4 ms·

What angers me the most about this, is this type of topic is exactly what should be taught in a required class on ethics for engineering degrees, but is complet

What angers me the most about this, is this type of topic is exactly what should be taught in a required class on ethics for engineering degrees, but is completely missing.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Yes it should be semester 1 in every single CS and SE course. Sadly, there are very few resources; textbooks and professors qualified in software engineering and ethics, and the adjacent political, social and economic realms to fill this. I'm really, honestly doing my best with this problem. The subject area is massive. The issues are horrendously complex. The targets keep moving (each day we seem to set a new bar for what shitfuckery is acceptable). Also writing a book on Ethics For Hackers that is not prescriptive or too personal value-laden is extraordinarily hard (and it makes it worse that I am an opinionated bastard) HN remains one of my best resources for "pragmatic" ethics, and so I thank you all.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Also writing a book on Ethics For Hackers that is not prescriptive or too personal value-laden is extraordinarily hard Ethics and personal values are the same thing. It would be impossible to write a book on Ethics for [any audience] that didn't consist entirely of personal values. Similarly, since ethics are necessarily subjective, it is impossible to write about ethics in a non-prescriptive way.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    There's actually an entire chapter on that subject; the difference between morals, ethics, norms, laws and best practices, throughout history and in "post-modern relativist" times. You'll either love it or hate it, depending on how open your mind is.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > the difference between morals, ethics That one's especially easy. They are exactly the same thing; mos is the Latin word, and ethos is the Greek one.
      - nonrandomstring 4y ago
        > That one's especially easy. It troubles me when someone proclaims such glib ease. I read maybe 10 different sources, philosophy books, old and modern, and numerous debates on the subject precisely because some people think "oh that's easy" - a symptom of our deflationary society which itself is an interesting predicament. What do those Greek and Latin words mean? Mos comes from "mores and customs" whereas ethics (from Ethikos) means character in the mind of an individual. That sets a distinction between normative and subjective standpoints. However "Western" sense this is reversed. We are comfortable talking about "your morals"my morality" as subjective, relative positions, but reserve the word ethics for something supposedly more objective, scientific, and therefore presumably more widely agreed. And that's just the surface of it. Resolving the actual documented uses of "morality" versus "ethics" in case studies reveals a whole lot more. Some distinctions assign the qualities of rightness and wrongness to morality, but the terms goodness and badness to ethics. And then the are are the entirely subtle but profound distinctions Plato and Emmanuel Kant make about the mental/spiritual realm of ethics versus Aristotle's primary focus on how actual people might behave. Or a modern moral philosopher like Jonathan Haight's distinctions between morals and ethics. The bottom line is it's not that important so long as you're consistent. However it is useful to have different concepts and to set them out as philosophical tools. So "especially easy" - I don't think so :)
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > ethics (from Ethikos) I gave you the correct source. The -ic- in ethikos forms an adjective from the noun, just like the Latin form -alis that you see in "morals". There is of course zero semantic distinction between a noun and its own adjectival form. If you look up "moralis" in Lewis and Short, you'll see a citation noting that the word was coined by Cicero as part of a protest against the idea that Latin was unsuited to the purpose of discussing philosophy (popular opinion at the time being that you had to use Greek for that purpose). It begins by noting that "mores [are what] the Greeks call ethe". The Greek and Latin words are translations of each other, and both refer to habits and norms. It is true that in modern English norms are a distinct concept from ethics. (Not true in Greek!) But it is not true that in modern English morals and ethics are distinct from each other.
- unequiv88 4y ago
  I would think have it near the end, as grads to be work on their final projects. Make the end push to graduate require ethics classes to book end all the technical detail they spent the prior years absorbing.
- Macha 4y ago
  I know it certainly was covered in mine, it shared half a module with academic writing. But I think by the time of starting third level education, something like this is too late to change someone's moral decision making, so I don't really think it had any effect on anyone in that course.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > by the time of starting third level education, something like this is too late to change someone's moral decision making That's an interesting reflection. It depends on whether you see ethics as rational and actively learned, or formative conditioning. It's why such a project is harder than I imagined, and also why I tried (only somewhat successfully) to avoid prescriptive narratives. The overlap between psychology (behaviour, which can be changed) and moral feelings is complex. I think the best we can do is lay bare some uncomfortable truths; how people have seen things historically, what the likely outcomes of our behaviours will be, and how we delude ourselves otherwise. What I see in tech is that there's a lot of "moral armour" - comfortable things we tell ourselves, distorted rationalisations, fallacies, short-term economic justifications - that kind of thing can be improved, unlearned and replaced by a better framework by appeal to the rational adult mind.
    - Macha 4y ago
      I think this forum in particular often considers self-interest as the only rational option, and so appealing to the rationality of such people as a way for ethical outcomes is a fool's errand. It's why "but it's legal" is often offered up here as a defense for companies criticised for unethical behaviour. My best guess as to why people are so willing to act as if ethical criticisms are not valid is that the commenters self interest sees themselves as a potential future benefactor of similar actions and so they see the rational behaviour as being to defend it in case they could benefit from doing the same. I'm not saying that people cannot ever be convinced to change their outlook here, but that doing so for an adult is a way more involved, individual process that requires input from people the person in question respects, which is way more than a university ethics course can hope to achieve.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Just setting aside time for it in the curriculum would be a huge improvement. Even a single class session of student driven discussion and debate, anything. We don't have to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- sigstoat 4y ago
  > Yes it should be semester 1 in every single CS and SE course. to, what, make sure it is forgotten by the time you graduate? is there even any evidence that making somebody take a class on ethics will make them more ethical? most college courses are grading you on your ability to write about a subject, not on how much you care about it, or decide to alter your future behavior.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > to, what, make sure it is forgotten by the time you graduate? That seems a little dismissive. Did you forget everything you were ever taught? I doubt it. Maybe let's be charitable toward others. > is there even any evidence that making somebody take a class on ethics will make them more ethical? Yes of course. Same as there's evidence that teaching cookery makes better chefs and people who take a driving lesson crash their cars less. Education is a real, actual thing, as you well know. > most college courses are grading you on your ability to write about a subject, not on how much you care about it, or decide to alter your future behaviour. Most college courses are rubbish. They're training camps there to take your money and give you a piece of paper to boost your fragile ego. I know that because I'm a university professor. You can read what I think about the current state of education the Times HE. Maybe one in five students actually take anything meaningful from school. They're the ones who care about stuff and focus on their future behaviour as successful individuals and members of society rather than on ephemeral "knowledge" or getting grades. Don't fall for the certificate scam and don't let schooling get in the way of your education. > making somebody take a class Now, that's a telling word you use. Not wishing to psychologise, but are you maybe afraid of someone making you take a class in this useless subject? If so I agree with you. "Ethics" is widely abused as a stand-in for whimsical "policy" that can't be backed up rationally, or to conceal hidden political agendas. Many classes are tedious finger-wagging checklists and plenty of "ethics boards" are sham kangaroo-courts run by cardigan wearing Kevins and Karens [1] who sit down with tea and biscuits to decide the future of a department of PhD's based on how they "feel" about some keywords in a checklist (I've sat in those meetings). You should be afraid of "ethics" when someone else co-opts it as way to tell you how to think. That's not what my project is about. If you're sceptical about ethics in tech you'd probably like it. It's about ethics empowering you as a decision maker - to back that up with 8000 years of human wisdom - to be wholeheartedly motivated by projects that can make the world a better place, and confidently, courageously say no to tedious dehumanising schemes of extraction and surveillance that passes for computing these days. [1] sorry actual Kevin and Karen
imgabe 4y ago
I had to take an ethics course as part of an engineering degree. This was before mobile apps really existed so it didn't include an example like this. Don't most schools require an ethics course?
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
What was in your engineering ethics course, then? Ours was pretty much summarized by "Rich assholes will try to convince your boss to convince you to do some evil shit in the name of money. It is your obligation to reject such requests". Followed by a painful amount of tragic examples. Like, this may have been the only message of the entire course. The Ethics course in the Philosophy department was way more engaging, because it had a bit more variety.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  My course was very much a "don't do bad things because there could be bad consequences" type of course without too much ambiguity as to what the right action was and definitely no reference to topics relevant to software engineering. It was not a "why do good people end up performing unethical actions, and how you can prevent yourself from equivocating and rationalizing unethical actions as well" course.
harimau777 4y ago
I'm not sure how much that helps unless there is also some sort of protection for engineers who refuse to behave unethically.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  This is by far the most important point that is completely missing from the ethics course I took. Sexual harassment is bad. Victims have an ethical obligation to report the harassment. The result will be HR protecting themselves, likely via moving the harassed person to a new team or making their life suck in other ways. The only path forward after is to fight, likely in/with the threat of courts. Social fall out (because a manager or their skip level's life got harder) is almost guaranteed. A product deadline may be missed. The blame is often directed at the victim and not directed at the person who was harassing. I have watched this play out multiple times. In this way, reporting someone for sexual harassment is a sacrifice. So while there may be a moral impetus to report, there is a cost to do so, and the end result is not an ethical question, but a cost benefit analysis. The cost benefit analysis is then hampered by short term vs long term thinking. If nobody reports it, the abuse continues. If everyone reports it, then some of the abusers would likely be punished. The individual cost of reporting is high, and so a person would rather move on than fight. The abuser then continues to abuse. The end result is that the ethics themselves are obvious and uninteresting, but it is the economic factors and game theory factors that bring all the meaning to any type of pragmatic discussion of ethics.
mkipper 4y ago
Engineering programs do include a required ethics class. But with a cynical lens, it's only required because the bodies that license engineers and permit them to practice require that course in order for a school's degrees to be accredited. Once an engineering graduate is licensed and practicing, they're on the hook to follow a standard of practice that includes ethics. If they violate that, their licensing body has the legal teeth to punish them in a variety of ways (e.g. fines, removing their license). Also, employers who do engineering work have to agree to a similar deal with the licensing body. If they force engineers to act unethically, those engineers can report them to the licensing body who also has the legal teeth to go after them in a variety of ways. It's not a pretty system but it generally does an okay job. The ethics course itself is a very small piece of the puzzle. Even if every software engineer had to take an ethics course, there's still a huge power imbalance between the average engineer and their employer. Ethics are great and all, but without a legally backed standard of practice to protect those engineers, widespread violations are more or less inevitable. You can stand up and refuse to do work because it goes against what you learned in your ethics class, but your employer can just find someone who doesn't feel as strongly about that. That still happens in traditional engineering fields, but there's at least a legal/regulatory framework in place to discourage it. Some jurisdictions "solve" this by lumping software engineering in with other disciplines and making the same licensing bodies deal with it. This is also a big mess. Those bodies are normally led by "traditional" engineers who barely understand software, their standards/legislation were written before software-specific issues (e.g. mass surveillance) were relevant, and their processes don't move fast enough to deal with a rapidly changing field like software engineering. It may be possible to fix all this or create similar organizations and legislation specific to software, but it's not trivial.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  I appreciate this explanation. It is one of the more cogent things I've read in a while and fills in a few pieces I didn't know I didn't know. > The ethics course itself is a very small piece of the puzzle... Do you have any recommended reading regarding this part of the puzzle?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
amalcon 4y ago
I took an ethics course in undergrad (don't recall whether it was required, but I can't think of anyone in my major+year who didn't take it). This was before mobile apps as such, but we discussed (among other things) both spyware and use of what would come to be called "big data" in law enforcement.
akira2501 4y ago
It would be useful.. but really there needs to be much better laws controlling user data. If Google and Apple want to monopolize their users with the app store, then I think they should have to pony up for much stronger liability in these cases. They're only enabling this behavior to gain profit.
musicale 4y ago
The ACM Code of Ethics (notably section 1.6 "Respect privacy") certainly forbids this sort of behavior. I'm still waiting for ACM to audit the practices of Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. and then apply penalties (conference and publication bans, membership revocations, digital library bans, etc.) as appropriate. At the very least they should call out examples of unethical behavior - which currently includes many common practices in tech companies.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Who cares about the ACM? I am not bound by their ethics. I have my own.

What angers me the most about this, is this type of topic is exactly what should be taught in a required class on ethics for engineering degrees, but is completely missing.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Yes it should be semester 1 in every single CS and SE course. Sadly, there are very few resources; textbooks and professors qualified in software engineering and ethics, and the adjacent political, social and economic realms to fill this. I'm really, honestly doing my best with this problem. The subject area is massive. The issues are horrendously complex. The targets keep moving (each day we seem to set a new bar for what shitfuckery is acceptable). Also writing a book on Ethics For Hackers that is not prescriptive or too personal value-laden is extraordinarily hard (and it makes it worse that I am an opinionated bastard) HN remains one of my best resources for "pragmatic" ethics, and so I thank you all.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Also writing a book on Ethics For Hackers that is not prescriptive or too personal value-laden is extraordinarily hard Ethics and personal values are the same thing. It would be impossible to write a book on Ethics for [any audience] that didn't consist entirely of personal values. Similarly, since ethics are necessarily subjective, it is impossible to write about ethics in a non-prescriptive way.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  There's actually an entire chapter on that subject; the difference between morals, ethics, norms, laws and best practices, throughout history and in "post-modern relativist" times. You'll either love it or hate it, depending on how open your mind is.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > the difference between morals, ethics That one's especially easy. They are exactly the same thing; mos is the Latin word, and ethos is the Greek one.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > That one's especially easy. It troubles me when someone proclaims such glib ease. I read maybe 10 different sources, philosophy books, old and modern, and numerous debates on the subject precisely because some people think "oh that's easy" - a symptom of our deflationary society which itself is an interesting predicament. What do those Greek and Latin words mean? Mos comes from "mores and customs" whereas ethics (from Ethikos) means character in the mind of an individual. That sets a distinction between normative and subjective standpoints. However "Western" sense this is reversed. We are comfortable talking about "your morals"my morality" as subjective, relative positions, but reserve the word ethics for something supposedly more objective, scientific, and therefore presumably more widely agreed. And that's just the surface of it. Resolving the actual documented uses of "morality" versus "ethics" in case studies reveals a whole lot more. Some distinctions assign the qualities of rightness and wrongness to morality, but the terms goodness and badness to ethics. And then the are are the entirely subtle but profound distinctions Plato and Emmanuel Kant make about the mental/spiritual realm of ethics versus Aristotle's primary focus on how actual people might behave. Or a modern moral philosopher like Jonathan Haight's distinctions between morals and ethics. The bottom line is it's not that important so long as you're consistent. However it is useful to have different concepts and to set them out as philosophical tools. So "especially easy" - I don't think so :)
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > ethics (from Ethikos) I gave you the correct source. The -ic- in ethikos forms an adjective from the noun, just like the Latin form -alis that you see in "morals". There is of course zero semantic distinction between a noun and its own adjectival form. If you look up "moralis" in Lewis and Short, you'll see a citation noting that the word was coined by Cicero as part of a protest against the idea that Latin was unsuited to the purpose of discussing philosophy (popular opinion at the time being that you had to use Greek for that purpose). It begins by noting that "mores [are what] the Greeks call ethe". The Greek and Latin words are translations of each other, and both refer to habits and norms. It is true that in modern English norms are a distinct concept from ethics. (Not true in Greek!) But it is not true that in modern English morals and ethics are distinct from each other.
unequiv88 4y ago
I would think have it near the end, as grads to be work on their final projects. Make the end push to graduate require ethics classes to book end all the technical detail they spent the prior years absorbing.
Macha 4y ago
I know it certainly was covered in mine, it shared half a module with academic writing. But I think by the time of starting third level education, something like this is too late to change someone's moral decision making, so I don't really think it had any effect on anyone in that course.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > by the time of starting third level education, something like this is too late to change someone's moral decision making That's an interesting reflection. It depends on whether you see ethics as rational and actively learned, or formative conditioning. It's why such a project is harder than I imagined, and also why I tried (only somewhat successfully) to avoid prescriptive narratives. The overlap between psychology (behaviour, which can be changed) and moral feelings is complex. I think the best we can do is lay bare some uncomfortable truths; how people have seen things historically, what the likely outcomes of our behaviours will be, and how we delude ourselves otherwise. What I see in tech is that there's a lot of "moral armour" - comfortable things we tell ourselves, distorted rationalisations, fallacies, short-term economic justifications - that kind of thing can be improved, unlearned and replaced by a better framework by appeal to the rational adult mind.
  - Macha 4y ago
    I think this forum in particular often considers self-interest as the only rational option, and so appealing to the rationality of such people as a way for ethical outcomes is a fool's errand. It's why "but it's legal" is often offered up here as a defense for companies criticised for unethical behaviour. My best guess as to why people are so willing to act as if ethical criticisms are not valid is that the commenters self interest sees themselves as a potential future benefactor of similar actions and so they see the rational behaviour as being to defend it in case they could benefit from doing the same. I'm not saying that people cannot ever be convinced to change their outlook here, but that doing so for an adult is a way more involved, individual process that requires input from people the person in question respects, which is way more than a university ethics course can hope to achieve.
yummypaint 4y ago
Just setting aside time for it in the curriculum would be a huge improvement. Even a single class session of student driven discussion and debate, anything. We don't have to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
sigstoat 4y ago
> Yes it should be semester 1 in every single CS and SE course. to, what, make sure it is forgotten by the time you graduate? is there even any evidence that making somebody take a class on ethics will make them more ethical? most college courses are grading you on your ability to write about a subject, not on how much you care about it, or decide to alter your future behavior.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > to, what, make sure it is forgotten by the time you graduate? That seems a little dismissive. Did you forget everything you were ever taught? I doubt it. Maybe let's be charitable toward others. > is there even any evidence that making somebody take a class on ethics will make them more ethical? Yes of course. Same as there's evidence that teaching cookery makes better chefs and people who take a driving lesson crash their cars less. Education is a real, actual thing, as you well know. > most college courses are grading you on your ability to write about a subject, not on how much you care about it, or decide to alter your future behaviour. Most college courses are rubbish. They're training camps there to take your money and give you a piece of paper to boost your fragile ego. I know that because I'm a university professor. You can read what I think about the current state of education the Times HE. Maybe one in five students actually take anything meaningful from school. They're the ones who care about stuff and focus on their future behaviour as successful individuals and members of society rather than on ephemeral "knowledge" or getting grades. Don't fall for the certificate scam and don't let schooling get in the way of your education. > making somebody take a class Now, that's a telling word you use. Not wishing to psychologise, but are you maybe afraid of someone making you take a class in this useless subject? If so I agree with you. "Ethics" is widely abused as a stand-in for whimsical "policy" that can't be backed up rationally, or to conceal hidden political agendas. Many classes are tedious finger-wagging checklists and plenty of "ethics boards" are sham kangaroo-courts run by cardigan wearing Kevins and Karens [1] who sit down with tea and biscuits to decide the future of a department of PhD's based on how they "feel" about some keywords in a checklist (I've sat in those meetings). You should be afraid of "ethics" when someone else co-opts it as way to tell you how to think. That's not what my project is about. If you're sceptical about ethics in tech you'd probably like it. It's about ethics empowering you as a decision maker - to back that up with 8000 years of human wisdom - to be wholeheartedly motivated by projects that can make the world a better place, and confidently, courageously say no to tedious dehumanising schemes of extraction and surveillance that passes for computing these days. [1] sorry actual Kevin and Karen

imgabe 4y ago

I had to take an ethics course as part of an engineering degree. This was before mobile apps really existed so it didn't include an example like this. Don't most schools require an ethics course?

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

What was in your engineering ethics course, then? Ours was pretty much summarized by "Rich assholes will try to convince your boss to convince you to do some evil shit in the name of money. It is your obligation to reject such requests". Followed by a painful amount of tragic examples. Like, this may have been the only message of the entire course. The Ethics course in the Philosophy department was way more engaging, because it had a bit more variety.

hayst4ck 4y ago
My course was very much a "don't do bad things because there could be bad consequences" type of course without too much ambiguity as to what the right action was and definitely no reference to topics relevant to software engineering. It was not a "why do good people end up performing unethical actions, and how you can prevent yourself from equivocating and rationalizing unethical actions as well" course.

harimau777 4y ago

I'm not sure how much that helps unless there is also some sort of protection for engineers who refuse to behave unethically.

hayst4ck 4y ago
This is by far the most important point that is completely missing from the ethics course I took. Sexual harassment is bad. Victims have an ethical obligation to report the harassment. The result will be HR protecting themselves, likely via moving the harassed person to a new team or making their life suck in other ways. The only path forward after is to fight, likely in/with the threat of courts. Social fall out (because a manager or their skip level's life got harder) is almost guaranteed. A product deadline may be missed. The blame is often directed at the victim and not directed at the person who was harassing. I have watched this play out multiple times. In this way, reporting someone for sexual harassment is a sacrifice. So while there may be a moral impetus to report, there is a cost to do so, and the end result is not an ethical question, but a cost benefit analysis. The cost benefit analysis is then hampered by short term vs long term thinking. If nobody reports it, the abuse continues. If everyone reports it, then some of the abusers would likely be punished. The individual cost of reporting is high, and so a person would rather move on than fight. The abuser then continues to abuse. The end result is that the ethics themselves are obvious and uninteresting, but it is the economic factors and game theory factors that bring all the meaning to any type of pragmatic discussion of ethics.

mkipper 4y ago

Engineering programs do include a required ethics class. But with a cynical lens, it's only required because the bodies that license engineers and permit them to practice require that course in order for a school's degrees to be accredited. Once an engineering graduate is licensed and practicing, they're on the hook to follow a standard of practice that includes ethics. If they violate that, their licensing body has the legal teeth to punish them in a variety of ways (e.g. fines, removing their license). Also, employers who do engineering work have to agree to a similar deal with the licensing body. If they force engineers to act unethically, those engineers can report them to the licensing body who also has the legal teeth to go after them in a variety of ways. It's not a pretty system but it generally does an okay job. The ethics course itself is a very small piece of the puzzle. Even if every software engineer had to take an ethics course, there's still a huge power imbalance between the average engineer and their employer. Ethics are great and all, but without a legally backed standard of practice to protect those engineers, widespread violations are more or less inevitable. You can stand up and refuse to do work because it goes against what you learned in your ethics class, but your employer can just find someone who doesn't feel as strongly about that. That still happens in traditional engineering fields, but there's at least a legal/regulatory framework in place to discourage it. Some jurisdictions "solve" this by lumping software engineering in with other disciplines and making the same licensing bodies deal with it. This is also a big mess. Those bodies are normally led by "traditional" engineers who barely understand software, their standards/legislation were written before software-specific issues (e.g. mass surveillance) were relevant, and their processes don't move fast enough to deal with a rapidly changing field like software engineering. It may be possible to fix all this or create similar organizations and legislation specific to software, but it's not trivial.

hayst4ck 4y ago
I appreciate this explanation. It is one of the more cogent things I've read in a while and fills in a few pieces I didn't know I didn't know. > The ethics course itself is a very small piece of the puzzle... Do you have any recommended reading regarding this part of the puzzle?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

amalcon 4y ago

I took an ethics course in undergrad (don't recall whether it was required, but I can't think of anyone in my major+year who didn't take it). This was before mobile apps as such, but we discussed (among other things) both spyware and use of what would come to be called "big data" in law enforcement.

akira2501 4y ago

It would be useful.. but really there needs to be much better laws controlling user data. If Google and Apple want to monopolize their users with the app store, then I think they should have to pony up for much stronger liability in these cases. They're only enabling this behavior to gain profit.

musicale 4y ago

The ACM Code of Ethics (notably section 1.6 "Respect privacy") certainly forbids this sort of behavior. I'm still waiting for ACM to audit the practices of Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. and then apply penalties (conference and publication bans, membership revocations, digital library bans, etc.) as appropriate. At the very least they should call out examples of unethical behavior - which currently includes many common practices in tech companies.

charcircuit 4y ago
Who cares about the ACM? I am not bound by their ethics. I have my own.