[jerf]

Errr, define "ethically".

I'm not trying to trap you. I'm willing to work with whatever definition you specify, and I won't try to play semantic games with the definition if it's at least close enough to something specific to work with. I'm not asking for a universality claim. But without some specification of what you mean the question is vague to the point of unanswerability.

The North Korean programmers may well have truly believed in what they were doing. A utilitarian may well truly believe that even if Facebook Free Basics isn't a perfect program, it's a net good for the participants. The "surveillance software" can be seen as just a tool and whether the tool makers are responsible for its misuse is ethically debatable. (And let me be clear I mean that literally, not as an attempt to rhetorically state a position. I could write a coherent argument both ways.) After all, many people even in free countries end up calling for strict regulation of corporations and that same "surveillance software" is pretty much the way you instantiate such regulation, so, is it really clear that it's intrinsically evil?

And again let me emphasize the point I'm making here is just the width of possible arguments about ethics that can be made. My previous paragraph is itself ethically incoherent, inasmuch I'm not even trying to take a consistent stand overall, but merely trying to highlight the most obvious problem per issue where ill-defined "ethics" makes it hard to even debate the matter.

[RodericDay]

Why? Defining ethics is extremely difficult, but volunteering our intuitions via examples helps us get closer and closer to narrowing what it is exactly that we're talking about.

It's mighty hard to pin down a universal definition for "art", "love", and even "game"- and yet we use these words regularly and mostly very successfully to communicate.

Discussing "ethics" is difficult too, but I am unconvinced by arguments of the "it's obviously all subjective" variety.

[objectiveariel]

> I'm willing to work with whatever definition you specify, and I won't try to play semantic games with the definition if it's at least close enough to something specific to work with.

My question is precisely asking you to define that.

[OliverJones]

Ethics is a slippery subject. Different people have different ethical stances, so if I were to say "that's unethical" to you, you'd be likely to misunderstand me.

One common ethical stance is utilitarianism. This stance purports to optimize collective welfare. I don't know any NSA people, but it seems likely that they share a utilitarian approach to ethical decision making, and they define happiness as security from evildoers. (I'm speculating about their stance, not claiming it to be my stance.) Selfish interest is part of utilitarianism.

For example, if you have a utilitarian stance you might choose to refrain from having sex with strangers to protect your health and theirs.

Another ethical stance is deontology. In this stance you refrain from having sex with strangers because it's externally defined as wrong. For example, "Do not commit adultery" shows up in one common collection of externally defined rules. If you say to someone, "that's illegal" you're speaking from a deontological stance.

A third stance is altruism. When operating in that stance, people value the welfare of others above their own welfare. Many who donate blood do so from an altruistic stance.

Real people have a combination of actual stances. And for most of us, our real, operative stances are often not quite aligned with what we say our stances are. That's just reality. Almost nobody completely walks their talk on this stuff.

An engineer who works through the night to repair a critical defect probably has a combination of ethical attitudes. Trying to make users happy is altruism. It may also be deontological -- they're violating their quality agreements. It may also be selfish and utilitarian: losing face, losing revenue and getting fired are to be avoided. All that is fine.

Life is harder when different people have contradictory stances. The life and death of Aaron Swartz is a tragic example of that.

Immanuel Kant proposed the "categorical imperative". (Oversimplifying) he suggests that we should live and behave ourselves the way we WISH everybody would live and behave. Professional codes of ethics attempt to employ the idea of the categorical imperative to create a shared ethical stance.

Codes of ethics are helpful precisely because of the slipperiness of ethics. Good codes of ethics offer a common language. And they serve to convert various ethical stances into deontological stances--written external collections of rules to follow. They make it easier for us to predict each others' ethical behavior.

So, a plea: when questions of ethics are up for grabs, let's be explicit about our own ethical stances and generous when trying to interpret other peoples' stances.