The Nerd's Eye View

Whenever I found myself arguing with Dr Germ or, come to think of it, almost anyone who isn't an engineer there's a point wherein I say something along the lines of "that's how it is, those are the rules." To which they invariably reply, "what rules? Where are these rules coming from?" and Is am forced to admit that they are made up.

Now I am not ashamed of this, far from it, I think that in a chaotic world it's insane not to impose order and rules of your own. I think you should work hard to make the rules self-consistent, and of course consistent with the rules of the world at large (moral codes, legal codes, etc). This is not as unusual as it may seem; after all, many of you have either heard of or adhere to the Guy Code (aka known as the Dude Code). And anyway, I might say, rules making is the sign of an ordered mind.

So it's with great interest and some worry that I read this article in the IEEE Spectrum about a study showing that almost half of terrorists captured are engineers by training. Now this is worrisome since it seems to indicate that the same mindset that leads one towards being an engineer also leads one to conservative thinking and religious dogma. This may be exacerbated by the situation in the Arab and Muslim world, where many college graduates are either engineers or doctors (the prestige degrees) but there are not as many engineering jobs to take in all those highly trained people. Conversely there are not enough doctors to go around, but the ones that are there are under a lot of pressure.

At any rate I'm curious - really - as to what you guys think about this. It really has me thinking and slightly worried - not about myself, but about my profession.