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Ethics is a trend. It's whatever is trendy to say or think at the moment. A set of arbitrary unenforceable rules to shame practices that is decided by whoever

Ethics is a trend. It's whatever is trendy to say or think at the moment. A set of arbitrary unenforceable rules to shame practices that is decided by whoever convinced other ethicist to grant him a PhD. Of course, all that is done without going through the rigor of making these practices illegal. That would have a real impact. And require real work.

ravi-delia 6y ago
I'd say its just the reverse. Like the strange and consistent finding that people are shockingly unmotivated by monetary incentive, it seems likely that straight up legal penalties would be less effective than soft social pressure. We are fundamentally social creatures, and things like signaling and status are usually in the drivers seat.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  A law has to pass the rigorous test of court. Soft pressure just has to get a mob going on. > Like the strange and consistent finding that people are shockingly unmotivated by monetary incentive I find that hard to believe. Maybe again there's some strange societal pressure against voicing that money is a motivation.
  - indigochill 6y ago
    I would guess what GP is referring to is something along the lines of this book: https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/ https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/ IIRC, the idea is just that money only goes so far up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Once our material well-being is taken care of, we want mastery and autonomy and incentives geared that way are more effective than money.
- konjin 6y ago
  It's quite lucky that it's not people who do most of the harm in society, it's corporations.
pengstrom 6y ago
This is unhelpful reductionism. Like science, it's an ongoing project to minimize harm in a very real way. No one is pretending that we are done or that forcing ideas o people is a good idea. The point is just to systematically think about the consequences of our actions. Ethics provide tools for this.
- qsort 6y ago
  > Like science, it's an ongoing project to minimize harm in a very real way. What would this "very real" way be? Different people have widely different objective functions they are trying to maximize. The expectation that we should always attempt to pursue cosmic justice is completely unrealistic. We already have a proper way of enforcing "very real" ways to curtail abuses, it's called passing laws. There probably is a place for serious, proper discussion of what the proper working ethics for a software engineer are, but it's nowhere near as preminent as the zeitgeist is suggesting.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    > We already have a proper way of enforcing "very real" ways to curtail abuses, it's called passing laws. And how is it decided what should become illegal? Just passing laws banning unethical things? Now we are back to square one deciding what is and isn't ethical.
    - konjin 6y ago
      The ballot box.
      - smnrchrds 6y ago
        But who writes the words that go on the ballots? Ballots are not like Ouija boards. Someone has to make a proposal for others to vote on. The person who writes that will be an ethicist, if not by title, then by the fact that they wrote the text of a proposal to ban something unethical.
oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
You're talking about applied ethics, not ethics as a whole.
timonoko 6y ago
Ethics is not a trend. For 50 years those who do nothing and know nothing are yapping about ethics. I suggest that we start this discussion when a machine makes the first unethical move. Saves lots of energy and grant money.
claudiawerner 6y ago
>A set of arbitrary unenforceable rules to shame practices that is decided by whoever convinced other ethicist to grant him a PhD. As someone also skeptical of ethics, this isn't a very useful or helpful way to see it. You say ethics is arbitrary, but it's only as "arbitrary" as every other humen-made system, and there are some (good, in my judgement) theories on the connection to human evolution. You say that ethical rules are decided by an ethicist going for a PhD, but historically, ethical discussion has happened outside the (formal) academy, never mind just to score a PhD. Why couldn't we say the same about sociology or economics, or even mathematics? It's not as though these people decide ethics for us - ethicists only decide ethics to the extent that artists decide what's blue or red. It's a process you are more than welcome to engage in from "the outside", and you don't need a degree in philosophy to do so. The fact that you may be ignored is irrelevant to the correctness of your theories. If you disagree with an ethical theory, even a popular one, it's your freedom to refuse to obey them when imposed for the reasons you put forward. It may even be a moral responsibility to do so. You say ethics is unenforcable. This is quite clearly either trivially true, or false - ethics has been and is enforced by levaging moral responsibility both on the conscience of the actor, and what society will tolerate (usually when ethics may process to law). Shame and guilt are also motivating factors. You speak as though there is no ethics behind making bad practices illegal, but law is filled to the brim with such debates that often hinge on ethics, or principles we will or won't give up for ethics. To take a recent example, debate around freedom of speech or religion. The whole reasoning behind those "self-evident" freedoms is our ethical reasoning. Ethical reasoning is neither static, nor ever in the best possible state. Ethical discussion (mind you, led mostly by people who aren't experts in ethics) over the past 100 years alone has changed so much. To dismiss it on the grounds that it changes is to your own detriment as someone who, like everyone else, is part of the constant ethical dialogue. By refusing to engage with the philosophy PhDs in reasoned argument, you're giving up your "vote", so to speak. When I see an argument or position in philosophy which is too narrow, built on false premises, ignorant of previous research, or simply logically fallacious, I don't throw my hands up and sneer at those careerist PhDs in their ivory tower. I don't give away my seat at the table, bury my head in the sand and insist they're wrong for reasons I refuse to articulate. Instead, I form my principles for myself, and if questioned why I don't follow the current trendy theory, my answer is simple - "It's wrong, and here's why..."
bitL 6y ago
How else would you get folks incapable of getting a PhD in hard sciences to rule over the folks that do hard science? How else would you make those who manipulate real-world data to get their preferred outcome feel good about themselves while doing it, or at least to hide the ugliness captured by the data? Wouldn't getting famous from hard work and taking risks take too long when one can just shame some top ML honcho on Twitter and become the ethical AI celebrity overnight? I predict we will need a license to do ML research soon and that would have to be rubberstamped by some AI ethicist... Not like the most recent ML conferences aren't doing that already ("Your dataset has only two genders? Bye")
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > How else would you get folks incapable of getting a PhD in hard sciences to rule over the folks that do hard science? In most subfields of scientific/technical ethics, it's very common for ethicists to have advanced degrees in the scientific/technical area. > I predict we will need a license to do ML research soon and that would have to be rubberstamped by some AI ethicist Except insofar as ethics is a component of the education and licensing requirements for regulated professions like medicine and law, that's not a thing that has happened in the US for any field (and even there is practitioners, not separate ethicists, who are responsible for the content and validation.) So, aside from sheet paranoia, what is this prediction grounded in?
  - bitL 6y ago
    > it's very common for ethicists to have advanced degrees in the scientific/technical area. Maybe, I can't tell, I am missing hard data on the distribution of degrees among ethicists. The one from Facebook whose lectures I attended had no technical degree but multiple degrees related to philosophy and sociology. One of the first lecture statements was that "technology is inherently about power", which is obviously how people outside tech perceive us and what many SWEngs are naively missing as we tend to think it's all about fun and self-realization (well, OK, it's dystopian now after profit-sensing individuals invaded our field). So those people outside want to regulate us with "ethics", i.e. creating power structures they rule and we need to consult for permissions. > sheet paranoia Was this truly a line of thought you wanted me to follow in order to become unreasonable?

ravi-delia 6y ago

I'd say its just the reverse. Like the strange and consistent finding that people are shockingly unmotivated by monetary incentive, it seems likely that straight up legal penalties would be less effective than soft social pressure. We are fundamentally social creatures, and things like signaling and status are usually in the drivers seat.

908B64B197 6y ago
A law has to pass the rigorous test of court. Soft pressure just has to get a mob going on. > Like the strange and consistent finding that people are shockingly unmotivated by monetary incentive I find that hard to believe. Maybe again there's some strange societal pressure against voicing that money is a motivation.
- indigochill 6y ago
  I would guess what GP is referring to is something along the lines of this book: https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/ https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/ IIRC, the idea is just that money only goes so far up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Once our material well-being is taken care of, we want mastery and autonomy and incentives geared that way are more effective than money.
konjin 6y ago
It's quite lucky that it's not people who do most of the harm in society, it's corporations.

pengstrom 6y ago

This is unhelpful reductionism. Like science, it's an ongoing project to minimize harm in a very real way. No one is pretending that we are done or that forcing ideas o people is a good idea. The point is just to systematically think about the consequences of our actions. Ethics provide tools for this.

qsort 6y ago
> Like science, it's an ongoing project to minimize harm in a very real way. What would this "very real" way be? Different people have widely different objective functions they are trying to maximize. The expectation that we should always attempt to pursue cosmic justice is completely unrealistic. We already have a proper way of enforcing "very real" ways to curtail abuses, it's called passing laws. There probably is a place for serious, proper discussion of what the proper working ethics for a software engineer are, but it's nowhere near as preminent as the zeitgeist is suggesting.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  > We already have a proper way of enforcing "very real" ways to curtail abuses, it's called passing laws. And how is it decided what should become illegal? Just passing laws banning unethical things? Now we are back to square one deciding what is and isn't ethical.
  - konjin 6y ago
    The ballot box.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      But who writes the words that go on the ballots? Ballots are not like Ouija boards. Someone has to make a proposal for others to vote on. The person who writes that will be an ethicist, if not by title, then by the fact that they wrote the text of a proposal to ban something unethical.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

You're talking about applied ethics, not ethics as a whole.

timonoko 6y ago

Ethics is not a trend. For 50 years those who do nothing and know nothing are yapping about ethics. I suggest that we start this discussion when a machine makes the first unethical move. Saves lots of energy and grant money.

claudiawerner 6y ago

>A set of arbitrary unenforceable rules to shame practices that is decided by whoever convinced other ethicist to grant him a PhD. As someone also skeptical of ethics, this isn't a very useful or helpful way to see it. You say ethics is arbitrary, but it's only as "arbitrary" as every other humen-made system, and there are some (good, in my judgement) theories on the connection to human evolution. You say that ethical rules are decided by an ethicist going for a PhD, but historically, ethical discussion has happened outside the (formal) academy, never mind just to score a PhD. Why couldn't we say the same about sociology or economics, or even mathematics? It's not as though these people decide ethics for us - ethicists only decide ethics to the extent that artists decide what's blue or red. It's a process you are more than welcome to engage in from "the outside", and you don't need a degree in philosophy to do so. The fact that you may be ignored is irrelevant to the correctness of your theories. If you disagree with an ethical theory, even a popular one, it's your freedom to refuse to obey them when imposed for the reasons you put forward. It may even be a moral responsibility to do so. You say ethics is unenforcable. This is quite clearly either trivially true, or false - ethics has been and is enforced by levaging moral responsibility both on the conscience of the actor, and what society will tolerate (usually when ethics may process to law). Shame and guilt are also motivating factors. You speak as though there is no ethics behind making bad practices illegal, but law is filled to the brim with such debates that often hinge on ethics, or principles we will or won't give up for ethics. To take a recent example, debate around freedom of speech or religion. The whole reasoning behind those "self-evident" freedoms is our ethical reasoning. Ethical reasoning is neither static, nor ever in the best possible state. Ethical discussion (mind you, led mostly by people who aren't experts in ethics) over the past 100 years alone has changed so much. To dismiss it on the grounds that it changes is to your own detriment as someone who, like everyone else, is part of the constant ethical dialogue. By refusing to engage with the philosophy PhDs in reasoned argument, you're giving up your "vote", so to speak. When I see an argument or position in philosophy which is too narrow, built on false premises, ignorant of previous research, or simply logically fallacious, I don't throw my hands up and sneer at those careerist PhDs in their ivory tower. I don't give away my seat at the table, bury my head in the sand and insist they're wrong for reasons I refuse to articulate. Instead, I form my principles for myself, and if questioned why I don't follow the current trendy theory, my answer is simple - "It's wrong, and here's why..."

bitL 6y ago

How else would you get folks incapable of getting a PhD in hard sciences to rule over the folks that do hard science? How else would you make those who manipulate real-world data to get their preferred outcome feel good about themselves while doing it, or at least to hide the ugliness captured by the data? Wouldn't getting famous from hard work and taking risks take too long when one can just shame some top ML honcho on Twitter and become the ethical AI celebrity overnight? I predict we will need a license to do ML research soon and that would have to be rubberstamped by some AI ethicist... Not like the most recent ML conferences aren't doing that already ("Your dataset has only two genders? Bye")

dragonwriter 6y ago
> How else would you get folks incapable of getting a PhD in hard sciences to rule over the folks that do hard science? In most subfields of scientific/technical ethics, it's very common for ethicists to have advanced degrees in the scientific/technical area. > I predict we will need a license to do ML research soon and that would have to be rubberstamped by some AI ethicist Except insofar as ethics is a component of the education and licensing requirements for regulated professions like medicine and law, that's not a thing that has happened in the US for any field (and even there is practitioners, not separate ethicists, who are responsible for the content and validation.) So, aside from sheet paranoia, what is this prediction grounded in?
- bitL 6y ago
  > it's very common for ethicists to have advanced degrees in the scientific/technical area. Maybe, I can't tell, I am missing hard data on the distribution of degrees among ethicists. The one from Facebook whose lectures I attended had no technical degree but multiple degrees related to philosophy and sociology. One of the first lecture statements was that "technology is inherently about power", which is obviously how people outside tech perceive us and what many SWEngs are naively missing as we tend to think it's all about fun and self-realization (well, OK, it's dystopian now after profit-sensing individuals invaded our field). So those people outside want to regulate us with "ethics", i.e. creating power structures they rule and we need to consult for permissions. > sheet paranoia Was this truly a line of thought you wanted me to follow in order to become unreasonable?