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> 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.

> 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.

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.