11 ms·

This appears to be deeply misguided. There is no possibility that this was written by someone who has any experience in professional ethics issues. In many cas

This appears to be deeply misguided. There is no possibility that this was written by someone who has any experience in professional ethics issues. In many cases, this code of ethics is unethical, such as elevating "public good" as the "primary" concern.

infamouscow 3y ago
This is the rhetoric of low quality people making excuses for their cowardice.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  It isn't rhetoric, and I frankly don't care what some troll on the Internet thinks of my "quality." Professional ethics is something I deal with all the time. This ain't it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgift 3y ago
    If you deal with ethics so often, maybe you can illuminate us why this code is deeply unethical? I cannot decipher it from your original post.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      The problem, as I see it, is with nebulous concepts such as "the public". Who is "the public" and how does one determine what they want? What happens when "the public" is divided on an issue? In the Hippocratic Oath, by contrast, the physician and the patient are identifiable people. I realize there's always someone who self-appoints themself to "speak for" "the public", but that's not actually helpful here. In reality, "the public" is generally divided on any issue. Not always 50-50, but to a significant degree. If you tell me I have to work in the interests of some poorly-defined "public" I'm going to ask you which "public", and who appointed you to speak for them.
      - infamouscow 3y ago
        This is splitting hairs and pretends like the meaning isn't well-defined, when it clearly is. Literally every work I've ever read in political philosophy regards "the public" to be the general population or the citizens of a country. By this rationale, things society has benefited immensely from, like "public health" are so arbitrarily defined that it cannot make any traction, which is counterfactual to reality. These efforts are some of the crowning achievements of human progress, and it's dissenters deserve intense derision if not outright contempt. It also ignores other facts. For example, the USPTO requires patent lawyers to be educated at accredited universities. For professionals coming from computer science, virtually every student going to an ABET accredited university is taught the ACM's code of ethics.
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > This is splitting hairs and pretends like the meaning isn't well-defined, when it clearly is. No, it absolutely is not. > Literally every work I've ever read in political philosophy regards "the public" to be the general population or the citizens of a country. Then every work you've ever read in political philosophy is overly simplistic. Pick any contentious political issue (abortion, gun control, socialized medicine, the list goes on and on). There are substantial (not fringe, substantial) portions of the populace on both sides (1) of those issues. Which side is "the public"? Generally, it's whichever side the person who's appointed himself to "speak for the public" prefers. (1) In actuality, pretending that there are only two sides itself is an oversimplification, of course. > USPTO requires patent lawyers to be educated at accredited universities And? Patent lawyers are ethically required to represent their clients (i.e., identifiable people), not "the public".
        infamouscow 3y ago
        The word public derives from the Latin word publicus, which means the people, state, or community. It's also legally defined as such. [1][2] Further, it's limiting to say there's only two sides to an issue, when in truth there's typically multiple dimensions and a gradient of positions along each of those dimensions. I would love to continue, but it seems like you're only interested in discussing a strawman of the ACM's code of ethics. I implore you to apply the principle of charity rather than interpret the code of ethics in the worst possible light imaginable. 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public 2: https://thelawdictionary.org/public/ https://thelawdictionary.org/public/
refulgentis 3y ago
Your point is 100% correct: I think immediately of how effective altruism turned into a contest of how many billions of lives you could save a century from now. I can't go as far as saying "public good as the primary concern is unethical", because there's so many ways to twist abstract words. I think immediately of someone saying the same thing about the Hippocratic Oath, or the Order of The Engineer, and they'd be just as correct. But the correctness is surface level: it is _rational_, but it is not practical.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  You bring up the Hippocratic Oath, so let's use doctors as an example. If the "public good" takes precedence over the individual patient, then any patient with a communicable disease with a fatality rate should be euthanized. Do you think that's ethical? Elevating public good as the primary concern necessarily means pure utilitarianism. There isn't a society on earth today that accepts pure utilitarianism as a valid ethical system. And in countries that trend closer to pure utilitarianism, public policy is repugnant: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-venezuela-elderly-idINKBN21O1DJ/ https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-venezuela...
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    I see, thank you, that's also a really good explanation of why my mind must have jumped to effective altruism, and the 238 billion lives saved 347 years if you give me $10 for lunch. I guess with the Hippocratic oath, I'm thinking a simile would be: "well, if first do no harm takes precedence literally 100% of the time, that could lead to 0 treatment because there's always a potential for harm"
    - spencerflem 3y ago
      I like it though, its simple and direct - do not harm your patient. I like the software engineering guides that say things like "do no harm to your User" which is way less nebulous than having to consider all of society, while also stopping most of what I consider to be pretty severe ethical violations being done by big tech and the software engineers that work there
jacquesm 3y ago
I think you should expand on this or it will leave a 'middlebrow dismissal' vibe.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  I think there are sufficient examples below, but just to be perfectly clear: the "public good" is a nebulous concept, which can either mean objectively assessed public good (utilitarianism) or subjectively assessed public good (personal policy preferences). The latter is particularly likely in light of the "ethics aren't algorithmic" cop-out. Neither utilitarianism nor your own personal policy preferences should ever take precedence over your actual ethical obligations to your employers, your clients, and your users. If at any point they do, then you have breached an ethical duty and possibly committed fraud.

infamouscow 3y ago

This is the rhetoric of low quality people making excuses for their cowardice.

torstenvl 3y ago
It isn't rhetoric, and I frankly don't care what some troll on the Internet thinks of my "quality." Professional ethics is something I deal with all the time. This ain't it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sgift 3y ago
  If you deal with ethics so often, maybe you can illuminate us why this code is deeply unethical? I cannot decipher it from your original post.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    The problem, as I see it, is with nebulous concepts such as "the public". Who is "the public" and how does one determine what they want? What happens when "the public" is divided on an issue? In the Hippocratic Oath, by contrast, the physician and the patient are identifiable people. I realize there's always someone who self-appoints themself to "speak for" "the public", but that's not actually helpful here. In reality, "the public" is generally divided on any issue. Not always 50-50, but to a significant degree. If you tell me I have to work in the interests of some poorly-defined "public" I'm going to ask you which "public", and who appointed you to speak for them.
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      This is splitting hairs and pretends like the meaning isn't well-defined, when it clearly is. Literally every work I've ever read in political philosophy regards "the public" to be the general population or the citizens of a country. By this rationale, things society has benefited immensely from, like "public health" are so arbitrarily defined that it cannot make any traction, which is counterfactual to reality. These efforts are some of the crowning achievements of human progress, and it's dissenters deserve intense derision if not outright contempt. It also ignores other facts. For example, the USPTO requires patent lawyers to be educated at accredited universities. For professionals coming from computer science, virtually every student going to an ABET accredited university is taught the ACM's code of ethics.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > This is splitting hairs and pretends like the meaning isn't well-defined, when it clearly is. No, it absolutely is not. > Literally every work I've ever read in political philosophy regards "the public" to be the general population or the citizens of a country. Then every work you've ever read in political philosophy is overly simplistic. Pick any contentious political issue (abortion, gun control, socialized medicine, the list goes on and on). There are substantial (not fringe, substantial) portions of the populace on both sides (1) of those issues. Which side is "the public"? Generally, it's whichever side the person who's appointed himself to "speak for the public" prefers. (1) In actuality, pretending that there are only two sides itself is an oversimplification, of course. > USPTO requires patent lawyers to be educated at accredited universities And? Patent lawyers are ethically required to represent their clients (i.e., identifiable people), not "the public".
        infamouscow 3y ago
        The word public derives from the Latin word publicus, which means the people, state, or community. It's also legally defined as such. [1][2] Further, it's limiting to say there's only two sides to an issue, when in truth there's typically multiple dimensions and a gradient of positions along each of those dimensions. I would love to continue, but it seems like you're only interested in discussing a strawman of the ACM's code of ethics. I implore you to apply the principle of charity rather than interpret the code of ethics in the worst possible light imaginable. 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public 2: https://thelawdictionary.org/public/ https://thelawdictionary.org/public/

refulgentis 3y ago

Your point is 100% correct: I think immediately of how effective altruism turned into a contest of how many billions of lives you could save a century from now. I can't go as far as saying "public good as the primary concern is unethical", because there's so many ways to twist abstract words. I think immediately of someone saying the same thing about the Hippocratic Oath, or the Order of The Engineer, and they'd be just as correct. But the correctness is surface level: it is _rational_, but it is not practical.

torstenvl 3y ago
You bring up the Hippocratic Oath, so let's use doctors as an example. If the "public good" takes precedence over the individual patient, then any patient with a communicable disease with a fatality rate should be euthanized. Do you think that's ethical? Elevating public good as the primary concern necessarily means pure utilitarianism. There isn't a society on earth today that accepts pure utilitarianism as a valid ethical system. And in countries that trend closer to pure utilitarianism, public policy is repugnant: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-venezuela-elderly-idINKBN21O1DJ/ https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-venezuela...
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I see, thank you, that's also a really good explanation of why my mind must have jumped to effective altruism, and the 238 billion lives saved 347 years if you give me $10 for lunch. I guess with the Hippocratic oath, I'm thinking a simile would be: "well, if first do no harm takes precedence literally 100% of the time, that could lead to 0 treatment because there's always a potential for harm"
  - spencerflem 3y ago
    I like it though, its simple and direct - do not harm your patient. I like the software engineering guides that say things like "do no harm to your User" which is way less nebulous than having to consider all of society, while also stopping most of what I consider to be pretty severe ethical violations being done by big tech and the software engineers that work there

jacquesm 3y ago

I think you should expand on this or it will leave a 'middlebrow dismissal' vibe.

torstenvl 3y ago
I think there are sufficient examples below, but just to be perfectly clear: the "public good" is a nebulous concept, which can either mean objectively assessed public good (utilitarianism) or subjectively assessed public good (personal policy preferences). The latter is particularly likely in light of the "ethics aren't algorithmic" cop-out. Neither utilitarianism nor your own personal policy preferences should ever take precedence over your actual ethical obligations to your employers, your clients, and your users. If at any point they do, then you have breached an ethical duty and possibly committed fraud.