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posted by
martyb
on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:04PM
from the "code"-of-ethics-needs-debugging? dept.
from the "code"-of-ethics-needs-debugging? dept.
Earlier this week, a post written by programmer and teacher Bill Sourour went viral. It's called "Code I'm Still Ashamed Of."
In it he recounts a horrible story of being a young programmer who landed a job building a website for a pharmaceutical company. The whole post is worth a read, but the upshot is he was duped into helping the company skirt drug advertising laws in order to persuade young women to take a particular drug.
He later found out the drug was known to worsen depression and at least one young woman committed suicide while taking it. He found out his sister was taking the drug and warned her off it.
By sake of comparison, take a look at the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (Adopted by ACM Council 10/16/92.)
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Programmers Talk About the Unethical and Illegal Things They’ve Been Asked To Do
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belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @09:14PM
Devs, Coders, Software Engineers, and every other permutation of the discipline could work transformative change, if they wanted to.
I once gamed an algorithm to make sure an impoverished college student won a contest. I didn't know her. I will never meet her. But I made a difference in her life, because I could. I'm absolutely sure there are those, here, who will condemn that, but I don't care. I had the chance to give somebody the helping hand they were praying for, and I gave it.
When you measure the impact of your professional life, all the things that you mundanely do to help you evil employer, against the miraculous things you could do to help a person you know not at all, the choice is clear.
Choose to be the good person, the guardian angel, you always wished you had had. Many other things might befall you, but that you will never regret.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 22 2016, @10:08PM
So... what happened to the person who deserved to win and didn't?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @10:26PM
They said "doh" and went out to get a donut.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:00AM
So... what happened to the person who deserved to win and didn't?
Ironically, it would have been the same person. It was just a test.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:17AM
Illegal does not mean immoral, slight distinction but very important.
I done some bad things, even technically illegal, but not immoral. But if you work with me, you will get a good manager who actually cares about you; so much that even people I fired, will greet me if I meet them in the street.
I foregone raises in order to give one to the people who work with me and never, ever, I have blamed an underling for a screw up. I own ALL screw ups, I should have avoided them and I didn’t. Whoever made the mistake, in my mind, is not responsible (other than being willfully negligent); I am: I failed to supervise, promote or train them properly.
You want to make a difference? Don’t worry about people you don’t know, people in Afghanistan or Africa, worry about the guys surrounding you all day at work.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:13PM
Good point. I would further mention ethical vs. moral. [grammarist.com]
I may be wrong, but it seems like saying something is unethical is less judgmental than saying it's immoral? Morality is underlying reasons like religion, vs. ethics which can be more generally agreed on by people with different foundations.
IANAPhilosopher
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"