When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics.
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@idealpoint @celesteh @jlink I've just emailed a college history professor to thank her for her influence on me. I've tried before to write to a high school math teacher but never reached her. Ah well. The writing is also meaningful to me.
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When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics. But it was offered by the philosophy department to philosophy majors,so it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics.
We had two class meetings per week. In the first class meeting, the professor would tell us about a system of ethics. Who came up with it and why. How it solved problems. And we could ask questions about what seemed to be shortcomings and he would give us the answers developed by people working on that system. It was finally the answer to all of our conundrums.
Then in the second session, he would tear it to shreds. He would raise a problem with it, maybe a problem we had raised, and show how the answer given was actually a tautology or logically confused or wrong in some other way. This system did not solve ethics and was in fact an incoherent mess!
The last week of the term, he got into the system popular now with tech oligarchs. They do actually have a system of ethics! (Which I don't recall the name of.) And boy, was it obviously a mess of scientific racism.
All during the term, I would get excited during the intro week and try to find holes. But this one was so obviously going to be eviscerated on Thursday, I didn't even try to point out how it was full of shit. I was llokinf forward to the coming destruction.
Thursday was the course review for the paper or exam or whatever. He let the last one stand.
At the time I thought he might actually be endorsing it and was upset. Later, I thought maybe because it was current rather than historical, counter arguments hadn't solidified.
Only much later did I realise that he had given us the tools to rip it apart ourselves. Indeed, it was the weakest and most poorly constructed of all the systems and we were certainly up to tearing it down.
So when I say CS students should take ethics, I mean, they should take a class like that, where they aren't left with a perfect framework to apply, but the tools to critique frameworks they encounter. They need to be able to spot bullshit. Right now, they are way too credulous of bullshit.
Edit: Effective altruism didn't exist yet. It was the racism stuff left as an exercise.
@celesteh I took "business ethics" and it was totally not about being ethical. Rather, it was about being afraid of and deferential to corporate lawyers.
Ughghjhhh
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@idealpoint @celesteh @jlink You should absolutely email him and tell him the exact story you put up here! That's amazing to hear from a former student.
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@idealpoint @celesteh @jlink You should absolutely email him and tell him the exact story you put up here! That's amazing to hear from a former student.
@victorgijsbers @idealpoint @jlink
I get emails like this occasionally and then I don't respond and then I feel guilty for not responding.....
He did seem more on it than me, though.
I looked up his publication record yesterday and he has some paper from 50 years ago about 'how the earth is flat' which is blowing my mind a bit. Like when we use a spirit level to ensure a table or whatever is flat, if we extended the flat table infinitely to the left, it would eventually circumnavigate the earth and join itself on the right. And if its level - that is, flat - is is actually followers the curvature of the earth. This is also (theoretically) true for much smaller tables. Everything we think of as flat isn't. The paper is slightly silly but he males a good point about how language is sloppy and how we actually experience the earth as having flat places.
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@celesteh I took "business ethics" and it was totally not about being ethical. Rather, it was about being afraid of and deferential to corporate lawyers.
Ughghjhhh
Out of college I was pointed in the direction of 'professional engineering exam' (or something like that). In my field it wasn't really a critical thing for getting a job, but I took a look. What passed for 'ethics' at the time seemed to be: don't undercut others in your profession, or otherwise interfere with them doing the job the way they see fit.
I didn't bother to even study (any further) for the test.
Much more recently I was studying for a cyber security certification, and was glad to see that they emphasized safety of people over watching out for you colleagues and bosses.
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When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics. But it was offered by the philosophy department to philosophy majors,so it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics.
We had two class meetings per week. In the first class meeting, the professor would tell us about a system of ethics. Who came up with it and why. How it solved problems. And we could ask questions about what seemed to be shortcomings and he would give us the answers developed by people working on that system. It was finally the answer to all of our conundrums.
Then in the second session, he would tear it to shreds. He would raise a problem with it, maybe a problem we had raised, and show how the answer given was actually a tautology or logically confused or wrong in some other way. This system did not solve ethics and was in fact an incoherent mess!
The last week of the term, he got into the system popular now with tech oligarchs. They do actually have a system of ethics! (Which I don't recall the name of.) And boy, was it obviously a mess of scientific racism.
All during the term, I would get excited during the intro week and try to find holes. But this one was so obviously going to be eviscerated on Thursday, I didn't even try to point out how it was full of shit. I was llokinf forward to the coming destruction.
Thursday was the course review for the paper or exam or whatever. He let the last one stand.
At the time I thought he might actually be endorsing it and was upset. Later, I thought maybe because it was current rather than historical, counter arguments hadn't solidified.
Only much later did I realise that he had given us the tools to rip it apart ourselves. Indeed, it was the weakest and most poorly constructed of all the systems and we were certainly up to tearing it down.
So when I say CS students should take ethics, I mean, they should take a class like that, where they aren't left with a perfect framework to apply, but the tools to critique frameworks they encounter. They need to be able to spot bullshit. Right now, they are way too credulous of bullshit.
Edit: Effective altruism didn't exist yet. It was the racism stuff left as an exercise.
@celesteh critical thinking. Practice. Practice. Practice.
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When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics. But it was offered by the philosophy department to philosophy majors,so it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics.
We had two class meetings per week. In the first class meeting, the professor would tell us about a system of ethics. Who came up with it and why. How it solved problems. And we could ask questions about what seemed to be shortcomings and he would give us the answers developed by people working on that system. It was finally the answer to all of our conundrums.
Then in the second session, he would tear it to shreds. He would raise a problem with it, maybe a problem we had raised, and show how the answer given was actually a tautology or logically confused or wrong in some other way. This system did not solve ethics and was in fact an incoherent mess!
The last week of the term, he got into the system popular now with tech oligarchs. They do actually have a system of ethics! (Which I don't recall the name of.) And boy, was it obviously a mess of scientific racism.
All during the term, I would get excited during the intro week and try to find holes. But this one was so obviously going to be eviscerated on Thursday, I didn't even try to point out how it was full of shit. I was llokinf forward to the coming destruction.
Thursday was the course review for the paper or exam or whatever. He let the last one stand.
At the time I thought he might actually be endorsing it and was upset. Later, I thought maybe because it was current rather than historical, counter arguments hadn't solidified.
Only much later did I realise that he had given us the tools to rip it apart ourselves. Indeed, it was the weakest and most poorly constructed of all the systems and we were certainly up to tearing it down.
So when I say CS students should take ethics, I mean, they should take a class like that, where they aren't left with a perfect framework to apply, but the tools to critique frameworks they encounter. They need to be able to spot bullshit. Right now, they are way too credulous of bullshit.
Edit: Effective altruism didn't exist yet. It was the racism stuff left as an exercise.
@celesteh " it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics."
No - this is *exactly* what I mean when I say programmers (and everyone, really) should study ethics. *Precisely* this.
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When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics. But it was offered by the philosophy department to philosophy majors,so it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics.
We had two class meetings per week. In the first class meeting, the professor would tell us about a system of ethics. Who came up with it and why. How it solved problems. And we could ask questions about what seemed to be shortcomings and he would give us the answers developed by people working on that system. It was finally the answer to all of our conundrums.
Then in the second session, he would tear it to shreds. He would raise a problem with it, maybe a problem we had raised, and show how the answer given was actually a tautology or logically confused or wrong in some other way. This system did not solve ethics and was in fact an incoherent mess!
The last week of the term, he got into the system popular now with tech oligarchs. They do actually have a system of ethics! (Which I don't recall the name of.) And boy, was it obviously a mess of scientific racism.
All during the term, I would get excited during the intro week and try to find holes. But this one was so obviously going to be eviscerated on Thursday, I didn't even try to point out how it was full of shit. I was llokinf forward to the coming destruction.
Thursday was the course review for the paper or exam or whatever. He let the last one stand.
At the time I thought he might actually be endorsing it and was upset. Later, I thought maybe because it was current rather than historical, counter arguments hadn't solidified.
Only much later did I realise that he had given us the tools to rip it apart ourselves. Indeed, it was the weakest and most poorly constructed of all the systems and we were certainly up to tearing it down.
So when I say CS students should take ethics, I mean, they should take a class like that, where they aren't left with a perfect framework to apply, but the tools to critique frameworks they encounter. They need to be able to spot bullshit. Right now, they are way too credulous of bullshit.
Edit: Effective altruism didn't exist yet. It was the racism stuff left as an exercise.
@celesteh the issue is that all decisions are Just In Time so the "ethics" reminders have to be at the exact correct time, or it's irrelevant. https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-just-in-time-theory/
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When I was studying CS (and music) I took one single philosophy class, in Ethics. But it was offered by the philosophy department to philosophy majors,so it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics.
We had two class meetings per week. In the first class meeting, the professor would tell us about a system of ethics. Who came up with it and why. How it solved problems. And we could ask questions about what seemed to be shortcomings and he would give us the answers developed by people working on that system. It was finally the answer to all of our conundrums.
Then in the second session, he would tear it to shreds. He would raise a problem with it, maybe a problem we had raised, and show how the answer given was actually a tautology or logically confused or wrong in some other way. This system did not solve ethics and was in fact an incoherent mess!
The last week of the term, he got into the system popular now with tech oligarchs. They do actually have a system of ethics! (Which I don't recall the name of.) And boy, was it obviously a mess of scientific racism.
All during the term, I would get excited during the intro week and try to find holes. But this one was so obviously going to be eviscerated on Thursday, I didn't even try to point out how it was full of shit. I was llokinf forward to the coming destruction.
Thursday was the course review for the paper or exam or whatever. He let the last one stand.
At the time I thought he might actually be endorsing it and was upset. Later, I thought maybe because it was current rather than historical, counter arguments hadn't solidified.
Only much later did I realise that he had given us the tools to rip it apart ourselves. Indeed, it was the weakest and most poorly constructed of all the systems and we were certainly up to tearing it down.
So when I say CS students should take ethics, I mean, they should take a class like that, where they aren't left with a perfect framework to apply, but the tools to critique frameworks they encounter. They need to be able to spot bullshit. Right now, they are way too credulous of bullshit.
Edit: Effective altruism didn't exist yet. It was the racism stuff left as an exercise.
@celesteh I took intro to ethics and loved it so much I took another one of my professor’s philosophy courses just because. I think every human should be exposed to philosophy. I feel like the closest we get is mathematical proofs in geometry, but ethics teaches you how to reason about things that you actually care about and can relate to. We kept talking about eating meat and how each school of ethics would feel about it. It made the process of learning to reason real and relevant
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From a professor: absolutely
@ricci @idealpoint @celesteh @jlink oh yes most definitely, from another professor
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@celesteh " it wasn't what I think most people mean when they say programmers should study ethics."
No - this is *exactly* what I mean when I say programmers (and everyone, really) should study ethics. *Precisely* this.
The only ethics classes I've ever seen were in the philosophy department.
*smirks* I pwn'ed my ethics prof.
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@victorgijsbers @idealpoint @jlink
I get emails like this occasionally and then I don't respond and then I feel guilty for not responding.....
He did seem more on it than me, though.
I looked up his publication record yesterday and he has some paper from 50 years ago about 'how the earth is flat' which is blowing my mind a bit. Like when we use a spirit level to ensure a table or whatever is flat, if we extended the flat table infinitely to the left, it would eventually circumnavigate the earth and join itself on the right. And if its level - that is, flat - is is actually followers the curvature of the earth. This is also (theoretically) true for much smaller tables. Everything we think of as flat isn't. The paper is slightly silly but he males a good point about how language is sloppy and how we actually experience the earth as having flat places.
Wouldn't a line off the surface of a flat table sitting on a sphere be a tangent?
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