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We need a Hippocratic Oath for those that manage and deploy capital. A Hippocratic Oath for only Software Engineers is addressing the symptom, not the cause.

by abj 6y ago

We need a Hippocratic Oath for those that manage and deploy capital. A Hippocratic Oath for only Software Engineers is addressing the symptom, not the cause. Most of us don't wake up and think, "How can I make user's life worse today?". We need to fix the incentives if we want to fix the behavior. We need to give Software Engineers writing spyware the option to say no and still feed their families. We need saying," This is unethical and I can't help," to be a valid second option.

jojobas 6y ago
The key incentive is cash. As long as doing sinister things can pay, there will be people doing it.
- smabie 6y ago
  Or maybe, just maybe, ethics isn't at all universal? If my time in other countries has taught me one thing, it's that different people and different cultures have very different ideas on right and wrong. Ultimately (like, really ultimately), the very idea of ethics is a meaningless fabrication in the absence of God. Without an ultimate arbiter of truth, morality cannot exist.
  - jojobas 6y ago
    While ethics are very far from universal, there are things that are universally accepted, i.e. that impaling everyone on Earth is bad. God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that.
    - badRNG 6y ago
      > God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that. Absent God (or some sort of other mind-body dualism that's largely suspect otherwise), I don't see how ethics can approach anything that resembles "universals." The ontology of morality in a naturalistic or materialist worldview seems committed to something like emotivism, unless one feels like attempting to bridge the is/ought divide. How can we ascertain what the "universal" is when so many rational beings can hold diametrically opposed moral values? Is it democratically decided? If one is examining morality as the values of different groups of people, and another is debating what we ought to consider universally moral, there isn't going to be much consensus, and probably a fair bit of confusion.
  - grumple 6y ago
    I think you might find some intro philosophy useful to understand how you can have a universal morality without a deity. Some Kant is a good place to start, with his universal law being a fundamental idea.
    - smabie 6y ago
      I actually majored in philosophy, Kant presupposes the existence of God in his assumption about the specialness of rational (i.e human) beings. I never liked my ethics classes. Phenomenology and existialism is my shit, though I suspect Husserl was the inspiration for GPT-3.

by abj 6y ago

jojobas 6y ago

The key incentive is cash. As long as doing sinister things can pay, there will be people doing it.

smabie 6y ago
Or maybe, just maybe, ethics isn't at all universal? If my time in other countries has taught me one thing, it's that different people and different cultures have very different ideas on right and wrong. Ultimately (like, really ultimately), the very idea of ethics is a meaningless fabrication in the absence of God. Without an ultimate arbiter of truth, morality cannot exist.
- jojobas 6y ago
  While ethics are very far from universal, there are things that are universally accepted, i.e. that impaling everyone on Earth is bad. God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that.
  - badRNG 6y ago
    > God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that. Absent God (or some sort of other mind-body dualism that's largely suspect otherwise), I don't see how ethics can approach anything that resembles "universals." The ontology of morality in a naturalistic or materialist worldview seems committed to something like emotivism, unless one feels like attempting to bridge the is/ought divide. How can we ascertain what the "universal" is when so many rational beings can hold diametrically opposed moral values? Is it democratically decided? If one is examining morality as the values of different groups of people, and another is debating what we ought to consider universally moral, there isn't going to be much consensus, and probably a fair bit of confusion.
- grumple 6y ago
  I think you might find some intro philosophy useful to understand how you can have a universal morality without a deity. Some Kant is a good place to start, with his universal law being a fundamental idea.
  - smabie 6y ago
    I actually majored in philosophy, Kant presupposes the existence of God in his assumption about the specialness of rational (i.e human) beings. I never liked my ethics classes. Phenomenology and existialism is my shit, though I suspect Husserl was the inspiration for GPT-3.