The spot light turns on all us engineers as potential terrorists ?
Heater.
Posts: 21,230
Engineers are much more likely to become fundamentalist terrorists
From here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent-extremism/
From here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent-extremism/
Comments
There is a reason why someone put the following graffiti on the wall over the toilet roll holder in my student residence:
"Sociology degrees, please take one"
What worries me is that these dumb Smile ideas sometime take hold. Remember Hoover's communist which hunts or phrenology?
I'm an engineer and this makes me so mad I want blow something up!
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The irony is engineers created the technology through which they get bashed by people with that attitude.
-Phil
I'm curious how hard they can make such a thing.
Maths education has always been a disaster. Given that a person cannot move on to step N + 1 until they master step N most people will trip and fall at some point having missed a step for whatever reason. The education system does not care and presses on relentlessly. At the end of 10 years of that everyone has tripped and fallen.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjvmaejlKzJAhXCKx4KHQ5eCSkQFggtMAY&url=http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/01/this-is-how-you-do-common-core-subtraction/&usg=AFQjCNEZfMrKVHKuYMo01usu9OTvz1_6Jw&sig2=_GQljCJYLpwuhw9Orjdmyw
I taught my kids that method, along with rounding and estimating to check order of magnitude and appoiximate answers.
Making change is the common example of everyday use, but there are many others. I can also see it play out when the machines get borked. People can't transact! And I've demonstrated it many times, often to the amazement of the adult who is lost without that machine computation, and or who can't catch errors in the same, or their handling of currency.
Of course my kids learned to carry and borrow too. Gotta have the basics.
In your head math is very useful, but should not be a primary goal. That is where a lot of these programs lose track.
Couple those things with ratios and a person can operate computationally and quickly in a real time dialog. Not everyone will need this, but like anything, it is worth giving everyone a look at it.
Even very simple things like, which quantity in the store is a better buy, given the sneaky ways they present price, can benefit from this sort of thing.
I do it in business contexts all the time. Often, I see people mashing about in spreadsheets, when they could have learned a few of the basics for the business and then extrapolate and estimate from there to vet potential choices and their financial outcomes. So many things boil down to a little or a lot of money and does that money make sense?
A tech related parallel thought is understanding the powers of two, hex, and a few other concepts in order to quickly assess or see options and processes and their merits.
I feel those things should be in early math education too, and if they are present, sans the appropriate context, would generate complaints similar to the ones seen here.
Just some perspective for your thoughts...
In my experience, having held tech and management roles, the conflict over these ideas is largely driven by implied context. When more is provided, they often make good sense. I honestly did not see the sense in this kind of thing, until I worked under an executive who showed me how he thinks. Very different from the engineer. Both are valid and necessary modes and ways of thought too.
Insight of that kind is what they need to be including at some point in the primary education. When and how thinking tools make sense is as important as teaching the mechanics inherent in the tools.
My oldest is pulling down a seriously good salary working as that PA, who can very quickly sort things out, and this kind of thinking is a part of how she does that. Early on, it was obvious she was not technical.
As the parent, I chose to maximize who she was, and that too is missing from these programs. Somebody somewhere needs to understand who the kids are and tease the good stuff out of them. That is the real human work in education, and no amount of new math tricks will help with that directly.
Just because we can doesn't mean that we should. Or will.
Maybe I'm an obvious choice with my penchant for pyrotechnics. But at least I'm flying the flag.
I bought a self igniting micro-torch a couple of days ago and I love it. It's a torch, mini hot air blower and a soldering iron.
There are no batteries...
Phil, thank you for the compliment. (Yes as a statement, it happens I happen to have it. And some of my family members refuse to believe it.)
I've always wondered why I landed in this particular hobby. Now I know.
After reading the Wired article, I took the online AQ test myself. And, although I won't reveal my actual score, I can say that it was high enough to explain a few things.
-Phil
One of the lines from the original StarTrek with reference to being barbaric states that ANYBODY is capable of creating harm or using technology in a destructive way, but what distinguishes us from being barbaric is the ability to choose and make decisions that prevent harm, using technology for a good cause... ultimately it is the individuals own decision ... good or bad ... but before you stereo-type someone who is into electronics vs. something else, think fro a moment that the same analogy could be applied with a hammer.... You can either use the hammer to do something constructive or use it to do something destructive ... but it is YOUR decision.
I don't think our sociologist was looking at it from the point of view of the potentially dangerous things us engineers might get up to in pursuit of our hobbies/careers.
No, there seem to be the suggestion that because of our interests, education, character, personality even some kind of mental abnormalities, engineers are more prone to be attracted to fanatical terrorist activity than people who study other things.
I'm sure he would conclude that the sociology students are the most stable, level headed and safe students.
It's sickening.
Of course there is always that tenuous link between bombs, timers and triggers and "engineers" that is bound to get people interested your hypothesis.
So what happens when the government and NSA/GCHQ etc take this nonsense seriously because it's written by a noted academic? Sign up for an engineering course and the full weight of their spying apparatus will be following your every move.
At least authors of fiction admit their work is fiction and seek the approval of their peers.
But what get's me is that sociology always seems to be about "us" watching "them". Where "us" is the academic westerners and "them" is a tribe of pygmies in the jungle or in this case muslim terrorists.
What about infiltrating and documenting all the weird stuff that goes on in our society?
The solution is to reassign the potentially 'dangerous' engineers to a safe communal farm.
Botanists would have to be approved and monitored by the government registry.
(This is text on a monitor so I emphasize this is said in jest!)
There aren't any genetic engineers. That's all done by scientists. Genetic engineering is a metaphor. I think a lot of bad image could be offloaded on to corporate research grants and affiliated scientists.
Think about this, it takes a good chemist to really blow something up. An engineer might only assist in determining where to place the charge.
BTW, it is the over-educated under-employed youth that are more likely to become fundamentalist terrorist. A lifetime of servicing student loan debt might make many irrational. And it just so happens that over-educated under-employed these days are the engineering students.
The problem here is that universities have been willing to over-produce engineering graduates and this tends to go in cycles with a different engineering discipline leading each new wave of the fad degree. There was a time when it was nuclear engineering, then it became electronic engineering, maybe biochemical engineering is the next.
If all these potential engineers went to dental school instead, they would do okay - buy a house, get a wife, and pay off their education.
The garbage from Wapo is no different.
What the WaPo article neglects to mention these men followed Salafist Islam, that's the brand that most Muslim terrorists follow and what has radicalized them to begin with.
Instead the clown decides to smear a entire profession, which is sickening.
If you want to look at the biggest mass killers look at politicians that get us into senseless and horrible wars, one after another. And maybe the newspaper men and women who often the cheerleaders for the war and profit from the suffering.
Not to mention the German rocket scientists and their V2 bombing of London.
Or what about the guys at Los Alamos in WWII.
Yep, it's all the engineers and scientists fault.
I fear the resulting persecution will lead us back to the dark ages.
Sorry guys.
Why ? RE: http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1316278/#Comment_1316278
When you understand the nature of those that dictate what the news in the major news papers and news is about, you know EXACTLY where they are headed.
You can't enslave a planet if you have people making innovative and disruptive technologies.
This presents a challenge for those that have this goal, how do you get all the engineers to align with dictatorship like public policy?
You demonize them, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer, by making the public fear a certain group, even if they are a fundamentally important group in modern society.
But it won't work, there are too many of us, and were just too damn smart, and bold. (you havta be bold to risk burning your finders so you can have your coffee maker tell you when the coffee is done via text message.)
Taking down an entire government that violates its own systemic structure(bill of rights), is gold in the eyes of those that are in the KNOW.
We don't have structure anymore, we have public opinion, which is dangerous, because thats all they need to turn our industry into a full licensed industry where only big business and big names can get legal access to all the tools and parts required to "engineer"
P.S. a bullet can be made from hay(as in straw) a long copper pipe, and some very high pressure air.
(thus why the 2nd amendment will never go away, along with the entire bill of rights)
You can see today, that doesn't stop the U.S.A. government from violating peoples rights.
They print the money, thus their supply is infinite to fight in court. If something fails to go their way, they just challenge it later in a different case, and keep doing that until the law gets changed to align with their secret set of laws. (which enslave all)
Theres a reason our government violated the right to privacy, because it has a set of secret laws too, which basically goes like this:
We do what we want, and when people don't like it, we demonize them, their profession, harass them, eat out their substance, and then when some judge somewhere judges in their favor, they view it as golden, and put it on their pedestal of accomplishments.
No one challenges the ruling because of a lack of funding.
The opposite to that is the infinite funding government has to FOREVER hack at some law until the tree finally falls.
Governments can violate a peoples rights all they want, but that just ends up filling the prisons, because people.
People truly believe in freedom, they act differently when THEIR dollar is squeezed, if certain freedoms mean they pay more in medical insurance, or similar ILK.
U.S.A. #1 prisoner of humans on planet earth.
And business is booming.
Say goodbye to the military industrial complex, and say hi to the
Prison industrial complex.
And those in power are just getting started.
They must ramp up the prison complex to make it big enough to enslave a people into getting paid 2$ an hour in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus Attempted at stopping this, and failed.
The universe drives me, thus, I cannot be stopped, and, I am an engineer, but what they don't get, is we cannot be stopped, we pull from a source of ancient knowledge, older than the earth its self. It amazes me to see so many humans claiming to own an idea, as if that idea wasn't put into your head by the universe its self?
(Nikola Tesla emphasized this, multiple times.)
So infact those that fight against freedom engineers fight against an ancient source of power that is actually the source of ALL that is, was, and will be.
If I have a terrorist government, what am I?
A terrorist? Hmm a terrorist that fights against a terrorist government?
Ok, guilty as charged, proud to be.
We empower the individual, which is antithesis to a top down rule.
I fear the universe more than I fear any pathetic human in some temporary position of power in this short life on this planet of beings that have no idea they are part of something much bigger. (Nikola Tesla talked about this source, multiple times.)
Comply or the universe will assimilate you.
Resistance is futile.
Take the engineers down, and you no longer have an easy ability to (re)create a 3d printer.
The 3D ATOMiC printer is the center of everything now. ATOM iC
See this, and you see their angle.
Rule the ic at the atomic level, then control all printers of this....
Etc, etc, you see where this is going.
Enforcement via ATOM resolution satellite cameras.
Focus makes this possible, “Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.”― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Technically this means in the near future(100 years) we will have live mappings of the 3D location of all atoms in front of the detector to a depth that might be as deep as an entire planet.
Atomic mapping on a planetary scale.
Impossible was the saying about mapping the entire planet surface down to the very last inch.
But we just recently did it.
This also makes atomic structures enforceable, so if you HAD a 3D printer, it would be known fairly quickly.
Enter the new deal:
Material Prohibition Complex
Same as the old deal, you fight it by, well, ignoring it.
"I do what I want" (just think if all the North Korean people did exactly that, well they'd have lots of dead people but they wouldn't have their effed up deal they have now)
(which is why we are kinda free(in the usa), our ancestors, DID WHAT THEY WANT.)
CARTMAN FOR PRESIDENT
(this IS after all, exactly what these people in power do, what THEY want, so do as they do.)
So you can start to see why its important that the people in power follow the rules also,... if we ALL just do what we want....
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.....
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Urine, everywhere.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/06/14/terror-in-the-american-desert/
"An assessment issued by the Department of Homeland Security in April 2009 discussed the potential threat posed by “domestic extremists.” As an example of the potential violence associated with such extremists, it cited the incident earlier that year where a gunman shot and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh. (The assessment, which said that factors including the economic downturn and the election of President Obama “may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity,” was savaged by conservatives and Republican lawmakers. Many people were particularly critical of the report’s warning that returning veterans having trouble readjusting could pose a threat. Groups called for the ouster of Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security at the time, and she issued an apology.)"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/homeland-security-department-curtails-home-grown-terror-analysis/2011/06/02/AGQEaDLH_story.html
Here is some super extreme rhetoric, "I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace." -Thomas Paine
I say, GO POUND sand, if they wanna try to turn freedom loving people into terrorists, so far they've had more success at turning sand into diamonds, using only their bare hands.
If everyone is a suspected terrorist, how do you find the real terrorist? Whats the process of elimination? Is there one? Is it even possible to have a process of elimination when your list is so bloated?
Do we add burgerking cooks to the list because they make low wage and have to work in dirty conditions, thus they are a disgruntled member of society, and thus a terrorist, they might just poison the food.
No seriously, I want my money back , U.S. Treasury, you are wasting it by giving it to Washington, at this point; and by all measures, this means you are funding a terrorist organization, identified by their own behavior, i.e. calling their own veterans, terrorists. p.s., they add engineers to that list now?
Negative returns on my investment.
I want out of this,....being forced to pay into taxes at the same time labeled a terrorist?
Or do I go to prison for not funding the DEMONIZING of their own American citizens?
This place is kinda dumb. (earth)
Shouldn't our government do something with all that money, oh I don't know, fund a space program?
@
Are there some meds you have forgotten to take today?
Only kidding
I am sure it will please some of you that I did cancel my subscription to the Washington Post recently -- after a one year trial. They keep emailing me a better offer to renew, but I did find that they tend to pander controversy to boost circulation.
I wonder if the Christian Science Monitor still offers some degree of objectivity. Mr. Murdock has trashed just about any news outlet he has purchased with sensationalism and bias, and the rest are following suit in order to survide hard times.