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> I refuse to put digitized therapist's notes on the internet There is just no way that doesn't already happen all over the place already. The "things I won't

> I refuse to put digitized therapist's notes on the internet There is just no way that doesn't already happen all over the place already. The "things I won't work with" blog lists things that will actually kill you in horrible, mind bendingly painful ways. In Tech it's more like "things I won't work with because it might fail" or "is too difficult" or "might be a bit too unscrupulous"

paranoidrobot 7y ago
> In Tech it's more like "things I won't work with because it might fail" or "is too difficult" or "might be a bit too unscrupulous" For some of things, sure. But there are other things that do cause death, pain and suffering. If you wrote code that's used in military weapons, that's a more direct relationship. If you write code that's used to power gambling sites/devices, it's perhaps somewhat abstract - but there are a large number of people who are harmed because of how addictive these things are. If you write code that's used for managing high-interest loans (like the point-of-sales type of 'buy-now-pay-later' of loans) - then you're enabling the exploitation of people who by-and-large cannot afford the things they're being told they can have, and will spend a large portion of their life paying these loans off.
- Jestar342 7y ago
  All of which are orthogonal to the blog. The blog is about things the author won't work with out of fear of personal injury. Not writing software for a high interest loan's sake is far from the same. Being true to one's own ethics is a very worthy virtue. But it just isn't in the same league as not wanting to melt one's face off or accidentally die in a paralysing seizure of excruciating pain.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  And yet, military weapons serve a necessary purpose. All of us would agree that some military is always necessary. You listed products that are "exploitative", but would you have an issue with working for a manufacturer of hard liquor, a substance with significant addictive potential? What of a gunsmith? A knife manufacturer? Many products have the potential for abuse; few are _inherently_ unethical. If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit producing and selling such things.
  - Vindicis 7y ago
    What purpose is that? To project power and bully people, sure. If everyone has a gun, no one has a gun. If no one has a gun, everyone has a gun. If one person has a gun, he calls the shots.
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      Self-defense. It's basic game theory that we will never have a world where no one has a gun. This remains true on a national level.
  - davidgould 7y ago
    > If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit ... That's sort of the point of ethics though, it's pretty weak to say "I choose not to steal because it is wrong, but you do you."
    - michaelt 7y ago
      On the other hand, if I said "I choose not to have an abortion, but you do you" that'd be a pretty up-to-date stance, right?
      - wyattpeak 7y ago
        While that statement is usually used as an explicit indicator that the speaker doesn't consider abortion immoral at all, I think there's a difficulty here in that morality is used in two different ways: things I don't think anyone should be doing e.g. owning slaves, and things I'd feel uncomfortable doing e.g. having an abortion. Perhaps they're two degrees of the same thing, but it doesn't seem obvious to me. I think there is also a subset of the first: things which I don't think anyone should be doing but social pressure forbids objection - eating meat comes to mind. Abortion may fall into this category for some, but in my experience even in fairly liberal circles people are willing to object to abortion, they just tend to couch it more.
  - 7y ago
MengerSponge 7y ago
Just because it's done all over the place already is no excuse for you to do it better.
- Jestar342 7y ago
  Disagree, though it depends on the measure of "better". If there's a market for therapists to digitize their notes and store them online, then I'd want that software to be secure. Should the creators of Gmail or Word or etc feel bad because therapists are using their services to send their notes to colleagues?
girvo 7y ago
I can tell you that they indeed are going over the internet, being put into a cloud based notes system for medical data at least where my girlfriend works as an optometrist (they have psychologists, GPs, surgeons, etc and they all use the same system)

paranoidrobot 7y ago

> In Tech it's more like "things I won't work with because it might fail" or "is too difficult" or "might be a bit too unscrupulous" For some of things, sure. But there are other things that do cause death, pain and suffering. If you wrote code that's used in military weapons, that's a more direct relationship. If you write code that's used to power gambling sites/devices, it's perhaps somewhat abstract - but there are a large number of people who are harmed because of how addictive these things are. If you write code that's used for managing high-interest loans (like the point-of-sales type of 'buy-now-pay-later' of loans) - then you're enabling the exploitation of people who by-and-large cannot afford the things they're being told they can have, and will spend a large portion of their life paying these loans off.

Jestar342 7y ago
All of which are orthogonal to the blog. The blog is about things the author won't work with out of fear of personal injury. Not writing software for a high interest loan's sake is far from the same. Being true to one's own ethics is a very worthy virtue. But it just isn't in the same league as not wanting to melt one's face off or accidentally die in a paralysing seizure of excruciating pain.
big_chungus 7y ago
And yet, military weapons serve a necessary purpose. All of us would agree that some military is always necessary. You listed products that are "exploitative", but would you have an issue with working for a manufacturer of hard liquor, a substance with significant addictive potential? What of a gunsmith? A knife manufacturer? Many products have the potential for abuse; few are _inherently_ unethical. If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit producing and selling such things.
- Vindicis 7y ago
  What purpose is that? To project power and bully people, sure. If everyone has a gun, no one has a gun. If no one has a gun, everyone has a gun. If one person has a gun, he calls the shots.
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    Self-defense. It's basic game theory that we will never have a world where no one has a gun. This remains true on a national level.
- davidgould 7y ago
  > If you have ethical qualms, fine, but there seems to be a tendency to condemn those whose ethical qualms do not prohibit ... That's sort of the point of ethics though, it's pretty weak to say "I choose not to steal because it is wrong, but you do you."
  - michaelt 7y ago
    On the other hand, if I said "I choose not to have an abortion, but you do you" that'd be a pretty up-to-date stance, right?
    - wyattpeak 7y ago
      While that statement is usually used as an explicit indicator that the speaker doesn't consider abortion immoral at all, I think there's a difficulty here in that morality is used in two different ways: things I don't think anyone should be doing e.g. owning slaves, and things I'd feel uncomfortable doing e.g. having an abortion. Perhaps they're two degrees of the same thing, but it doesn't seem obvious to me. I think there is also a subset of the first: things which I don't think anyone should be doing but social pressure forbids objection - eating meat comes to mind. Abortion may fall into this category for some, but in my experience even in fairly liberal circles people are willing to object to abortion, they just tend to couch it more.
- 7y ago

MengerSponge 7y ago

Just because it's done all over the place already is no excuse for you to do it better.

Jestar342 7y ago
Disagree, though it depends on the measure of "better". If there's a market for therapists to digitize their notes and store them online, then I'd want that software to be secure. Should the creators of Gmail or Word or etc feel bad because therapists are using their services to send their notes to colleagues?

girvo 7y ago

I can tell you that they indeed are going over the internet, being put into a cloud based notes system for medical data at least where my girlfriend works as an optometrist (they have psychologists, GPs, surgeons, etc and they all use the same system)