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Discussions of software and ethics are often painful, because the mere concept of ethics is so utterly foreign and unknown to software as an industry. Ethics i

Discussions of software and ethics are often painful, because the mere concept of ethics is so utterly foreign and unknown to software as an industry. Ethics is not about right versus wrong. That is morality. So for this conversation it does not matter if a given software is evil, a given client is evil, or if anybody cares that any of these are evil. Evil is irrelevant and highly subjective. Ethics is about conformance to rules that govern practice and behavior. In industries that observe ethics the violations of such rules don't just mean you get fired. It means you can never do that job for anybody ever again. The goal is to ensure that people practicing in a given field of work prioritize the quality of work above that of profit or employer demands.

saghm 4y ago
That makes sense, but I'd argue that OP opened the door to actual moral questions by characterizing their ethical code as "don't do evil things for evil people". Even if ethical codes are a morality-neutral set of rules, that goes out the window when the rules themselves start adding explicit moral requirements. Even ignoring the fact that the article itself defines its rules in a moral context, I feel like GP's concerns over the content are equally valid even just as professional rules. I thought the part about cache validation was hyperbole, but no, it's literally right there in the article: "Stale stuff in a cache would be an ethics violation". I don't really see how this would be a remotely reasonable rule for an industrial ethical code that you describe. If we're putting "stale cache results" in the list of rules where breaking them doesn't "just mean you get fired", but that "you can never do that job for anybody ever again", we might as well just all just retire as software developers and take up a new trade; even the best programmers in the world accidentally write buggy code sometimes, so we'd be better off finding some other job on our own terms rather than waiting for inevitably getting "disbarred" (or whatever the equivalent term here would be).
fwlr 4y ago
A quick search of morals vs ethics: First result claims morals are your sense of right and wrong, ethics are the good and evil agreed upon by your community. [1] Second and third results claim “morals” and “ethics” are used interchangeably. The second says even philosophers of ethicists consider them interchangeable. Both of them then add that if a distinction is to be drawn, they agree with the first. [2][3] The fourth result says the opposite, that ethics is an “individual assessment” while morality is an “intersubjective community” evaluation. I don’t think the terms are as cleanly separated as your comment suggests. I also firmly disagree with this other claim that the “mere concept of ethics is utterly foreign and unknown” to software as an industry. 1: https://www.verywellmind.com/morality-vs-ethics-what-s-the-difference-5195271 https://www.verywellmind.com/morality-vs-ethics-what-s-the-d... 2: https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-betwee... 3: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals 4: https://theconversation.com/amp/you-say-morals-i-say-ethics-whats-the-difference-30913 https://theconversation.com/amp/you-say-morals-i-say-ethics-...
- eikenberry 3y ago
  You are mistaking pop-ethics for ethics. Ethics has a technical terminology (which the GP presents) that doesn't 100% align with pop-usage, as is very common in many fields. If you want to talk in detail about a subject matter it is usually best to align your thoughts with the specialists to avoid having to re-hash things they have already sorted out. This is in comparison to talking to a general audience where these sorts of details aren't important (and this is reflected in your references) where even the specialists won't differentiate.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    Technical terms sometimes have definitions, but the definitions are highly context-dependent. Philosophy is particularly notorious for people not agreeing on the terminology and definitions, or even on whether there is any value in having definitions. Historically, "morals" was more or less Cicero's translation for "ethics". That's probably the clearest distinction between the terms you can find.
    - eikenberry 3y ago
      I haven't dipped my toe into academic ethics in a number of years, but I very clearly remember it was a big thing among ethics philosophy people of the time to stress that ethics in philosophy was the study of ethical systems (differing from morality in the way the previous post described). Perhaps this was a dominant school of thought at the time, but the profs and literature we studied both where pretty clear about this.
  - fwlr 3y ago
    I do appreciate there can be such a distinction! The article was using them interchangeably and therefore so was I. The reply to my comment hewed to the technical version, so I replied with the pop-ethics version. Perhaps I should have made it more clear that I was not saying “there isn’t a technical version”, but rather “there is also a popular version, and that’s what seems to be in use here”.

saghm 4y ago

That makes sense, but I'd argue that OP opened the door to actual moral questions by characterizing their ethical code as "don't do evil things for evil people". Even if ethical codes are a morality-neutral set of rules, that goes out the window when the rules themselves start adding explicit moral requirements. Even ignoring the fact that the article itself defines its rules in a moral context, I feel like GP's concerns over the content are equally valid even just as professional rules. I thought the part about cache validation was hyperbole, but no, it's literally right there in the article: "Stale stuff in a cache would be an ethics violation". I don't really see how this would be a remotely reasonable rule for an industrial ethical code that you describe. If we're putting "stale cache results" in the list of rules where breaking them doesn't "just mean you get fired", but that "you can never do that job for anybody ever again", we might as well just all just retire as software developers and take up a new trade; even the best programmers in the world accidentally write buggy code sometimes, so we'd be better off finding some other job on our own terms rather than waiting for inevitably getting "disbarred" (or whatever the equivalent term here would be).

fwlr 4y ago

A quick search of morals vs ethics: First result claims morals are your sense of right and wrong, ethics are the good and evil agreed upon by your community. [1] Second and third results claim “morals” and “ethics” are used interchangeably. The second says even philosophers of ethicists consider them interchangeable. Both of them then add that if a distinction is to be drawn, they agree with the first. [2][3] The fourth result says the opposite, that ethics is an “individual assessment” while morality is an “intersubjective community” evaluation. I don’t think the terms are as cleanly separated as your comment suggests. I also firmly disagree with this other claim that the “mere concept of ethics is utterly foreign and unknown” to software as an industry. 1: https://www.verywellmind.com/morality-vs-ethics-what-s-the-difference-5195271 https://www.verywellmind.com/morality-vs-ethics-what-s-the-d... 2: https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-betwee... 3: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals 4: https://theconversation.com/amp/you-say-morals-i-say-ethics-whats-the-difference-30913 https://theconversation.com/amp/you-say-morals-i-say-ethics-...

eikenberry 3y ago
You are mistaking pop-ethics for ethics. Ethics has a technical terminology (which the GP presents) that doesn't 100% align with pop-usage, as is very common in many fields. If you want to talk in detail about a subject matter it is usually best to align your thoughts with the specialists to avoid having to re-hash things they have already sorted out. This is in comparison to talking to a general audience where these sorts of details aren't important (and this is reflected in your references) where even the specialists won't differentiate.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  Technical terms sometimes have definitions, but the definitions are highly context-dependent. Philosophy is particularly notorious for people not agreeing on the terminology and definitions, or even on whether there is any value in having definitions. Historically, "morals" was more or less Cicero's translation for "ethics". That's probably the clearest distinction between the terms you can find.
  - eikenberry 3y ago
    I haven't dipped my toe into academic ethics in a number of years, but I very clearly remember it was a big thing among ethics philosophy people of the time to stress that ethics in philosophy was the study of ethical systems (differing from morality in the way the previous post described). Perhaps this was a dominant school of thought at the time, but the profs and literature we studied both where pretty clear about this.
- fwlr 3y ago
  I do appreciate there can be such a distinction! The article was using them interchangeably and therefore so was I. The reply to my comment hewed to the technical version, so I replied with the pop-ethics version. Perhaps I should have made it more clear that I was not saying “there isn’t a technical version”, but rather “there is also a popular version, and that’s what seems to be in use here”.