ISIS appeals to the ones who would rather go out with a bang.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    I was thinking about this the other night: In the world of an RPG why does my character go off and become an Adventurer instead of living a quiet, humble, out of the way life? In that fantasy world the normal quality of life isn't that good, and if you're just sitting around you're probably going to be picked off by some a-hole before natural old age. In that fantasy world if you go out and TRY to have adventure your hard work, blood, and tears usually result in a better outcome. You did good, you get good rewards. I think the real reason our society feels so vulnerable to 'radicalization' is that there is a distinct breakdown in 'the dream'; in the belief that you can put forth work and actually be rewarded. Or even in the ability to take that risk without starving/growing ill and ending up in a poverty spiral. The people demand fulfillment, and meaningful lives; they want dignity and respect for their contribution to the whole.
- marksc 10y ago
  Engineers are given answers and told to look for places to apply all the answers. Scientists are given answers and told to look for new questions that haven't been answered. These are fundamentally different approaches to life. The former, the engineering approach, I would not call "smart." I don't think it is a coincidence that engineering students are both far religious than science students, with the exception of software engineers. Last I checked something like 90% of structural engineering students were religious, while only like 10% of physics students were. ISIS claims to have all the answers. Liberal/progressive ideologies readily admit to a world without solid answers. The former appeals to the engineering mindset far more than the latter.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Un-peace in the Middle East comes as much from (IMO, inevitable) mismanagement by the British Empire ( and later the US ) as anything. Of course, the primary thing is the failure of the Ottoman Empire, with the death-blow by the Kemalists in 1920-1922. There's literally a book - "A Peace To End All Peace" ( ISBN-13: 978-0805088090 )dedicated to numbing your brain with a thousand blows to show this. Technology seems to be at odds with many people's sense of what is human and with human identity. It's a story as old as that of Captain Ned Ludd. I saw this very closely in my most recent gig. I put a (very crude) machine learning element into the flagship product and the reaction was a lot fear. Geez, I was just trying to keep operators from breaking (expensive) things. Again, though, the incentives were not with that. But the perception was "they're takin' 'er jerbs."
- webmaven 10y ago
  The French are also to blame, and the Germans exploited the British and French mismanagement with considerable glee (as did the USSR WRT the US' mismanagement in the region for a while, and vice versa).
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    This is true. I suffer from English-language bias and France did not persist in the Middle East post-WWII ( many holdings ended in the 20s-30s ) , so it's easier to forget. Plus, France's colonies in Africa were much more of their empire, and of course, the Indochina .... thing...
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Come to think of it, one could probably go with the blame back to Adam and Eve. So maybe instead of asking which particular subsets of previous generations screwed things up, we should ask ourselves why do we allow the effects of that to continue? One of my wild dreams is that one day nations and societies suddenly look back at the history of harm they did to one another and say, "So what? Fuck it, it's in the past, we have no obligation to perpetuate it."
sobbybutter 10y ago
Eschewing religion and promoting "rational thinking" gives us, perhaps, the most dangerous outcome of all: nationalism.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I wonder where's the connection between rational thinking and nationalism? The latter seems like utter manifestation of stupidity, or at least absolute lack of empathy. Ingroup/outgroup thinking is not rationality, it's a heuristic in the mind that doesn't work for us anymore.
nathan_long 10y ago
Cough cough Khmer Rouge cough cough
dang 10y ago
No religious flamewars on HN, please. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995497 and marked it off-topic.

fredfoobar42 10y ago

You'd think that, but there's been a huge swath of engineering school graduates joining ISIS and similar organizations. It's not that ISIS is recruiting them, something about engineering students [makes them more likely to join ISIS](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent-extremism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/1...)

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
The engineering school of the university I work at is plastered with posters urging students it's not too late just make the call don't make the jump. If it weren't so tragic it would be funny that it's the only college that seems to have that problem So I guess ISIS appeals to the ones who would rather go out with a bang.
- mjevans 10y ago
  I was thinking about this the other night: In the world of an RPG why does my character go off and become an Adventurer instead of living a quiet, humble, out of the way life? In that fantasy world the normal quality of life isn't that good, and if you're just sitting around you're probably going to be picked off by some a-hole before natural old age. In that fantasy world if you go out and TRY to have adventure your hard work, blood, and tears usually result in a better outcome. You did good, you get good rewards. I think the real reason our society feels so vulnerable to 'radicalization' is that there is a distinct breakdown in 'the dream'; in the belief that you can put forth work and actually be rewarded. Or even in the ability to take that risk without starving/growing ill and ending up in a poverty spiral. The people demand fulfillment, and meaningful lives; they want dignity and respect for their contribution to the whole.
marksc 10y ago
Engineers are given answers and told to look for places to apply all the answers. Scientists are given answers and told to look for new questions that haven't been answered. These are fundamentally different approaches to life. The former, the engineering approach, I would not call "smart." I don't think it is a coincidence that engineering students are both far religious than science students, with the exception of software engineers. Last I checked something like 90% of structural engineering students were religious, while only like 10% of physics students were. ISIS claims to have all the answers. Liberal/progressive ideologies readily admit to a world without solid answers. The former appeals to the engineering mindset far more than the latter.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

Un-peace in the Middle East comes as much from (IMO, inevitable) mismanagement by the British Empire ( and later the US ) as anything. Of course, the primary thing is the failure of the Ottoman Empire, with the death-blow by the Kemalists in 1920-1922. There's literally a book - "A Peace To End All Peace" ( ISBN-13: 978-0805088090 )dedicated to numbing your brain with a thousand blows to show this. Technology seems to be at odds with many people's sense of what is human and with human identity. It's a story as old as that of Captain Ned Ludd. I saw this very closely in my most recent gig. I put a (very crude) machine learning element into the flagship product and the reaction was a lot fear. Geez, I was just trying to keep operators from breaking (expensive) things. Again, though, the incentives were not with that. But the perception was "they're takin' 'er jerbs."

webmaven 10y ago
The French are also to blame, and the Germans exploited the British and French mismanagement with considerable glee (as did the USSR WRT the US' mismanagement in the region for a while, and vice versa).
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  This is true. I suffer from English-language bias and France did not persist in the Middle East post-WWII ( many holdings ended in the 20s-30s ) , so it's easier to forget. Plus, France's colonies in Africa were much more of their empire, and of course, the Indochina .... thing...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Come to think of it, one could probably go with the blame back to Adam and Eve. So maybe instead of asking which particular subsets of previous generations screwed things up, we should ask ourselves why do we allow the effects of that to continue? One of my wild dreams is that one day nations and societies suddenly look back at the history of harm they did to one another and say, "So what? Fuck it, it's in the past, we have no obligation to perpetuate it."

sobbybutter 10y ago

Eschewing religion and promoting "rational thinking" gives us, perhaps, the most dangerous outcome of all: nationalism.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
I wonder where's the connection between rational thinking and nationalism? The latter seems like utter manifestation of stupidity, or at least absolute lack of empathy. Ingroup/outgroup thinking is not rationality, it's a heuristic in the mind that doesn't work for us anymore.

nathan_long 10y ago

Cough cough Khmer Rouge cough cough

dang 10y ago

No religious flamewars on HN, please. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995497 and marked it off-topic.