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by mcguire 2470 days ago
The practice of computer science is a human activity and therefore involves ethics. Further, the argument that computer science is ethically neutral is itself a question of philosophical ethics.
1 comments

The practice of mathematics also is a human activity and therefore has ethics when viewed from the context of human activity. However, math itself is not ethical. It just is.

The same is said of computer science. What you do on the job as a software engineer, is more engineering and applying math and programming in a human activity. The disciplines themselves, algebra, category theory, topology, calculus, number theory, computer science are all devoid of ethics or morals.

Combining ethics and science is like combining church and state.

is there any non-human math you are aware of? The categorization of mathematics into certain disciplines (algebra/topology/etc) is also a human choice. As is the choice to separate the philosophy class from the calculus class. They are all human choices, which reflect our outlook to life. I choose not to demarcate mathematics and philosophy because as far as I know only humans do mathematics, and every choice they make in that doing, teaching or researching has implications, even if tiny, for the good or bad that happens to this world.
All math is non-human.

What does the quantity one have to do with a human? Nothing. The only thing you are doing is giving it a name. "One" The categorization of mathematics is just nomenclature. We choose the name and categorizations of something that already exists independent of the human experience.