"Engineering Authoritarianism" 12

[MartinLe]

Hey all,

I came across this short text that I find interesting enough to want it widely read:

https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/12/05/engineering-authoritarianism/

Interesting bits:

Consider first, the disturbing fact that engineers are vastly overrepresented in extremist groups of all stripes: from neo-nazis to jihadists, engineering is the most common educational background of right-wing extremists. Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, the authors of a book on the subject found that relative to their prevalence in any given nation, engineers are vastly over-represented in violent right-wing extremist groups. Left-wing extremist groups that advocate or support violent means, on the other hand, have no engineers amongst their ranks and are instead made up of people with backgrounds in the social sciences and humanities.

Imagine if medical doctors, instead of taking the Hippocratic Oath that says, in part, “do no harm”, instead took an oath to never knowingly expose their employer to malpractice suits? No one, patients included, wants to be involved in malpractice but the change in allegiance should be clear: we want doctors to be first and foremost concerned with their patients’ well-being and their hosting institutions should be directed toward supporting that concern. Why should engineers be any different? Why are there no oaths to build things that cause harm to fellow humans? Why are there no licenses to be revoked if an engineer knowingly and consistently builds things that do great harm? These seem like common sense requests until you look at the major employers of engineering graduates: military contractors, resource extraction companies, and the governments that own those militaries and resources.

I was struggling a bit with the second part: On one hand, the kind of choice they hope more engineers make - not work in arms production or some resource extraction - is one I made myself. OTOH it would be weird to codify this in a semester long course on ethics. But practicing to think through the consequences of the work we do would be a good idea.

 

[GregLocock]

Without seeing the stats it is hard to say, but perhaps intelligent motivated people from poor countries see engineering as a way forward, and out of that cohort the frustrated ones go all suicide-bomby. But without the stats it is just guesswork.





Cheers

Greg Locock


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[CheckerHater]

Authoritarianism? Lenin was a lawyer, Stalin was under-educated priest, Hitler was a painter. Sure, blame everything on engineers.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
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[jgailla]

Engineers TEND to see the world in black and white because we deal with physical things which are governed by knowable models.
When an engineer applies this philosophy to the entire world it gets messy because there are no good models for human behavior and things are shades of grey.
Many ex-military seem to have the same problem for a different reason.

 

[TenPenny]

If engineers had to take an oath not to 'build things that harm humans', the world would be a cold, dark, ugly place, because there are precious few things that don't hurt humans.

Cars, trucks, ships, planes, food slicers, chainsaws, sharp pointy things, blunt heavy things, things that move, things that fall over, things that have liquids in them....it's a long list.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Not to mention the engineers that design things specifically to harm humans. Someone has to design tanks, bombers, guns, bullets, etc. Same for the people who design the tools that go on to build those things designed to hurt humans.

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

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[JNieman]

The oft-abused parallel to the Hippocratic oath often loses metaphorical value that the author desires when you realize we regularly perform chemotherapy.

 

[MartinLe]

Without debating the point if indeed "Someone has to design tanks, bombers, guns, bullets, etc.", the designer should worry by whom and to what ends these are used, and maybe walk out the door.

Occasionally this happens:
Story 1: Austrian military contractor converts small crop duster planes to military duty. Eventually the staff learn that the ultimate cusomer is former Blackwater boss Erik Prince. A few technicians quit, not wanting to work for a mercenary. (Story was in the Intercept a few months back)
Story 2: A German company that built spying software had a lot of staff turnover, since they sold to among others the gulf states and many developers did not want that on their conscience.

 

[SandCounter]

I disagree that there is no "oath" for engineers. In my state, the board rules say, "Licensees shall at all times recognize that their primary obligation is to protect the safety, health, property, and welfare of the public. If their professional judgment is overruled by nontechnical authority, they will clearly point out the consequences, notifying the proper authority of any observed conditions which endanger public safety, health, property and welfare." Also, with regard to codifying ethics training, generally a certain portion of the required Professional Development Hours are already required to be in ethics training.

Here are some stats and general musings to go along with the quotes showing the engineer-terrorist correlation. I thought it was interesting when I was downloading a Solid Works update that it made me click the check box to promise I wouldn't use the software for terror.





I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[SNORGY]

Yesterday was Pearl Harbour day.

Imagine the world we would live in today but for what happened on December 7, 1941 and August 6 and 9 1945, and the engineers and scientists behind those things.

In my view, there is and shall always be a place to build things that can be used to deliberately hurt people. Where the ethics of it come into play is determining what constitutes a legitimate reason to authorize their deployment.

 

[KENAT]

The guy must have a very different experience of Engineering ethics etc. than I and different from anecdotes often posted on this site.

"their professional ethics (the customer/employer/contractor is always right), they are taught unquestioning deference to authority"

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[JNieman]

Yea, it's going to be highly contextually variable.

Refer to the Challenger disaster for an example of complicit deferral to authority in the face of contrary evidence.

 

[JAE]

At least the writer wears a tie and is carefully groomed.

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[chris3eb]

Some doctors treat "bad people" who do harm to society. Some engineers design "bad things" that do harm to society. What's his point?

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Without seeing the stats, it might be that you are just looking at a small group of people that are motivated and resourceful and it really doesn't have anything to do with engineering at all. Anyone who got their engineering degree is motivated and has energy and can care since they likely are not living hand to mouth since their family could afford to educate them. Unmotivated or people just scraping by don't have the energy or time to care to get really involved in group xxx.

 

[Compositepro]

I did not read the article and generally do not read that type any way. It is in the vein of black people being over-represented in crime statistics. I doubt that many of these extremist engineers were actually employed as engineers. Any people who have no hope for a better life are potentially dangerous. The smarter ones are more dangerous.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

"....they are taught unquestioning deference to authority and unremitting neutrality towards issues of political consequence"

HA. HA. HA. Has he met an engineer? I can't think of one group in a company that management doesn't think is more of a pain.

 

[JAE]

The writer is a maroon - from his writings and comments herein it is obvious the guy is living in academia dreamland.

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[drawoh]

MartinLe,

That article combines several not-very related issues. A number of important arab terrorists were trained as engineers, including Yasser Arafat and Osama Bin Laden. On the political spectrum, engineers tend to be right-wing. Are Islamic terrorists right wing or left wing?

If you look at the membership of hard-line right-wing groups here in North America, you would expect to see more engineers than you would in the general populace, simply due to the skew noted above. Read through the discussions in forum1088. Politically, engineers are all over the place.

It is easy to overestimate the value of any college degree (or diploma). Engineering tests are open book, or you memorize the equations. You complete your assignments and hand them in. You get marks of 60%. You get your degree. You work hard, but you don't really have to think very much. If you are creative and like to solve problems, the knowledge is a tool. The system does not weed out the sort of rigid, process driven people who believe in absolutist ideologies and theologies.

The perception of engineers to the overall population varies from culture to culture. In North America, engineers are perceived as anti-social nerds. I suggest you read The Ghost of the Executed Engineer, by Loren Graham, which covers a lot about engineering in the Soviet Union. I don't know how engineers are regarded in the Arab world.

I also suggest reading Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861--1865, by Richard S. Brownlee. Unless you actually care about what happened in Missouri during the American Civil War, you can read this and ignore the distinctions between terrorists, freedom fighters, lawfully constituted authority, and jackbooted thugs. You can track the development of a really vicious guerilla war. Arab terrorist groups are nasty, but the Irgun and the Stern Gang were quite nasty in their day. Maybe the engineers had important logistical skills which enabled them to rise in their organizations.

--
JHG

 

[GregLocock]

People keep pointing out that an engineering education is a useful skill set in many fields outside engineering. Maybe that's just another example.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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