6 ms·

You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. The most moral people I've ever worked with were the Marines I served with for 8 years. I've me

You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. The most moral people I've ever worked with were the Marines I served with for 8 years. I've met others, but most people are, sadly, opportunists who will gladly do what's best for them at the drop of a hat.

elihu 8y ago
Taking an ethics class taught me something that in retrospect should have been obvious but wasn't to me at the time: disagreements about ethical questions come largely from a different prioritization of certain values. If I come to one ethical determination and someone else comes up with another, it's not because they didn't apply logic in the same (obviously correct) way I did. Most likely, they just have different priorities or they use a different ethical framework. That isn't to say that ethics is completely subjective or whatever you feel like, but the class helped nudge me out of an "everyone who disagrees with me must be wrong" attitude. Plenty of people learn this without having to take a class but in my case the class was helpful.
watwut 8y ago
Your opinions about what is moral act and what is not one matter. You can do quite a lot harm while believing you are doing good things. Besides morality, knowledge of impact of this or that o world around matters. That is diferrent then morality and you can't derive it only from own experience. Lastly, there are plenty of near psychopaths and assholes in the army including marines. And it is not like various units did not had problems with bullying harassment and what on. Or if ships did not hit other ships recently because of chain or errors quite a few of them in ethical category.
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  There are bad apples everywhere. No place or team is perfect. The military, however, quickly purges the idiots and losers once they are exposed. If only this were possible in the civilian world. You tend to hear of the negatives of the military over the news, never the thousands of little, often unnoticed or undocumented missions that occur daily where the military simply does what it does. I've met more sociopath types in IT than I ever ran into in the military. The military tends to get a bad rap in civilian circles, particularly the Marines, because they attract alpha males. It takes a certain mindset and ability to deal with vast amounts of mind games and BS to serve in the Marines, but to outsiders, this makes no sense. The near-24-hour chaos provided in training and in garrison teaches people to deal with chaos while making decisions that affect the lives of teammates. The yelling, hazing, banter, and heavy physicality teach you that in your chosen profession, there is no rose garden. As George Orwell wrote: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." Bullying should be purged, near-harmless hazing, no. It teaches rite of passage, that membership is achieved and earned, not given. I don't want to work with beta males. They get people killed. Indecisiveness in combat gets people killed. When you're in combat, you're not giving a shit about the US or any other place. You're not fighting for that. You care only about the guys to your right and left. You live or die as a team. Morals always put the other person first. Love of family or teammates is not an emotion, but an act of the will. Love is not an emotion, it's an act of the will. You will the good of the other for other, with their best intentions in mind, even if it costs you your life. As Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
  - watwut 8y ago
    Bullying should be purged, but is not. And others comes before individuals, except beta males and non-members. Near-harmless hazing, teaches rite of passage to membership alright, but morals are not only nor primary about how you act to your own members and friends. And maybe I don't want to be member of your group and where does it leaves your behavior toward me, exactly? Morals have more to do with how you treat non-members and beta males and competitors. Not sure what all that has to do with combat. Ultimately, people in IT are not in combat. Our moral questions are about which projects to work on and whether overly optimistic estimate counts as lie. Should I fight my manger to be unethical and where is the line? How much tracking is ok and am I going to develop software that breaks the law?
wuschel 8y ago
I am sorry for you that you had such a bad experience with humans. I, for one, had the opposite experience, and have met many decent people around the world. It was rather minority in a group of people that made things go bad. > You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. Morals are learned, not inherited. You can teach morals, whether in a course, or in a family. Of course, the practical side is very important here... one has to learn to resist factors that corrupt your moral values.
joyeuse6701 8y ago
Morals, ethics, come from habit. See Aristotle.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Quite a lot has been written on the subject of morality and ethics since Aristotle's time. Orders of magnitude more than had ever been produced at the time he was alive, in fact. I'm not convinced his Nicomachean Ethics are as definitive as your comment seems to imply. If what you're trying to say is that anyone can learn to become ethical, then that's a reasonable opinion. But I don't think citing Aristotle usefully refutes the parent commenter's point about people either having morality or not having it, because Aristotle hardly settled the matter on any major dilemma in philosophy. Furthermore, Aristotle's Ethics go on about "right" education quite a bit - to the point that you can reasonably conclude people can't become ethical if it's not instilled in them early enough on in their life.

elihu 8y ago

Taking an ethics class taught me something that in retrospect should have been obvious but wasn't to me at the time: disagreements about ethical questions come largely from a different prioritization of certain values. If I come to one ethical determination and someone else comes up with another, it's not because they didn't apply logic in the same (obviously correct) way I did. Most likely, they just have different priorities or they use a different ethical framework. That isn't to say that ethics is completely subjective or whatever you feel like, but the class helped nudge me out of an "everyone who disagrees with me must be wrong" attitude. Plenty of people learn this without having to take a class but in my case the class was helpful.

watwut 8y ago

Your opinions about what is moral act and what is not one matter. You can do quite a lot harm while believing you are doing good things. Besides morality, knowledge of impact of this or that o world around matters. That is diferrent then morality and you can't derive it only from own experience. Lastly, there are plenty of near psychopaths and assholes in the army including marines. And it is not like various units did not had problems with bullying harassment and what on. Or if ships did not hit other ships recently because of chain or errors quite a few of them in ethical category.

stirfrykitty 8y ago
There are bad apples everywhere. No place or team is perfect. The military, however, quickly purges the idiots and losers once they are exposed. If only this were possible in the civilian world. You tend to hear of the negatives of the military over the news, never the thousands of little, often unnoticed or undocumented missions that occur daily where the military simply does what it does. I've met more sociopath types in IT than I ever ran into in the military. The military tends to get a bad rap in civilian circles, particularly the Marines, because they attract alpha males. It takes a certain mindset and ability to deal with vast amounts of mind games and BS to serve in the Marines, but to outsiders, this makes no sense. The near-24-hour chaos provided in training and in garrison teaches people to deal with chaos while making decisions that affect the lives of teammates. The yelling, hazing, banter, and heavy physicality teach you that in your chosen profession, there is no rose garden. As George Orwell wrote: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." Bullying should be purged, near-harmless hazing, no. It teaches rite of passage, that membership is achieved and earned, not given. I don't want to work with beta males. They get people killed. Indecisiveness in combat gets people killed. When you're in combat, you're not giving a shit about the US or any other place. You're not fighting for that. You care only about the guys to your right and left. You live or die as a team. Morals always put the other person first. Love of family or teammates is not an emotion, but an act of the will. Love is not an emotion, it's an act of the will. You will the good of the other for other, with their best intentions in mind, even if it costs you your life. As Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
- watwut 8y ago
  Bullying should be purged, but is not. And others comes before individuals, except beta males and non-members. Near-harmless hazing, teaches rite of passage to membership alright, but morals are not only nor primary about how you act to your own members and friends. And maybe I don't want to be member of your group and where does it leaves your behavior toward me, exactly? Morals have more to do with how you treat non-members and beta males and competitors. Not sure what all that has to do with combat. Ultimately, people in IT are not in combat. Our moral questions are about which projects to work on and whether overly optimistic estimate counts as lie. Should I fight my manger to be unethical and where is the line? How much tracking is ok and am I going to develop software that breaks the law?

wuschel 8y ago

I am sorry for you that you had such a bad experience with humans. I, for one, had the opposite experience, and have met many decent people around the world. It was rather minority in a group of people that made things go bad. > You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. Morals are learned, not inherited. You can teach morals, whether in a course, or in a family. Of course, the practical side is very important here... one has to learn to resist factors that corrupt your moral values.

joyeuse6701 8y ago

Morals, ethics, come from habit. See Aristotle.

throwawaymath 8y ago
Quite a lot has been written on the subject of morality and ethics since Aristotle's time. Orders of magnitude more than had ever been produced at the time he was alive, in fact. I'm not convinced his Nicomachean Ethics are as definitive as your comment seems to imply. If what you're trying to say is that anyone can learn to become ethical, then that's a reasonable opinion. But I don't think citing Aristotle usefully refutes the parent commenter's point about people either having morality or not having it, because Aristotle hardly settled the matter on any major dilemma in philosophy. Furthermore, Aristotle's Ethics go on about "right" education quite a bit - to the point that you can reasonably conclude people can't become ethical if it's not instilled in them early enough on in their life.