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Good. For context, air pollution kills 200,000 in the US and 40,000 in UK every year. You have to consider ethics in your work as an Engineer. Refusing an une

by dreen 9y ago

Good. For context, air pollution kills 200,000 in the US and 40,000 in UK every year. You have to consider ethics in your work as an Engineer. Refusing an unethical task is your moral duty.

w_t_payne 9y ago
Yes ... but as engineers we need to support the professional organisations that in turn will support us when we need to make these difficult and politically courageous decisions.
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  Who are such organisations?
  - mistersquid 9y ago
    Without putting words into w_t_payne's mouth (and at risk of incurring the ire of HNers who are wary of them), unions would be one such form of organization. Other such organizations might include software engineering guilds but I don't think such guilds generally act to protect the interests of software engineers collectively or individually. For various historical and professional reasons, software developers have not seriously considered unionization as a means of advancing their interests. However, unions typically do protect their members from arbitrary and unfair work termination. YMMV EDIT: change indirect object of first sentence in last paragraph.
    - dreen 9y ago
      Without getting too much into politics, I agree with you 100%, unions are the way to go.
      - DonHopkins 9y ago
        Tagged unions are an even better variant.
  - davidcuddeback 9y ago
    IEEE and ACM are the professional organizations for software engineering. They even jointly published a code of ethics for software engineering: https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics.
briandear 9y ago
40,000 people are dying from air pollution in the U.K.? Citation really needed.
- ako 9y ago
  A quick Google search shows these as the fist two results: * http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35629034 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35629034 * https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/03/06/air-pollution-cause-40000-deaths-every-year-fact-check-linked/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/03/06/air-pollution-ca...
shubhamjain 9y ago
Is it even possible to attribute a death to single, specific cause like pollution? What is the median age of these deaths? How did they happen? Do certain occupations make people more vulnerable to pollution exposure?
- avar 9y ago
  Nobody's attributing deaths to single causes. When we say e.g. that coal plants kill N number of people per year it's not the case that someone breathed in some coal particulates and keeled over night there at the age of 20. Rather, we know from epidemiological data that certain pollution, foods etc. shorten your life by a given amount. Let's say life expectancy is 100 years, living near a coal plant subtracts 5 years from that, and living near a nuclear plant 0. That would mean that out of 20 people living there there was 1 death equivalent a year.
  - Banthum 9y ago
    That's one way to calculate it. Other times, people measure life in "quality-adjusted years". So a coal plant that kills a young person every 20 years is worse than one that kills 78-year-olds regularly. This is a more rigorous method, measuring quality*years instead of deaths, which is why you almost never see it in activist claims. It's too rigorous to be manipulated. Other times, people just look at the immediate cause of death (e.g. lung cancer) and extrapolate to the cause of that cause (e.g. air pollution). But this imports a lot of assumptions and is easy to game. For example, I've seen cases where hundreds of thousands of deaths have been attributed to a given cause, but it turns out that those people were dying just a few years short of average life expectancy, and would've died for other reasons very soon regardless - quite different from the image of people in their prime dying needlessly. It's good to question these figures. As they are currently presented, we don't know the methodology, which makes them meaningless.
draugadrotten 9y ago
>You have to consider ethics in your work as an Engineer. Refusing an unethical task is your moral duty. It's easy to say, but ethics isn´t always so black and white. What about yourself. Do you drive a car? Then you are guilty of contributing to the air pollution that kills 200,000 in the US ever year, and you also endanger others' life by participating in traffic and making it more dangerous. You are also contributing to sponsoring the salaries of the car industry overall, which means you are indirectly sponsoring the development of more lethal machines, which also by the way enables murderers to transport themselves more rapidly to their victims. Did you post a helpful comment on HN or stackoverflow, and this comment helped a programmer in North Korea to develop their nuclear weapons just a little bit further, is that ethical? You have to consider ethics, but an "unethical task" depends so much on context.
- dreen 9y ago
  The context was pretty clear here. This particular engineer got asked to do something he knew was unethical and he did it anyway. That is pretty black on white to me. Consumer behaviour is an entirely different thing.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    I agree with you that the unethical nature of what he did was black and white. But why is consumer behavior any different?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Plenty of HN coding and chemistry wizards work for the 'defense' industry.
- csydas 9y ago
  I think there is a major difference in butterfly effect scenarios and intentionally misleading and commiting fraud. It's why mens rea is part of the equation for judgement. Intent means a lot; if it weren't, we wouldn't differentiate between manslaughter and murder. The VW engineers intentionally designed a system meant to defraud tests and avoid regulations, misleading consumers and regulators about the product. This was an order from on high, I dont doubt, but it's still an intentiknal decision. I do this knowing the direct result is fraud and pollution. My intent is to commit fraud, and I do not care about the side effect of pollution. And it's not really possible to not know what the intent of such a system is. I think we do need to be aware of the impact of our decisions and our choices, and we cannot just dismiss unethical choices on the basis of "everything could be bad.". That's just eschewing responsibility.
donatj 9y ago
The numbers really vary by source, and the vast majority who do die from air pollution were already on deaths door and it can be blamed for taking a few days to months at most.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Don't put away the torches and pitchforks, we're going to go after the alcohol industry when this is done.

by dreen 9y ago

Good. For context, air pollution kills 200,000 in the US and 40,000 in UK every year. You have to consider ethics in your work as an Engineer. Refusing an unethical task is your moral duty.

w_t_payne 9y ago

Yes ... but as engineers we need to support the professional organisations that in turn will support us when we need to make these difficult and politically courageous decisions.

drdeadringer 9y ago
Who are such organisations?
- mistersquid 9y ago
  Without putting words into w_t_payne's mouth (and at risk of incurring the ire of HNers who are wary of them), unions would be one such form of organization. Other such organizations might include software engineering guilds but I don't think such guilds generally act to protect the interests of software engineers collectively or individually. For various historical and professional reasons, software developers have not seriously considered unionization as a means of advancing their interests. However, unions typically do protect their members from arbitrary and unfair work termination. YMMV EDIT: change indirect object of first sentence in last paragraph.
  - dreen 9y ago
    Without getting too much into politics, I agree with you 100%, unions are the way to go.
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      Tagged unions are an even better variant.
- davidcuddeback 9y ago
  IEEE and ACM are the professional organizations for software engineering. They even jointly published a code of ethics for software engineering: https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics.

briandear 9y ago

40,000 people are dying from air pollution in the U.K.? Citation really needed.

ako 9y ago
A quick Google search shows these as the fist two results: * http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35629034 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35629034 * https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/03/06/air-pollution-cause-40000-deaths-every-year-fact-check-linked/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/03/06/air-pollution-ca...

shubhamjain 9y ago

Is it even possible to attribute a death to single, specific cause like pollution? What is the median age of these deaths? How did they happen? Do certain occupations make people more vulnerable to pollution exposure?

avar 9y ago
Nobody's attributing deaths to single causes. When we say e.g. that coal plants kill N number of people per year it's not the case that someone breathed in some coal particulates and keeled over night there at the age of 20. Rather, we know from epidemiological data that certain pollution, foods etc. shorten your life by a given amount. Let's say life expectancy is 100 years, living near a coal plant subtracts 5 years from that, and living near a nuclear plant 0. That would mean that out of 20 people living there there was 1 death equivalent a year.
- Banthum 9y ago
  That's one way to calculate it. Other times, people measure life in "quality-adjusted years". So a coal plant that kills a young person every 20 years is worse than one that kills 78-year-olds regularly. This is a more rigorous method, measuring quality*years instead of deaths, which is why you almost never see it in activist claims. It's too rigorous to be manipulated. Other times, people just look at the immediate cause of death (e.g. lung cancer) and extrapolate to the cause of that cause (e.g. air pollution). But this imports a lot of assumptions and is easy to game. For example, I've seen cases where hundreds of thousands of deaths have been attributed to a given cause, but it turns out that those people were dying just a few years short of average life expectancy, and would've died for other reasons very soon regardless - quite different from the image of people in their prime dying needlessly. It's good to question these figures. As they are currently presented, we don't know the methodology, which makes them meaningless.

draugadrotten 9y ago

>You have to consider ethics in your work as an Engineer. Refusing an unethical task is your moral duty. It's easy to say, but ethics isn´t always so black and white. What about yourself. Do you drive a car? Then you are guilty of contributing to the air pollution that kills 200,000 in the US ever year, and you also endanger others' life by participating in traffic and making it more dangerous. You are also contributing to sponsoring the salaries of the car industry overall, which means you are indirectly sponsoring the development of more lethal machines, which also by the way enables murderers to transport themselves more rapidly to their victims. Did you post a helpful comment on HN or stackoverflow, and this comment helped a programmer in North Korea to develop their nuclear weapons just a little bit further, is that ethical? You have to consider ethics, but an "unethical task" depends so much on context.

dreen 9y ago
The context was pretty clear here. This particular engineer got asked to do something he knew was unethical and he did it anyway. That is pretty black on white to me. Consumer behaviour is an entirely different thing.
- timthelion 9y ago
  I agree with you that the unethical nature of what he did was black and white. But why is consumer behavior any different?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Plenty of HN coding and chemistry wizards work for the 'defense' industry.
csydas 9y ago
I think there is a major difference in butterfly effect scenarios and intentionally misleading and commiting fraud. It's why mens rea is part of the equation for judgement. Intent means a lot; if it weren't, we wouldn't differentiate between manslaughter and murder. The VW engineers intentionally designed a system meant to defraud tests and avoid regulations, misleading consumers and regulators about the product. This was an order from on high, I dont doubt, but it's still an intentiknal decision. I do this knowing the direct result is fraud and pollution. My intent is to commit fraud, and I do not care about the side effect of pollution. And it's not really possible to not know what the intent of such a system is. I think we do need to be aware of the impact of our decisions and our choices, and we cannot just dismiss unethical choices on the basis of "everything could be bad.". That's just eschewing responsibility.

donatj 9y ago

The numbers really vary by source, and the vast majority who do die from air pollution were already on deaths door and it can be blamed for taking a few days to months at most.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Don't put away the torches and pitchforks, we're going to go after the alcohol industry when this is done.