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I question the amount that such ethics courses actually help. Business majors have had ethics courses for as long as I can imagine, and yet you don't have to go

I question the amount that such ethics courses actually help. Business majors have had ethics courses for as long as I can imagine, and yet you don't have to go far on HN (even in this very thread) before you see people saying business majors are unethical. The bigger problem, IMO, is that many tech companies have started handing out kool-aid that data collection and analytics is ethical. They justify it by saying that it helps people avoid spam, or get better advertisements, or whatever, and then the engineers think they are being ethical and beneficial to society by building these systems.

TimTheTinker 7y ago
> Business majors have had ethics courses for as long as I can imagine I took a business ethics course in undergrad, and it was surprising how many students advocated all sorts of (to me) aberrant ethical views. (Note I’m pretty traditional, morally speaking. The environment was strongly postmodern, and this was before all the modern insanity about “free speech is bad because some people say bad/offensive things”.) Not that I minded personally, but it was a strong lesson to me that teaching people categories and how to think won’t give them a desire to respect any particular brand of morality.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > this was before all the modern insanity about “free speech is bad because some people say bad/offensive things”.) To be totally fair, the idea "free speech is bad because some people say bad things" is older than the mind of man can remember.
  - bregma 7y ago
    > To be totally fair, the idea "free speech is bad because some people say bad things" is older than the mind of man can remember. Yes, it's just that we've only recently been allowed to talk about it openly.
- paulmd 7y ago
  Most nations besides the US don't subscribe to an unlimited right to speech. Hell, the US doesn't subscribe to an unlimited right to speech. Should I be allowed to say that I think you should die for the opinion you just espoused? That is probably not a legal statement for me to make under the US principles of free speech. Should you be allowed to say that you think I should die for my genetics or the social group that I am born into? Glad we've agreed that while free speech isn't bad because some people say bad things, that doesn't mean that all free speech should be legal, either. As we've thus agreed, we can absolutely restrict certain categories of speech without diminishing the actual social value of free discourse. This idea is entirely uncontroversial in every single developed country except for the US. Nobody else thinks that "well I just want to murder all the jews but you want to suppress free discourse, looks like you have some growing up to do" is a valid position for people to take. No, that's not polite to say, but that's where your argument ends up, and that's really the entire purpose of that argument. Otherwise - what arguments exactly do you feel could not legally be expressed in a modern first-world democracy, that actually should be expressed? This argument literally, always comes down to someone who argues that "well I don't actually (openly) support Nazis marching in the streets, but I don't think they should be legally suppressed from expressing their desire to murder an entire race of human beings". Again, otherwise, be glad to hear what exactly you think you think people have a problem with that is legally suppressed in the communist state of Germany or Sweden in 2019. The reality is that the laws are always interpreted by humans and a huge amount of deference is given to free speech in all but the most explicit cases. Yes, if the system becomes corrupted we have a problem, but that's literally always the case even with an unlimited right to free speech. There is no slippery slope here unless things go completely off the rails, and things can always go completely off the rails under any system. We really, actually, can just ban the Nazis marching in the streets without everything magically turning into a dystopia. Germany has done it for 75 years. I realize you probably think I'm overreacting because this idea always went over well at your college smokeouts, but I'm under no obligation to sugar coat this for you, I'm just being blunt: this is an occasion when your opinion is trite and shallow and you really should re-think the consequences, because it's entirely possible that your opinion gets people killed over the next decade. You're not Atticus Finch for white-knighting the right of Nazis to express hate speech.
  - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
afiori 7y ago
Saying that business majors are full of unethical people is like saying that politics is full of unethical people, it is the job that attract those characteristics. The objective of those ethical classes is to move the neutral/good majority in hope in hope to counterbalance the unethical minority.
- tidepod12 7y ago
  And computer science is just as full of unethical people. The highest paying jobs available to those in their 20s and 30s, by far, are computer science jobs. That alone attracts an incredible amount of people only in it for the money. On top of that, companies which are usually regarded as some of the most unethical companies on the planet (especially in regards to privacy) are companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which are worshipped by and have computer science people scrambling to get hired by them. Going back a little further in history, before FAANG, the companies that were revered by the tech world were the very same ISPs that this post is railing against. Programmers as a whole seem to have no problem at all being unethical as long as it gets them either money or the chance to work on the latest tech fad.
  - afiori 7y ago
    I do not disagree with this, but it stands that the presence/prevalence of unethical people is not really an argument against ethic courses, as they are meant to do little more that containing the problem

TimTheTinker 7y ago

> Business majors have had ethics courses for as long as I can imagine I took a business ethics course in undergrad, and it was surprising how many students advocated all sorts of (to me) aberrant ethical views. (Note I’m pretty traditional, morally speaking. The environment was strongly postmodern, and this was before all the modern insanity about “free speech is bad because some people say bad/offensive things”.) Not that I minded personally, but it was a strong lesson to me that teaching people categories and how to think won’t give them a desire to respect any particular brand of morality.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> this was before all the modern insanity about “free speech is bad because some people say bad/offensive things”.) To be totally fair, the idea "free speech is bad because some people say bad things" is older than the mind of man can remember.
- bregma 7y ago
  > To be totally fair, the idea "free speech is bad because some people say bad things" is older than the mind of man can remember. Yes, it's just that we've only recently been allowed to talk about it openly.
paulmd 7y ago
Most nations besides the US don't subscribe to an unlimited right to speech. Hell, the US doesn't subscribe to an unlimited right to speech. Should I be allowed to say that I think you should die for the opinion you just espoused? That is probably not a legal statement for me to make under the US principles of free speech. Should you be allowed to say that you think I should die for my genetics or the social group that I am born into? Glad we've agreed that while free speech isn't bad because some people say bad things, that doesn't mean that all free speech should be legal, either. As we've thus agreed, we can absolutely restrict certain categories of speech without diminishing the actual social value of free discourse. This idea is entirely uncontroversial in every single developed country except for the US. Nobody else thinks that "well I just want to murder all the jews but you want to suppress free discourse, looks like you have some growing up to do" is a valid position for people to take. No, that's not polite to say, but that's where your argument ends up, and that's really the entire purpose of that argument. Otherwise - what arguments exactly do you feel could not legally be expressed in a modern first-world democracy, that actually should be expressed? This argument literally, always comes down to someone who argues that "well I don't actually (openly) support Nazis marching in the streets, but I don't think they should be legally suppressed from expressing their desire to murder an entire race of human beings". Again, otherwise, be glad to hear what exactly you think you think people have a problem with that is legally suppressed in the communist state of Germany or Sweden in 2019. The reality is that the laws are always interpreted by humans and a huge amount of deference is given to free speech in all but the most explicit cases. Yes, if the system becomes corrupted we have a problem, but that's literally always the case even with an unlimited right to free speech. There is no slippery slope here unless things go completely off the rails, and things can always go completely off the rails under any system. We really, actually, can just ban the Nazis marching in the streets without everything magically turning into a dystopia. Germany has done it for 75 years. I realize you probably think I'm overreacting because this idea always went over well at your college smokeouts, but I'm under no obligation to sugar coat this for you, I'm just being blunt: this is an occasion when your opinion is trite and shallow and you really should re-think the consequences, because it's entirely possible that your opinion gets people killed over the next decade. You're not Atticus Finch for white-knighting the right of Nazis to express hate speech.
- 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

afiori 7y ago

Saying that business majors are full of unethical people is like saying that politics is full of unethical people, it is the job that attract those characteristics. The objective of those ethical classes is to move the neutral/good majority in hope in hope to counterbalance the unethical minority.

tidepod12 7y ago
And computer science is just as full of unethical people. The highest paying jobs available to those in their 20s and 30s, by far, are computer science jobs. That alone attracts an incredible amount of people only in it for the money. On top of that, companies which are usually regarded as some of the most unethical companies on the planet (especially in regards to privacy) are companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which are worshipped by and have computer science people scrambling to get hired by them. Going back a little further in history, before FAANG, the companies that were revered by the tech world were the very same ISPs that this post is railing against. Programmers as a whole seem to have no problem at all being unethical as long as it gets them either money or the chance to work on the latest tech fad.
- afiori 7y ago
  I do not disagree with this, but it stands that the presence/prevalence of unethical people is not really an argument against ethic courses, as they are meant to do little more that containing the problem