Why do engineers become terrorists?

This article (via Crooked Timber) claims that engineers are quite a bit overrepresented in the ranks of terrorists -- including Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks.

Well, I've spent some time tracking political extremism in engineering culture, although not of the violent type, so here's some random attempts at a theory:

- engineering historically has been a profession caught between the upper and working classes. The lowest-status of the professions, it has been a way for children of laborers to move up to professional status. I don't know how much this is still the case, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is still so in the developing world.

- this sociological fact causes a good bit of status-anxiety and role confusion, among a class of people whose social skills aren't usually that great to begin with.

- engineers are also often mathematically inclined and hence drawn to abstractions.

- so, one cure for being lost in society is finding a cult to belong to, preferably one with a simple, powerful, self-reinforcing belief system, that is, a form of fundamentalism.

- but, engineers also having a practical, real-world orientation, they will also be drawn to taking action, and may be more skilled than average in doing so.

This is drawn from my experience with libertarians and Randroids, who whatever else you can say about them are not particularly violent (Ayn Rand depicted blowing stuff up in her novels and was drawn to serial killers, but her followers don't seem to follow her that far). But I'm guessing some of the psychological forces that pull engineers into those ideologies may also draw others into violent religious and right-wing fundamentalism. Libertarianism is a form of enlightenment fundamentalism, it fetishizes and oversimplifies enlightenment virtues like rationality, self-interest, and individuality, and turns them into an ideology and a cult.

Now of course the vast majority of engineers aren't terrorists or libertarians or extremists of any kind. And almost no libertarians are terrorists as far as I know -- but they do tend towards unhealthy obsessions with weaponry and in that respect the culture tends to merge into other more violent tendencies of the extreme right.

I hope nobody interprets this as an attack on engineers or engineering culture. Engineering's successes represent some of the highest forms of human creativity and progress. But we are talking here about failures, people on the margins who, due to either their own limitations or the limitations of their education, failed to direct their energies in a creative direction and instead chose destruction.

Shocking news: religious foundation run by homophobic wingnuts!

Over the past few years I've observed the Templeton Foundation with some bemusement, as it seems to sponsor all sorts of things that seem interesting-but-bordering-on-flakey. I don't have a problem with its general goal, which to explore the connections between science and religion. As a moderate in the God wars I'm all for people trying to find a middle way.

So, I was a bit disturbed to find out that a boatload of Templeton money is going to the forces behind California's regressive Proposition 8, which would strip away the rights of gays to be married (rights they gained under a recent CA Supreme Court decision). John Templeton (son of the founder of the Templeton Foundation and its current chairman) has contributed $1 million dollars to a collection of groups campaigning for this odious law (along with Howard Ahmanson, another crazy rich guy who funded the similar but less respectable Discovery Institute).

Templeton funds many interesting scientific and quasi-scientific efforts, including the Foundational Questions Institute, which lists many prominent people as members and affiliates, including science bloggers Scott Aaronson and Sean Carroll.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with taking money from the Templeton Foundation, no matter what dubious causes they may be linked to. Money they spend on actual research is money not being spent on supporting regressive legislation. However, if I was taking money from such people (and I have been in somewhat similar situations, where I've accepted military funding for my own research), I would feel some extra obligation to speak out for goodness, righteousness, and truth in areas where my patron is spreading evil, hatred, and lies. Just saying.

On the intellectual level, I'm disappointed to learn that Templeton-brand religion is the fundamentalist/wingnut variety -- the kind of God that hates teh gay, not the kind of abstract principle of existence and value that an intelligent person might conceivably have truck with; not the unnameable of mysticism or apophatic theology; no, this is a God with very firm opinions about the proper deployment of human genitalia. There are sane people who work on reconciling science and religion, but they apparently have no crazed billionaires behind their efforts.

Random righties

1) From an ultra-conservative website that I've never heard of, an actually pretty intelligent and nuanced review of a book on the history of the left. Most interestingly, it differentiates between the homegrown native versions of the left:

American communism was wholly un-American: all eight of the Communist Party dailies published in 1921 were in foreign languages. Writes Flynn: “Such American originals as J. A. Wayland, Big Bill Haywood, and Eugene Debs passed the baton to conformists directed in thought and deed by overlords halfway round the planet.”
The noncommunist American Left pushed back. The freeswinging and disorderly Wobblies and farmer-labor parties, with their “the star-spangled anarchism,” in Flynn’s felicitous phrase, were a poor fit for European regimentation.

...and defends the Beats and the New Left, who for the most part were trying to get past communism and re-connect with the more rootsy and chaotic American anarcho-socialist tendency.

2) From an allegedly leading light of cultural conservatism (Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion), a rather disgustingly preening post about how he doesn't care about people in Burma. It occurs to me that all two of my readers might share his attitude. I feel compelled to write something in response to this although I can't quite get my thoughts in order. First, at some level, you care about what you care about, and you can't be coerced or convinced to care otherwise. But that's very superficial, since in fact the process of moral maturation is in large part learning to be less egoistic, and to care about other people. Does that mean you have to care equally about everybody? Obviously not (some moral philosophers seem to think otherwise; but they're cracked). So, what are one's obligations to total strangers on the other side of the world? I won't pretend to know, but I know that there's something mildly revolting about such principled devotion to uncaring.

Libertarian flameout

Ron Paul is outed as a racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, conspiracy-mongering piece of shit. No surprise really, but a lot of nerds are hurt and confused. Add on his support for medical quackery, denial of evolution, and ties to Christian Reconstructionism*, all I can say is, what took so long? It has been suggested that he didn't really believe all the crap that went out under his name over the years, in which case he's either too irresponsible or too willing to pander to be considered a serious candidate for anything.

I can't say I'm very sorry, but I guess I am a wee bit. US politicians are so bland and non-ideological, it was refreshing to see one with an actual belief system. And he was the only semi-serious presidential contender to take a strong antiwar stance (the other being my man Dennis Kucinich). There's something to be said for some libertarian principles entering the mainstream. Unfortunately, whatever good might have been in those principles has been irreparably tarnished by their associations with the dark, fetid swamps of the extreme right. Hopefully those looking for a place to park their idealism will look at Kucinich who is against the Iraq War, the Drug War, and has even less chance of winning than Paul.

[* that last one is a pretty weak link -- Gary North, a prominent Reconstructionist, was once a staffer for Paul -- but the article pointed to has some fascinating information on ties between libertarianism and the theocratic movement in general.]

The Moldbug Variations

My recent fascination with the work of Mencius Moldbug has drawn me into the world of right-wing intellectuals. Not the shameless neoconservative Bush shills, but people with actual ideas, albeit scary ones. Dark thinkers, who are not afraid to dig up and poke at the weak foundations of the Enlightenment. Where they want to go with this, I'm not sure. They seem to have a fondness for The Old Days, including colonialism (much more well-ordered than the current third-world mess), monarchy, and empire. They verge close to racism and the dark proto-facism of de Maistre.

Still, it's a fascinating world. I've learned about interesting people like Australian philosopher David Stove, who wrote a great piece demolishing most of philosophy but doesn't believe in evolution. I suppose he exemplifies, in a somewhat different way, the mixture of deep insight and utter wrongheadedness of this new world. Then the right-wing blogs of course have a way of finding and publicizing the worst of the "left", including the wonderful Stalin Society.

I'm in heaven, because at my age I don't find anything new to interest me very often.

Führerprinzip

From the World's Stupidest Editorial Page comes this argument that we should all just shut up and line up behind Dear Leader:

But as someone who escaped from communist Romania--with two death sentences on his head--in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a "liar," a "deceiver" and a "fraud."

They can because this isn't communist Romania, you pompous twit.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook...Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community ... This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels.

No, it's regarded as fucking moronic.

For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts. Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies.

So -- in time of war, we aren't allowed to criticize the president who is the veritable incarnation of America's strength. To do so is tantamount to treason. We are at war against "terror", that is, we're in a war that can never end, so basically we aren't allowed any criticism of the president ever.

Mr. Pacepa should have stayed in Romania, he's obviously learned his lessons well there. "The communists got it right", indeed.

This is related, loosely, to the dynamics of conflict, forcing side-choosing, hardending of the boundaries. There is not a good term for this, which is a pity, since it seems to be at the root of war and many other social dynamics.

I recently had a long chat with Mencius Moldbug, an interestingly crazy libertarian whose goal is (roughly), to eliminate politics (because it leads to violence and war) and replace it with contracts, ownership, and law. I think this is largely misguided, but I'm partly sympathetic. Politics is unpleasant, it kills the mind, it forces people to conform to group norms so is hostile to the individual, it leads to violence. But I don't think you can get rid of it.

H-T, IOZ

Wingnut in the family

I have a terrible family secret -- one of my close relatives is a ridiculously extreme right-winger. He used to call me to argue against evolution and for the theory that Bill Clinton is a serial murderer. He's good friends with Ann Coulter and some other famous-name righties. We aren't close. Despite of (or maybe because of) his manifestly nutty beliefs, he's doing very well on Wall Street.

At a recent family gathering I learned that he was involved in Coulter's latest plagarized expectoration, Godless. Apparently he's the one who started her off on the anti-evolution track that makes up a good third of the book. According to him, Coulter is "smart" and "insightful", while Richard Dawkins (who I pointed him at the last time we went over this ground, maybe five years ago) is "an idiot". To each their own, I guess.

He's got the argumentation style of Bill O'Reilly -- a sort of bullying, finger-in-the-chest style that has absolutely no interest in truth or discourse or discovery. I always feel kind of icky after these encounters, mostly because I'm anything but a docrtrinaire atheist, but his stance polarizes the conversation, not leaving a lot of room for exploring the interesting middle ground.

This guy is not super-religious or anything. As far as I can tell, his positions arise out of a kind of conservative contrarianism -- a desire to rebel against a perceived liberal establishment. If that means rebelling against science and common sense, well, that just makes their position that much braver. I think this sort of conservative-as-rebel stance is quite common and goes a long way in explaining the popularity of right-wing blowhards. Bush himself is mystifyingly packaged up as some sort of rebel, which makes no sense at all but fits into this general framing strategy.

The thing is, most intelligent people assume that the ones who propel Coulter to the top of the bestseller list are mouthbreathing morons, and that Coulter herself is an entertainer who doesn't actually believe what she says. My relative is not a moron, he's just in the grip of some form of nuttiness. I can't speak to Coulter's sincerity, but he seems to take her seriously. I wouldn't pay her any mind whatsoever if not for this family connection and the fact that her books routinely top the bestseller lists. It doesn't seem wise to ignore a phenomenon like that.

Here's a remarkably patient investigation into the sources of Coulter's misrepresentations on evolution, worth reading for some pointers into actual scientific literature. There's an interesting theory about the persistence of the appendix, for instance, and some recent studies that directly attack the "irreducible complexity" arguments by cleverly how a complex biochemical mechanism could have evolved by small steps from earlier, simpler components.

Geoff Nunberg analyzes Coulter's rhetoric of "flamboyantly gratuitous tastelessness". Her trick is saying nasty things in a semi-joking way, so anybody who complains can be accused of humorlessness. This fits into the conservative-as-rebel strategy -- her flouting of basic decency and common sense is made to look daring, while her opponents become sanctimonious apologists for the establishment.

Link Gumbo -- pre-Halloween edition

Berlin airlift proposed for Pakistan. 50,000 dead, 3.5 million at risk.
The US has a chance to do some good and advance its own interests at the same time.

Thrasymachus, Socrates, Aristotle, Alcibiades are...Republic Dogs.

A public figure who is competent, disinterested, intelligent, and well-spoken sure stands out these days.

Can extreme right-wing creationists save rationality from the depradations of the left?
(thanks Pharyngula)

Self-help for infectuous disease comix!