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There is this pattern where things are always the opposite of their message: - Dishonesty expert is dishonest - Politicians who constantly talk about freedom

There is this pattern where things are always the opposite of their message: - Dishonesty expert is dishonest - Politicians who constantly talk about freedom want to restrict anything that doesn't fit their world view - Militant anti-gay preachers hire call boys - Diversity teams are the least diverse

johntb86 3y ago
At least ethicists are about as ethical as other people: https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-the-rest-of-us-study-finds https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-th...
WalterBright 3y ago
I've always wondered if ethics class impart any ethics at all. If you're not an ethical person, why would you become one after taking such a class? If you're already an ethical person, taking a class in it is pointless.
- telotortium 3y ago
  The fact that the term "ethics" is used so much in a CYA way, or else as transparent rationalization of whatever worldview is currently dominant among the PMC, has given me an almost allergic reaction to that word.
- fasterik 3y ago
  Ethical theory is an interesting subject in its own right. Even if studying it doesn't make you a better person, that doesn't make it useless, any more than studying abstract areas of math or physics is useless. That being said, some work in practical ethics has had a huge impact. Peter Singer's work on animal ethics started the modern animal rights movement, and his essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" has inspired many people to donate a lot more to charity than they otherwise would.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jjk166 3y ago
  There is a distinction between understanding and practicing ethics. It's like taking a course on leadership vs being a good leader - some people might have a legitimate desire to be a good leader, but not know the best techniques; taking a course allows them to understand how to be a good leader so that they might become one. As another example, an atheist could study theology not to better practice religion but merely to better understand it. Someone can likewise have every intention of being ethical, but just be bad at it. Conversely, someone could know ethics well and simply choose to disregard them and do unethical things anyways. An ethicist isn't necessarily someone who practices ethics particularly well, it's someone who understands the concepts of ethics well.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > Someone can likewise have every intention of being ethical, but just be bad at it. Is there really any empirical evidence that such people exist and could be helped by an ethics course? I think laymen [to ethics] with a desire to be ethical can generally go about being ethical with little more than the Golden Rule. And if somebody hasn't figured out the Golden Rule yet by the time of their mandatory ethics course in college, there's probably something wrong with them (narcissism? psychopathy? some compulsion that makes them listen to intrusive thoughts?) that will make the ethics lectures basically pointless. The most effective time to teach ethics is probably Kindergarten, plus or minus a few years. I just don't believe in the existence of adults who want to be ethical but don't know how because a college professor hasn't explained it to them.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > Is there really any empirical evidence that such people exist and could be helped by an ethics course? Yes. Many, many people (including me) don't speak up when we see someone else doing something wrong. These ethics courses not only drill home the point of the importance of speaking up, but helpfully give many mechanisms in which one can speak up anonymously, or otherwise in a protected manner. A hypothetical of a situation the GP may have had in mind would be a person who is thinking of fudging or taking a shortcut, but doesn't want anything bad to happen. Ethics courses can show how minor deviations in ethical practice can have major impacts (jokingly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWjKkF0Zi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWjKkF0Zi4 ). These courses can also show that actively stopping work for an ethical reason will not be punished or looked down on in any way. Because of this the person will feel confident in checking their initial impulse to fudge and instead do what's right. Showing people how they can be ethical is just as important as showing them what ethics are. We don't need to be moral heroes in order to take more ethical action.
- dahwolf 3y ago
  Similar to a dating coach that has hundreds of dates to draw expertise from, making them actually terrible at dating, if the point is to form long term relationships.
- akira2501 3y ago
  If there are swift and just penalties for unethical behavior, then one does not need to actually learn how to be internally ethical, they just need to learn the social and political framework that's already established. As you might expect, it's among "one of the most popular" courses offered at Harvard.
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    It's popular because it's a profound topic, and Sandel is an amazing orator who makes the topic interesting, and when something is enjoyable, almost everyone wants to do it.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Question from a non-student of philosophy: Why do people use the term "ethical" as though there were a single agreed-upon "right" system of ethics? My understanding is that there are numerous concepts of right and wrong, some of which are very divisive. So i.e. there are people who would be widely detested for being "ethical" in unfashionable frameworks.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    It depends on your beliefs about the status of ethics. Moral realists believe that there are independently true facts about ethics. So for a moral realist, if "X is ethical" is true, then people who believe "X is unethical" have a false belief. On the other hand, moral relativists believe that ethics is context- or culture-dependent. So for a moral relativist, "X is ethical" has no universal truth value, but must be judged in the context of a certain time, place, and set of cultural practices.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Except that moral relativism ultimately boils down to a universal axiom of "One ought behave in a manner aligning with the moral framework of their setting", offering an inherent contradiction with the belief that there aren't axiomatic ethical rules. All ethics assert a universal ethical framework. Moral relativism just offers a really complicated one.
      - fasterik 3y ago
        Maybe your objection works for a relativist who makes claims like "one ought to tolerate moral practices of other cultures". But I don't think all relativists are making that claim. Some are just rejecting any notion of objective moral truth.
      - krapp 3y ago
        >Except that moral relativism ultimately boils down to a universal axiom of "One ought behave in a manner aligning with the moral framework of their setting", offering an inherent contradiction with the belief that there aren't axiomatic ethical rules. Except it doesn't. Moral relativism doesn't make any claims about the way one should behave. It's entirely consistent with a moral relativist point of view to oppose commonly accepted morality. Moral relativism merely asserts that there is no absolute arbiter of good and evil, no immutable arc of history towards freedom, no inalienable right. Everything is a matter of opinion and consensus, and consensus is always fluid.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Ethics (as a philosophical field) is about applying some level of rigor to the question "What ought I (and others) do and why?". "An ethical person" is a meaningless statement without an underlying framework of ethics, which obviously is a hotly debated topic, otherwise it wouldn't be an entire field of study. What studying ethics offers the individual is the tools to analyze their moral beliefs and ensure they are at least internally consistent. That "and why?" is probably the most valuable takeaway from studying ethics. Rather than saying "that act was wrong", a student of ethics can explain, down to axiomatic beliefs, why that wrong. If a disagreement between two people boils down to axiomatic beliefs, then you're never going change each others minds. But a difference in interpretation can be argued with the potential for persuasion. It also gives you a lot of practice justifying your own actions. Useful, but perhaps not exactly altruistic.
- wpietri 3y ago
  That's overly binary for my tastes. You talk as if there's no nuance to being ethical. Ethics is hard because people are complex and the ultimate effects of actions in the world are hard to predict. An ethics class can't make a sociopath normal, but it can alert normal people to the many important considerations, and the long history of people fucking it up via shallow, too-simple understanding.
- goodbyesf 3y ago
  An ethics class doesn't make you ethical, no more than a criminology class makes you a criminal. Ethics isn't about making you ethical ( though it may ), it's about studying the history and principles of ethics. It's about giving you the foundation to reason about ethics. Try the trolley problem. Is it okay to divert a trolley to kill 1 innocent person to save 10? What about 5? What about 1? And this is just an abstract thought problem. Now try war, nukes, abortion, death penalty, etc. Everyone has a simplistic and superficial idea of ethics. An ethics class helps you develop a deeper and broader understanding of ethics. To develop the what and why of ethics.
telotortium 3y ago
> - Diversity teams are the least diverse IME DEI is usually a function rolled into HR (although they often contract with diversity training firms), rather than a separate team, except at large companies. Where there are separate DEI teams, they tend to be the most diverse, at least among the white-collar workforce - the requirements for these jobs tend to be quite nonspecific, because they don't really need to do much besides write stuff and give presentations related to diversity. These tasks can, at a pinch, be mostly handed off to interns and ChatGPT, or else involve cribbing from preexisting presentation templates. The actual engineering, PM, etc., teams tend to be less diverse - graduates of specific university programs tend to be less diverse, in the non-euphemistic sense, than university graduates as a whole.
- fwungy 3y ago
  It's a make work job for providing political favors, e.g. politician's niece is given an easy job in exchange for future or past favors.
- JenrHywy 3y ago
  They may be more diverse in terms of race and sexuality, but have very little diversity of opinion and worldview.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    Little diversity of opinion and worldview how? (Should DEI teams be hiring people who are against diversity, equity, and inclusion?)
    - a_subsystem 3y ago
      They would benefit from being open to discussion, which they are generally not. There are an absolute plethora of examples. See Peter Boghossian's street interviews/surveys for example.
    - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
      > Should DEI teams be hiring people who are against [...] Yes, otherwise you're saying hiring is just a political test.
nancyhn 3y ago
- Mis/Disinformation experts spread mis/disinformation
jack_riminton 3y ago
Corporate entities with “innovation” in their titles are most definitely not innovative e.g. Innovation Managers have most likely never done an innovative thing in their life
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  And "excellence" initiatives are usually led by people who have never accomplished anything :-)
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Good managers are not necessarily good at the task they are managing. There's nothing odd about this. A good manager should have a great understanding at what they are managing, but not necessarily be individually competent at it.
  - jack_riminton 3y ago
    If that were true, why do the most innovative companies not have Innovation Managers?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      Because all of their employees were hired in advance to be good at self-innovation-management? Because a higher-level executive is taking on these duties in addition to, or in lieu of, their other duties. You can do a job without it being your job title.
JenrHywy 3y ago
One of Jung's more interesting concepts is that of enantiodromia - where things taken to extremes become their opposite. It's also a concept in the I Ching (where the "strongest" lines are the ones the ones changed into their opposite), and in Nietzsche's BG&E.
jstarfish 3y ago
We like these fall-from-grace stories but there's a subpattern to this that can't be articulated so easily. Literal "corruption" comes close. See also: every freedom fighter that launches a coup to overthrow a dictator, then becomes a dictator themselves within a decade. Or cops that get caught stealing child porn from the evidence locker, despite not being pedophiles by any definition. Not all these types start this way, or are inherently hypocrites. Repeat exposure to something tends to rub off. You can't rail against the evils of prostitution as the basis of your career without being forced to spend cycles processing what about them is so awful. Thinking about round tits on display, the mechanics of sex, etc. The unthinkable is literally on your mind 24/7, which effectively normalizes the behavior and makes it less outrageous over time. It's a weird cycle of grooming yourself to accept what you purport to hate. I'm an anti-fraud professional. I'm surrounded by so much of it (seemingly without consequence) that I'm frequently tempted to break bad myself. I never will, but it's a "conscious" decision (as an extremely stubborn Slav) and not because I'm a saint. Temptation just comes with the territory. It wears you down until you fail and make headlines in the most humiliating way.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
  I cannot prove it with ready evidence but I suspect there is a tendency during bad economic times for there to be more high-profile corruption cases because of a psycho-social need of frustrated people to vent their displeasure on perceived causal agents. TL;DR: If you were a public person, watch your actions during bad times.
- zigman1 3y ago
  Therre is this amazing political theory book called The Dictator's Handbook [1] by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith which itself is a popularized version of their Theory of Selectoriat (i am not sure if it is a cortect translation) from Mesquita's book called The Logic of Political Survival. I highly recommend it, for me it is one of the most important books I've ever read. It explains exactly what you wrote about. CGP Grey made great recap in one of his videos [2] called Rules for Rulers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&feature=share8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&feature=share8
red-iron-pine 3y ago
ITT: we start to understand "Projection"

johntb86 3y ago

At least ethicists are about as ethical as other people: https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-the-rest-of-us-study-finds https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-th...

WalterBright 3y ago

I've always wondered if ethics class impart any ethics at all. If you're not an ethical person, why would you become one after taking such a class? If you're already an ethical person, taking a class in it is pointless.

telotortium 3y ago
The fact that the term "ethics" is used so much in a CYA way, or else as transparent rationalization of whatever worldview is currently dominant among the PMC, has given me an almost allergic reaction to that word.
fasterik 3y ago
Ethical theory is an interesting subject in its own right. Even if studying it doesn't make you a better person, that doesn't make it useless, any more than studying abstract areas of math or physics is useless. That being said, some work in practical ethics has had a huge impact. Peter Singer's work on animal ethics started the modern animal rights movement, and his essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" has inspired many people to donate a lot more to charity than they otherwise would.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jjk166 3y ago
There is a distinction between understanding and practicing ethics. It's like taking a course on leadership vs being a good leader - some people might have a legitimate desire to be a good leader, but not know the best techniques; taking a course allows them to understand how to be a good leader so that they might become one. As another example, an atheist could study theology not to better practice religion but merely to better understand it. Someone can likewise have every intention of being ethical, but just be bad at it. Conversely, someone could know ethics well and simply choose to disregard them and do unethical things anyways. An ethicist isn't necessarily someone who practices ethics particularly well, it's someone who understands the concepts of ethics well.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > Someone can likewise have every intention of being ethical, but just be bad at it. Is there really any empirical evidence that such people exist and could be helped by an ethics course? I think laymen [to ethics] with a desire to be ethical can generally go about being ethical with little more than the Golden Rule. And if somebody hasn't figured out the Golden Rule yet by the time of their mandatory ethics course in college, there's probably something wrong with them (narcissism? psychopathy? some compulsion that makes them listen to intrusive thoughts?) that will make the ethics lectures basically pointless. The most effective time to teach ethics is probably Kindergarten, plus or minus a few years. I just don't believe in the existence of adults who want to be ethical but don't know how because a college professor hasn't explained it to them.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > Is there really any empirical evidence that such people exist and could be helped by an ethics course? Yes. Many, many people (including me) don't speak up when we see someone else doing something wrong. These ethics courses not only drill home the point of the importance of speaking up, but helpfully give many mechanisms in which one can speak up anonymously, or otherwise in a protected manner. A hypothetical of a situation the GP may have had in mind would be a person who is thinking of fudging or taking a shortcut, but doesn't want anything bad to happen. Ethics courses can show how minor deviations in ethical practice can have major impacts (jokingly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWjKkF0Zi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWjKkF0Zi4 ). These courses can also show that actively stopping work for an ethical reason will not be punished or looked down on in any way. Because of this the person will feel confident in checking their initial impulse to fudge and instead do what's right. Showing people how they can be ethical is just as important as showing them what ethics are. We don't need to be moral heroes in order to take more ethical action.
dahwolf 3y ago
Similar to a dating coach that has hundreds of dates to draw expertise from, making them actually terrible at dating, if the point is to form long term relationships.
akira2501 3y ago
If there are swift and just penalties for unethical behavior, then one does not need to actually learn how to be internally ethical, they just need to learn the social and political framework that's already established. As you might expect, it's among "one of the most popular" courses offered at Harvard.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  It's popular because it's a profound topic, and Sandel is an amazing orator who makes the topic interesting, and when something is enjoyable, almost everyone wants to do it.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Question from a non-student of philosophy: Why do people use the term "ethical" as though there were a single agreed-upon "right" system of ethics? My understanding is that there are numerous concepts of right and wrong, some of which are very divisive. So i.e. there are people who would be widely detested for being "ethical" in unfashionable frameworks.
- fasterik 3y ago
  It depends on your beliefs about the status of ethics. Moral realists believe that there are independently true facts about ethics. So for a moral realist, if "X is ethical" is true, then people who believe "X is unethical" have a false belief. On the other hand, moral relativists believe that ethics is context- or culture-dependent. So for a moral relativist, "X is ethical" has no universal truth value, but must be judged in the context of a certain time, place, and set of cultural practices.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Except that moral relativism ultimately boils down to a universal axiom of "One ought behave in a manner aligning with the moral framework of their setting", offering an inherent contradiction with the belief that there aren't axiomatic ethical rules. All ethics assert a universal ethical framework. Moral relativism just offers a really complicated one.
    - fasterik 3y ago
      Maybe your objection works for a relativist who makes claims like "one ought to tolerate moral practices of other cultures". But I don't think all relativists are making that claim. Some are just rejecting any notion of objective moral truth.
    - krapp 3y ago
      >Except that moral relativism ultimately boils down to a universal axiom of "One ought behave in a manner aligning with the moral framework of their setting", offering an inherent contradiction with the belief that there aren't axiomatic ethical rules. Except it doesn't. Moral relativism doesn't make any claims about the way one should behave. It's entirely consistent with a moral relativist point of view to oppose commonly accepted morality. Moral relativism merely asserts that there is no absolute arbiter of good and evil, no immutable arc of history towards freedom, no inalienable right. Everything is a matter of opinion and consensus, and consensus is always fluid.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Ethics (as a philosophical field) is about applying some level of rigor to the question "What ought I (and others) do and why?". "An ethical person" is a meaningless statement without an underlying framework of ethics, which obviously is a hotly debated topic, otherwise it wouldn't be an entire field of study. What studying ethics offers the individual is the tools to analyze their moral beliefs and ensure they are at least internally consistent. That "and why?" is probably the most valuable takeaway from studying ethics. Rather than saying "that act was wrong", a student of ethics can explain, down to axiomatic beliefs, why that wrong. If a disagreement between two people boils down to axiomatic beliefs, then you're never going change each others minds. But a difference in interpretation can be argued with the potential for persuasion. It also gives you a lot of practice justifying your own actions. Useful, but perhaps not exactly altruistic.
wpietri 3y ago
That's overly binary for my tastes. You talk as if there's no nuance to being ethical. Ethics is hard because people are complex and the ultimate effects of actions in the world are hard to predict. An ethics class can't make a sociopath normal, but it can alert normal people to the many important considerations, and the long history of people fucking it up via shallow, too-simple understanding.
goodbyesf 3y ago
An ethics class doesn't make you ethical, no more than a criminology class makes you a criminal. Ethics isn't about making you ethical ( though it may ), it's about studying the history and principles of ethics. It's about giving you the foundation to reason about ethics. Try the trolley problem. Is it okay to divert a trolley to kill 1 innocent person to save 10? What about 5? What about 1? And this is just an abstract thought problem. Now try war, nukes, abortion, death penalty, etc. Everyone has a simplistic and superficial idea of ethics. An ethics class helps you develop a deeper and broader understanding of ethics. To develop the what and why of ethics.

telotortium 3y ago

> - Diversity teams are the least diverse IME DEI is usually a function rolled into HR (although they often contract with diversity training firms), rather than a separate team, except at large companies. Where there are separate DEI teams, they tend to be the most diverse, at least among the white-collar workforce - the requirements for these jobs tend to be quite nonspecific, because they don't really need to do much besides write stuff and give presentations related to diversity. These tasks can, at a pinch, be mostly handed off to interns and ChatGPT, or else involve cribbing from preexisting presentation templates. The actual engineering, PM, etc., teams tend to be less diverse - graduates of specific university programs tend to be less diverse, in the non-euphemistic sense, than university graduates as a whole.

fwungy 3y ago
It's a make work job for providing political favors, e.g. politician's niece is given an easy job in exchange for future or past favors.
JenrHywy 3y ago
They may be more diverse in terms of race and sexuality, but have very little diversity of opinion and worldview.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  Little diversity of opinion and worldview how? (Should DEI teams be hiring people who are against diversity, equity, and inclusion?)
  - a_subsystem 3y ago
    They would benefit from being open to discussion, which they are generally not. There are an absolute plethora of examples. See Peter Boghossian's street interviews/surveys for example.
  - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
    > Should DEI teams be hiring people who are against [...] Yes, otherwise you're saying hiring is just a political test.

nancyhn 3y ago

- Mis/Disinformation experts spread mis/disinformation

jack_riminton 3y ago

Corporate entities with “innovation” in their titles are most definitely not innovative e.g. Innovation Managers have most likely never done an innovative thing in their life

rqtwteye 3y ago
And "excellence" initiatives are usually led by people who have never accomplished anything :-)
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Good managers are not necessarily good at the task they are managing. There's nothing odd about this. A good manager should have a great understanding at what they are managing, but not necessarily be individually competent at it.
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  If that were true, why do the most innovative companies not have Innovation Managers?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Because all of their employees were hired in advance to be good at self-innovation-management? Because a higher-level executive is taking on these duties in addition to, or in lieu of, their other duties. You can do a job without it being your job title.

JenrHywy 3y ago

One of Jung's more interesting concepts is that of enantiodromia - where things taken to extremes become their opposite. It's also a concept in the I Ching (where the "strongest" lines are the ones the ones changed into their opposite), and in Nietzsche's BG&E.

jstarfish 3y ago

We like these fall-from-grace stories but there's a subpattern to this that can't be articulated so easily. Literal "corruption" comes close. See also: every freedom fighter that launches a coup to overthrow a dictator, then becomes a dictator themselves within a decade. Or cops that get caught stealing child porn from the evidence locker, despite not being pedophiles by any definition. Not all these types start this way, or are inherently hypocrites. Repeat exposure to something tends to rub off. You can't rail against the evils of prostitution as the basis of your career without being forced to spend cycles processing what about them is so awful. Thinking about round tits on display, the mechanics of sex, etc. The unthinkable is literally on your mind 24/7, which effectively normalizes the behavior and makes it less outrageous over time. It's a weird cycle of grooming yourself to accept what you purport to hate. I'm an anti-fraud professional. I'm surrounded by so much of it (seemingly without consequence) that I'm frequently tempted to break bad myself. I never will, but it's a "conscious" decision (as an extremely stubborn Slav) and not because I'm a saint. Temptation just comes with the territory. It wears you down until you fail and make headlines in the most humiliating way.

sacnoradhq 3y ago
I cannot prove it with ready evidence but I suspect there is a tendency during bad economic times for there to be more high-profile corruption cases because of a psycho-social need of frustrated people to vent their displeasure on perceived causal agents. TL;DR: If you were a public person, watch your actions during bad times.
zigman1 3y ago
Therre is this amazing political theory book called The Dictator's Handbook [1] by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith which itself is a popularized version of their Theory of Selectoriat (i am not sure if it is a cortect translation) from Mesquita's book called The Logic of Political Survival. I highly recommend it, for me it is one of the most important books I've ever read. It explains exactly what you wrote about. CGP Grey made great recap in one of his videos [2] called Rules for Rulers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&feature=share8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&feature=share8

red-iron-pine 3y ago

ITT: we start to understand "Projection"