| > which you answer with your last point: "guns don't kill people" and an admittance of ethical responsibility are not mutually exclusive. I would say it's admittance of ethical impact rather than ethical responsibility, and the apparent controversy actually is just a huge mess of confusion with very little substance that mostly results from people rationalizing away their responsibility by selectively pretending lack of impact. The thing is, "Whether I produce weapons has no causal connection to people suffering, and I should be allowed to produce weapons because it helps to prevent criminals from making people suffer" is self-contradictory, you cannot actually believe both of those statements at the same time. "Whether I produce weapons has a causal connection to people suffering but I am not responsible for my contributions because others do contribute as well" would be consistent but obviously fallacious (who else could possibly be responsible for your contribution?). There is a genuine discussion to be had about whether specific actions have a net positive or negative ethical impact, and that can get complicated fast, depending on the action at hand. But the supposed controversy usually is about the simple assertion that indirection and cooperation removes responsibility, though it is expressed in a way that suggests that it removes the causal connection, which is nothing more than a strategy to rationalize, not really something that you can have a controversial discussion about. > and maybe there has never been a controversy like i am suggesting. which is a great point and presses me to reiterate: where is this programmer who does not believe his job has ethical implications? Well, that is ultimately difficult to say, because you have to go by what people say, and people usually don't say that literally. But more often than not you see people even here on HN who use arguments of the form "but that was his job", "but he had to earn money" in a context where it seems pretty clear that they think that that trumps all ethical concerns as to the impact their actions have on other people. Whether they actually somehow think that their actions have no ethical impact, or just that they aren't responsible for their impact, is difficult to know. > and IF IT IS a falsehood programmers believe: you think telling some number of programmers they are ethically insufficient could not possibly lead to a controversial discussion? Well, possibly, but see above: That could essentially be said about all points on that list. It's somewhat in the nature of a list of "falsehoods people believe" that there could be contradicting voices. So if that is what you mean by "controversial", then I don't understand what your complaint is and why you are picking out that specific statement from the list?! |