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Silicon Valley, and software engineering in general needs regulation, but it also needs to regulate itself. The whole Libertarian wet dream is fine when you’re
by Erlangolem 9y ago
Silicon Valley, and software engineering in general needs regulation, but it also needs to regulate itself. The whole Libertarian wet dream is fine when you’re in college, less so when you’re building self-driving cars or surveillance networks. The lack of enforced ethical standards has always been problematic, but now it’s getting dangerous.
Once you’re involved in everything from healthcare, and automobiles, to drone strikes, you’re sll grown up and the training wheels need to die. The alternative is that this pressure continues to build and the public demands extreme regulation without understanding what they’re regulsting.
Tl;dr grow up, or they’ll come for the good (encryption) along with the bad (carelessness with human lives a la Uber).
- Fins 9y agoYou can't enforce ethical standards. I thought dumb college kids were all leftie Bernie supporters; being a libertarian takes slightly more intelligence than a belief that somebody will come and regulate everything perfectly for you.
- watwut 9y agoBeing a libertarian does not take much intelligence. It however seems to be correlated with a lot of arrogance and with overblown ego.
- nugi 9y agoKinda like being vegan, liberal, or conservative. Everyone is just being tribalistic and petty.
- portofcall 9y agoNot at all, but that’s definitely a cheap and easy shortcut to giving ourselves license to sink to the lowest common denominator. Don’t sell everyone short based on the actions and attitudes of the loudest.
- watwut 9y agoYes. But libertarians are more likely to claim that being libertarian is proof of their higher intelligence. As parent did.
- Fins 9y agoThat goes for blindly following any ideology.
- portofcall 9y agoThe Bar in every state, the AMA, the APA, and many other bodies enforce ethical standards.
- Fins 9y agoThey enforce rules of that association. Which may or may not be based on ethical standards.
- Erlangolem 9y agoThey call them ethical standards, and if you’re being reduced to a purely semantic argument, why not just pack it in?
- Fins 9y agoThat's a pretty important semantic distinction -- are you enforcing ethical standards (and I don't think anyone can force somebody to be a good person), or are you enforcing laws or rules? If the same association, in the fifties, excluded black members, would you say that the standards they were enforcing at the time were ethical?
- portofcall 9y agoUnless you’re offering a similarly objectionable issue with current ethical standards, you’re playing word games instead of a real argument. Which is obnoxious.
- ksk 9y agoAre you making the argument that ethical progress is not possible?
- Fins 9y agoNot really. I am arguing that what can be enforced, either by state or by an organization, are laws for the former and rules/bylaws/etc for the latter. Which may or may not be ethical. Maybe I _am_ splitting it a bit too finely, but I just don't see ethical norms (which do change over time) as something being enforceable.
- notfromhere 9y agoSure you can. Ask every lawyer or stockbroker that can no longer work in their field due to shady or illegal behavior.
- Fins 9y agoillegal It's legal standards that are being enforced, not ethical. Whether those standards coincide with ethical ones is completely another issue.
- notfromhere 9y agoEthical codes aren't legal standards for professional organizations. You can be disbarred for legal but unethical actions